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Jan 25
Hi!
I read this article today and had to sigh. It is a never ending farcical endeavour trying to write when the kids are about, even before I consider all the glass ceiling/weaker sex debate that Virginia Woolf brings up (which, contrary to the article I linked, has come a long way).
And leaving out the housework and laundry…
I am positive there is unmapped potential in me that I am too distracted and tired to even begin to send out into the world; it’s a blooming good thing I love the punks I live with, and have begun to get serious about organising and simplifying our home to give my future self much more freedom 😉
My nine words came from Randomlists :
Swift Head Kaput Acoustic Announce Habitual Melodic Paper Uppity
I sit here:
Swift pen straining to extract,
From a head that’s kaput,
All of the creative ideas
That came to me
Over the dishes.
Meanwhile:
Young male voices
Intrude,
Testing acoustic limits
In a steamy, tiled room.
(YouTube has taught them
To announce and project
Every thought in their head
So that those at the back may hear…)
One would think
That I could shut out
This habitual (oft-melodic)
Interruption through daily practice;
But it seeps into my mother-brain,
Keeps me reacting
As if their squawks mean danger –
An invisible force,
Pulling me from my paper
Almost as violently
As the uppity, soggy child
Who later bursts through my door…
Hubby does the honours when it comes to the boys’ daily showers. I oscillate between trying to write in that short time and just getting small ‘straightening’ tasks done in the house while keeping half an eye on motivational YouTube videos.
It doesn’t really matter what room I’m in, the children will come and find me to tell me something ‘urgent’. Pairing socks is easier to get back to than a poem, after a long discussion about what kind of snake a purple squiggle on their artwork is (and whether or not the characters they’ve drawn are in immediate danger), it must be said.
I love that they want to involve me in their creativity and lives, and I often get small things gifted to me at this time, so it can be really sweet; but if I have been unable to write at any other point of the day, or one of the kids has been off ill (as was the case today) and I have had no quiet space with my thoughts due to cuddling and playing time, I find it really hard to still be in demand when someone else is there for them.
I write best before 9pm, and ideally between 10am and 2pm. This will be easier after the summer when Youngest starts school, of course, but I also need that outlet now. After reading to the boys and getting them to agree to go to bed (!) it is really too late for my brain to generate anything like a “lightning crack of genius”.
My life is a blessed and comfortable one, and I of course realise how precious all this time I get to spend with my kids is, but I feel – after almost eight years – my restlessness falls in line with Woolf’s observations about rooms and ruminations quite a bit these days 😉
[Second pic is from here]
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 24
Hey There!
Today’s selection is from here.
Deprivation Pole Era Twist Gold Enhance Help Athlete Taste
Deprivation takes its toll,
As if your friends moved to the Pole
The other end of Earth from you –
When all you have is cabin blues
Brought on by rainy weekend’s dust
(A vacuum running dawn til dusk)
With Monday drawing ever nearer
In winter’s bitter, cloistered era.
That silly little mental twist
The gloomy voice that heralds this:
“Your times of gold are long since past
This disquiet is not some mask
You’ve put on for a morbid dance;
Leaving the house will not enhance
Your life, or get the help you need…!”
To outrun thoughts, I have to speed
Like an athlete besting her time,
And find a way for hope to shine
Come show me this is just a phase –
Soon life regains its sweeter taste.
The Spring is coming! Smile anew!
Soon warmer rays will filter through!
This morning I walked home from the school run with a mum that I haven’t talked to since the end of the last school year 🙂
*Waves in case she’s reading*
Shockingly, I was able to invite her into my house, knowing that it would be pretty tidy!! I have been decluttering and sorting stuff here and there for just over a month now. I had picked toys up from the playroom floor before getting the kids on the road, and straightened the livingroom. I’d even vacuumed and done a quick clean last night; even though I wasn’t expecting company!
There were still a few dishes hanging about, and I had to check that the bathroom was presentable (!), but it was a really nice feeling to be relaxed enough that if she had walked into any room in my house it would no longer be the most embarrassing disaster ever.
I haven’t felt like that for most of my married life, and I rarely felt like that even when I only had a room or two to take care of while single!
I have a long way to go (I’ve earmarked the first three months of this year for decluttering just the bedrooms) and I don’t hit my ‘tidy’ targets every day due to catching up on the blog, appointments, etc. but I am at least keeping on top of the laundry a lot better and making my bed every day – so I’m feeling proud of myself!!
My visitor and I had a lovely chat about weddings, poetry, creativity…and randomly striking up conversations with people wherever we go 😉 it’s fab to be taken out of your routine now and then, meet someone you weren’t expecting to, and talk about what you enjoy doing…especially over that all important mug of milky tea (and slice of sponge cake from the treat cupboard).
There may have been a storm in Scotland today, but it felt like a favourable wind to me!
[Second pic is from here]
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 23
Hello 🙂
I have not visited my beloved random word generators for a while, so I popped onto Textfixer and got these nine words for today’s poem:
I read them and immediately knew what I was going to write about 😉
Seven Messiah Star Baboon Weasel Acoustic Decade Accursed Tactic
Seven days a week
I follow the news
On a fake messiah;
Watch this ‘star’
Tear up the world stage.
Gesturing like some baboon,
Flanked by a devoted weasel or two;
Addicted, as always, to the acoustic virtues
Of his open mouth…
I get sucked into
The same game
Of judgement and name-calling,
Part of me enjoying
The dangerous feckless folly unfolding.
I shake my head and feel sure
That this decade we’re in
Shouldn’t be tolerating him
And his accursed ways;
That every tactic he tries
Is inherently wrong.
But what ‘adulting’ am I displaying here:
Faulting a system
I don’t even understand…?
How weird to feel superior
When a great nation toys with wars.
[Second pic is from here]
Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter
Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 22
Hiya 🙂
Here’s today’s roll:
I chose a background material that would suit Epitaph poetry, fully intending to write a few different ones. Unfortunately, I only ended up with one Epitaph, and the background, in hindsight, is not the best for showing up the kubes!!
Hellbent, putrid, vile one perished!
Our cheeks dry – you were not cherished!
I did roll 14 blank kube-faces, however, so I managed to write three further poems in free verse:
Clear pool –
Her journey
Finally sees light:
Mature grace with
Sweet return to life.
Shiver through thunder swell –
Livid crack –
My heart beats fast.
Stay gleeful:
What dilemma
Is there
Whose shape cannot turn around?
Doctor war blows…
Realise, brother:
We marvel
That you tried for us.
I don’t have any proper leftovers for tomorrow! Not bad, eh?!
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 21
Hi!
These are yesterday’s leftover kubes:
The way I’d set them out made me think of the #MeToo movement, so I wrote with all those harrowing stories in mind.
Finally Overlook Flesh Etc. Slimy You Biting In Here Pool Trunk
I wish
I could finally ‘overlook’
Your flesh fetish:
The way you stared
At parts of women
Not covered by cloth.
It made me curl
My toes in silent protest;
Pushed buttons
Soon to be set to detonate.
The casual misogyny:
A wink
A guffaw, snort, etc.
That dismissed how I felt…
Some slimy serpent:
You coiled around my thoughts,
Biting at my confidence.
The poison slowly seeped in –
Circulating my system
Each day.
It took too long to get here –
To see you drown
In the cesspool you formed:
The lives you ruined
Screaming
From the trunk of your soul.
[Second pic is from here]
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 20
Hello!
I rummaged through my craft cupboard and picked some nice material to roll my Haikubes on today. It ended up inspiring my first poem, which I wrote in the ballad style (a syllable pattern of 8-6-8-6, with an abcb rhyme scheme).
 
Flying ritual – wicked journey! –
With my broom partner, Doug;
Shot around the solar system
Dodging all the space-thugs.
I only rolled six blank kube faces, and I proceeded to use them all for that first poem!!
I still constructed two more poems with the blocks I had left, however…one in the Hiaku structure of 5-7-5 syllables (though its subject matter is not strictly Hiaku material), and the last in the longer Tanka style of
5-7-5-7-7 😉
Watching Mommy, I
went places. Any stage ran
smooth for gleeful cheeks.
Alternate riches:
Stay ravenous for simple.
Surface mature, girl.
My shady waste left me sour
Mouthing anal thunder, too.
I was swithering about whether ‘sour’ was a one- or two-syllable word; but I looked it up, and it is just one. Hurrah!!
I have eleven words left over to play with tomorrow as well, so I am quite pleased with how this session went!
Are you liking the return to my random poetry tinkerings? Have you any suggestions for other things you would like to see me tackle?
Please pop a comment on here, or visit my social media pages I’ve linked below, and let me know what’s working for you!
Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter
Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 19
Hey 🙂
The ‘leftovers’ from yesterday were not speaking to me as a poem, so I put 20 minutes on my timer and let a character pop into my head to tell me of a woe she has:
Not Slips As On Anal Cover Stick An For Travel So Not Hellbent It’s
I looked at him, while trying to seem like I was not interested. It was a weird game I’m sure lots of other people tried back then, but now it just seems so stupid. I would berate myself for days over any slips I made: seeming too eager if he talked to me, making too much eye contact, arranging to hang out with too small a group of people to be a buffer between us…girls are strange beings, I’ve come to realise.
As I soldiered on with this incredibly anal stint, the poor guy was just trying to be my damn friend. He didn’t see me agreeing to sit at his table as ‘blowing my cover‘. He didn’t stick any labels on our time together at all. He just really seemed to enjoy my company.
He was an advocate for any kind of travel. He had great plans for after university, had taken that hallowed ‘year out’ already, and done some amazing stuff. I found his stories exhilarating, his trust that everything was going to work out was so not the way I was brought up to think; and yet irresistibly refreshing. The risks he had faced, the times when every circumstance seemed to suggest he was hellbent on failure, but a lucky break presented itself in the nick of time…I wanted to have that certainty, that passion and adventurous spirit; I wished I had the courage to do what he did and stand by his side through every crazy moment.
It’s a huge regret of mine that I never told him how I felt, that I waved him off (with the usual gang) at the airport that last time, and wished him a safe journey.
I wish he’d known how much I will always love him before he got married that summer: a whirlwind romance in New Zealand. Now I just have happy pictures to stare at on Facebook as he builds that perfect life he was always destined for – with someone else.
Every time I see his smile I hate myself, and more colour drains from my grey existence without him…
Oh no! 🙁 I rarely get to hear of happy endings from these ‘voices’ that show up in my head!
Have you a lost love that you pine for?
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 18
How do?!
I got the kubes out again! This time I decided to try for Tetractys poetry.
This is what I rolled (61 kubes):
I got straight into the creating after that, and actually forgot about the topic kubes! Here’s my first poem (I put the amount of syllables that are supposed to be in each line, in grey):
(1) Sweet
(2) Baby;
(3) Our gorgeous,
(4) Friendly marvel:
(10) Your glorious, smooth, sleeping hand opens…
As Hubby says, that is the most poetic one of the evening 😉
My second attempt made use of a few blank kube faces and I wondered what the background to the scene was:
(1) A
(2) Doctor
(3) Behind me
(4) Quickly sang through
(10) A mouthful of noodle, but then was killed.
So were there musical-demanding terrorists in a hospital near Chinatown? An alien on the rampage, that can be cowed by a tune? Hmmmm…
I got a third Tetractys together, too:
(1) Fire,
(2) Wind, time…
(3) Flock yelled its
(4) Simple grace to
(10) Have nerve – fantasy threw down its lame charm.
There are a few words left for tomorrow, but they are not very exciting, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with them. Here is a pic of all the poems and remnants on my table when I’d finished:
See you tomorrow!
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 17
Hi!
If you remember, I had 15 words and the ending of ‘-esque’ left over from yesterday’s fun with the Haikubes, and I vowed to write a poem with them today.
Here’s what came of that endeavour…
Words to incorporate:
Doctor Licks -esque Its He Prick Lurid You A Cheeks Next Flying To Your Any Bust
I sit in the waiting room
Watching my doctor
– In reception,
Protected by glass –
As he licks
The ice cream.
The room is hot
I arrived too early
And now it’s almost time…
The picturesque moment
Of ‘man enjoying a treat’
Loses its appeal.
“How dare he?!
The prick! Such a lurid display!
Here you are: early.
Having to be taunted by
A show of nonchalance:
His cheeks full of food,
As your fever
Has barely left yours!
You’d better be next!
This behaviour
Is flying in the face
Of what the media says…
Isn’t it?!
NHS staff rushed off their feet, eh?
Can’t be bothered
To stick to your
Appointment time, can he?
Any sympathy you had for doctors
Should be well dead now;
Bust that myth, haven’t we…?!”
“So” said the doctor,
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“Intrusive thoughts” I said,
Trying not to glare at
The ice cream on his tie.
Hands up who was expecting that from those words?! 😛
[Pic is from here]
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Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
Jan 16
Hey There!
I got to thinking, and realised that I could probably write a Cinquain or two with a roll of my Haikubes! (This is the poetry type that has five lines, and a syllable structure of 2-4-6-8-2)
So…
I grabbed one of the red-printed kubes to give me the first topic (‘My Future’) and came up with this:
Fortune:
Hoped-for return
Screwed, ‘neath heavy ‘balance’.
Empty fantasy…fathom this,
Fortune!
I loved that I got ‘fortune’ twice in one roll, and other alliterative words to put with it!! Also, the blank kube faces that came up add even more options, as I can insert my own words. I imagined the speaker/me giving a rude gesture at the end 😉
Speaking of rude, I got quite a few words that, when put together, could be rather ‘Ooooh Maaatron!’ in this selection…!
The next roll of the topic-kube gave me ‘A Regret About’, so I used some of the naughtier stuff in my second cinquain (this one is definitely not about me!!):
Hero
Rides into town;
Clever words…my room…the
Desperate tangle…our wet flesh…
Baby.
I managed to get one last cinquain out of my selection, and this time it had to be about ‘Our World’. I decided to look at climate change, starting with the milder end (where we are seeing strong winds etc more often); and ending with the really tragic pictures we sometimes catch on the news. (Just to finish on a sober note, in case you were enjoying this post at all…)
Luckily I had just enough blank kube-faces left to write this one!
Climate:
Biting wind blows
Down gentle shady trees/
Boy must search for slimy, muck-death
Parents…
I had 15 intriguing words (plus one ending of ‘-esque’) left over, so I’ve taken a picture of them to enable me to construct a random word poem for tomorrow!
Here is the whole scene from my cinquain session today, just so you can see that I didn’t cheat 😉
Be sure to check out tomorrow’s post to see what I come up with for the leftovers!!
[Who knows, I may even pick a prettier background than a shoebox lid, my notepad and Eldest’s carpet… 😛 ]
Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter
Copyright © 2018 Montaffera All Rights Reserved
Please do not use any of my content (posts, pictures, poetry etc) without my permission, but feel free to link back to my blog if something catches your eye. Thank you!
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