How do you go about deciding where to break your lines? I only ask because everyone has their own particular way of doing it.
I do most of them as I'm writing them as a way to capture how they're coming out of my mind. I usually try to keep lines between 1 - 5 (definitely less than 10) words as a general rule; which I think oddly enough stems from the fact that I like the skinny, vertical-look like this was sent through a small online chat message box. I usually start a line with a conjunction if it's part of a sentence, as you can see with the "and" I try to break in a way that emphasizes certain sounds. cleanse the palate of my soul with some sorbet I like how the s's are close and form a slinking, s-like shape if you were to connect them all. taste what’s next without the persuasive traces of the past. With this, I like visualizing how Taste slant rhymes with trace, they both slant-rhyme with the suas in persuasive, and the alliteration of persuasive and past. I try to do a lot of internal rhyming/similar sounds and shaping the poem in a way that makes it work in more directions than just left-to-right.
Hmm. Why the self-imposed limit? I actually think that this could work better if there were more going on, especially because the idea of "cleansing" has so many associations, not to mention "soul." I see what you mean with the internal play, but for me, the way that the lines break are a bit abrupt at times. of my soul with some sorbet for me, "with" detracts from the second line, as it's a weak note to end on and "with" ending in the unvoiced "th" naturally has a lot of air moving through the sound in a way that is very close to the sibilants of the alliterative "some sorbet", so to me, "with some sorbet" falls more naturally.cleanse the palate
As I read this, I think it would be better if it just read:cleanse the palate
of my soul
some sorbet