I am sitting with my milky cup of tea, looking out of our Eldest’s window at bright November sunshine this morning. I dug out the quirky china mug that my Auntie bought me for my (second, I think?!) pregnancy and I am savouring how it keeps my caffeine hit warmer than other mugs.
The sky is the colour of a happy watercolour wash, and it is peppered by the snowflake stickers we stuck on the glass a few Christmases ago – Eldest asked to keep them there, so we did. There are also still some of the chalk pen doodles from a few years ago, because he finds them nice to look at and I’m not picky about how it appears from outside.
I am not an Autumn lover, but I can appreciate it has beauty in it. The colours can be breathtaking, the symbolism raw – and the general lean towards knitwear, layers and crafting obviously works in my favour 😉
I really should share a happy poem for this gorgeous-yet-frosty day…but the generator had other ideas.
This feeling of being an imposter, hiding in plain sight.
Trapped in a blizzard of shoulds
Unsure which way is up.
Phenomenal self-doubt descends:
A locust storm munching
On all the harvest
You once thought you could count on.
Distancing oneself
From all who like to think they matter
Becomes a way of life.
At first it feels rude,
But the relief becomes addictive.
That liberatingsilence in one’s head
Is better than any mere drug.
Maybe I’ll write a happy ditty tonight, when I think back on how nice it is sitting in a sun spot having cleared off our Eldest’s desk while he is at school. How decadent it feels settling to apply myself to my creative passions in daylight; as the dust motes gather on all surfaces and the washing whirls in its endless rumbly rounds… 😉
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!
“…Today, I’d like to challenge you to blend…concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. You might try including a dramatic, declarative statement, like Hass’s “All the new thinking is about loss,” or O’Hara’s “It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” Or, like, Baudelaire, you might try addressing your feeling directly, as if it were a person you could talk to. There are as many approaches to this as there are poets, and poems.” [from the NaPoWriMo site]
Well, I don’t know about you, but if I ‘meditate’ on an issue I’m having, my inner wisdom has a way of never pulling her punch. I get it squarely between the eyes and have to stop flinching and actually accept the lesson before I can move on. I get a lot of these home truths dealt to me while doing mundane things like washing our dishes, folding laundry or just wandering back from the school run looking at the sky…
Something I read (or someone said) might stay with me, and my inner wisdom will shrug and tell me that I might not like it, but if I look across the patterns of my day-to-day there is this piece of evidence, this silly sabotaging habit, this phrase I use that proves that person/book was at least half relevant to something I’m wrestling with. There is usually a very annoying list of achievable steps that gets presented to me as well, or a YouTube video pops up that is ridiculously well timed…don’t you just hate that?!
This poem came out of our need to start tweaking things around the house now that the kids are getting more independent and the fixtures and fittings are not holding up as well as they used to, etc etc…
If it gets too good they’ll change it,
Better not get comfy here;
Then your confidence won’t be hit
When ‘they’ turn – and you can’t steer.
So: these walls did not get painted
And this carpet’s still the same
As the day the previous owners
Picked it out – yes I’m to blame;
And there’s still unopened boxes
Lurking in our storage piles
That I have no heart to ditch yet
So keep lugging o’er the miles.
I think I’m waiting for some signal
That I can trust what is good
Not to vanish like a mirage
If I drop my guard. Then: stood
In the glow of my achievements
(And the knowledge I now hold)
I’ll stop running scripts from childhood
And refusing to be bold…
So that’s my little pep talk with myself over for another day 😉
That’s the penultimate poem of NaPoWriMo dusted, too! Whoa!
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!
“…I’d like to challenge you to “remix” a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can pick a line you like and use it as the genesis for a new poem. Or make a “word bank” out of a sonnet, and try to build a new poem using the same words (or mostly the same words) as are in the poem. Or you could try to write a new poem that expresses the same idea as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, like “hey baby, this poem will make you immortal” (Sonnet XVIII) or “I’m really bad at saying I love you but maybe if I look at you adoringly, you’ll understand what I mean” (Sonnet XXIII)…”
It is our wedding anniversary today. We sat on the couch with the kids and watched a couple of nervous 30-somethings say their vows to each other, remarked upon the length of my dress and how hard it was to walk in, calculated how old different family members must have been then, etc etc. Our Youngest liked the song we’d picked for our first dance (Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles), and our Eldest was asking about the logistics of me getting in and out of the bridal car 😉
So when I read the prompt for today’s NaPo contribution, I decided to look at Sonnet number 27 (because we met on the 27th of March 2005 and were married on the 27th of April 2008…) and I realised that it was a fitting Sonnet, as it is about being really tired after a busy day, but one’s mind spanning the miles to a lover as soon as one lies down.
Being a ruminator, however, the 3rd and 4th lines have a darker meaning for me, too:
“But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired…”
So I decided to change some of Shakespeare’s words to tweak the feel of the poem from one of romantic infatuation to one of anxiety. I have given Shakespeare’s lines in grey and the ones I’m using in blue, so you can see how they compare and contrast…like the good wee English scholar I was taught to be, haha.
** Trigger warning for some of the imagery I’ve used **
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, Wearing a tee, Hub snoring in my bed,
The dear respose for limbs with travel tir’d; The dear lord knows I’ve never been so tir’d;
But then begins a journey in my head
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts–from far where I abide—
My stupid thoughts—their whirl I can’t abide–
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
Intend a zealous voyage out my tree,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:
Musing on pointless questions I do see:
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
The demons that I should keep out of sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Present their shadows to my helpless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Which, like a slipknot hung in ghastly light,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Makes blessed night dangerous, and her sweet face skew.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
For Hub, and for myself, no quiet find.
I rather enjoyed messing about with the bard’s work 😉
Only three more April poems to write for this year! I can’t believe that I have managed to keep up (and post up) an entry for every day with all the holidays and kid wrangling. (I know a few, like this one, have had to be backdated by half a day or so, but the poems have still all been accounted for).
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!
I wrote a poem after the Grenfell Tower fire news bulletins (here), and the Manchester arena attack (here).
When I was 18 I wrote one about the horror that unfolded at Dunblane. I lived not far from there at the time, and the death of children particularly haunts me.
I fervently miss a few people in my life, but I write most often about the void I experience without my maternal grandmother (see here and the second poem from here, for example) she even creeps into short scenes I have written from prompts people have left me on my Facebook page!
“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail”
You’d think it would have been easy to comply.
Nope.
I enlisted a generator for inspiration and wrote a poem using all of the nine words I’d been given, then realised it read better when shaved to about two thirds of its size… I only ended up using “execute” and “describes” in my final cut. I am not being a stickler for my usual generator rules for NaPoWriMo though, so it’s all good 😉
I don’t know if what I wrote meets the prompt for you, but I know that I’m referencing four relatives who have passed on in the poem, so I think it does…
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!
“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that…presents a scene from an unusual point of view. Perhaps you could write a poem that presents Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery from the perspective of the apple. Or the shootout at the OK Corral from the viewpoint of a passing vulture. Or maybe it could be something as everyday as a rainstorm, as experienced by a raindrop”
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!
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!
It was Eldest’s birthday today, and the Na/GloPoWriMo prompt decided to run with this nicely:
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of gifts and joy. What would you give yourself, if you could have anything? What would you give someone else?
Happy writing!
Youngest’s birthday was only eight days ago.
I get sentimental at this time of year, I warn you now…the start of the poem is Eldest’s answer to “what would you like for your birthday if you could have anything?” while he was talking about his X-Box adventures 😉
“Sixty-four emeralds!” – said with a grin
(For Minecraft – it’s all ‘invent’ry’ will fit in)
Why did I not know that all we’d to do
Was ‘dig’ him up a shiny green thing or two?!
I wish that my joy could be bought with such ease –
I’m standing here mourning that time is a thief,
And I’m wishing this handsome young man with bed-hair
Could somehow rewind a few years…it’s not fair!
Though, better still, please the capacity
To visit myself in my uncertainty
In each parenting stage (once at last I am wise)
With assurances, hugs – more rational eyes.
It would be nice to think in my quiet old age
I could comfort my young self, sow peace through my days;
That the next time I felt like collapsing in sobs,
I’d be at my own shoulder,
whisp’ring softly:
“Good job…!”
I am getting this up on the blog at a ridiculously wee hour of the morning, so I must dash, but I’ll be back later for day eight. Ciao for now!
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!
A foray into the villanelle style wasone of the three suggestionsto get me crafting today’s poem. Not an easy task, but I had a bash at it!
The site says:
The classic villanelle has five three-line stanzas followed by a final, four-line stanza. The first and third lines of the first stanza alternately repeat as the last lines of the following three-line stanzas, before being used as the last two lines of the final quatrain.
I also found it described as having a rhyme scheme of: A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2on Wikipedia, where the capital A stands for a repeated refrain, and the number after each signifies which of the two it is…
I went for the version that has 10 syllables to a line, too.
Anyway, all this complicated stuff can be explained better by just getting to the poem! So here goes:
I cannot run, also I cannot kill.
This conundrum – it haunts my waking hours.
Why’s every word they say so freaking shrill?
To stay civil is taking all my skill,
All I want’s ten minutes in the shower.
I cannot run, also I cannot kill.
Our two having a Lego superhero adventure together on the X-Box (semi-amicably)
“I can’t make brothers disappear at will…”
(Thank the lord our tablet still has power)
Why’s every word they say so freaking shrill?!
“I do not have a magic wand or pill.”
“Don’t make that face at me, your milk will sour.”
I cannot run!! Also: I cannot kill.
“Get down from there! No jumping off the ‘sills!”
“Flatulence is not your superpower…”
Whyyyyyyy’s every word they say so freaking shrill…?!
Their hearts and tummies never seem to fill,
I feel one day they’ll all of me devour.
I cannot run. Also, I cannot kill.
WHY’S EVERY WORD THEY SAY SO FREAKING SHRIIIIIIIIIILL??!!!
Did I mention that the kids were on holiday this week and next?! 😀
Hope you got a giggle or two out of today’s poem (I like the superpower line!!), and I’ll hopefully be back soon with tomorrow’s offering 😉
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!
To explain: I wrote a series of 40-syllable 10-line verses (with a syllable layout of 1,2,3,4,10,10,4,3,2,1) around the theme of a story that unfolds over a long-ish time period and incorporates the words below!!
As
Always
These are her
Habitual
Army of thoughts: negative troops of pain
Hop between recollections, turning her
Neuroscience
Toxic. Her
Friendships
Stale.
There
Was once
This lovely
Man, one kid each,
A comfortable house…but inside she
Would compare unfavourably, always
Sure happiness
Was just a
Fatal
Boast.
The
Children
Grew anxious
The man: distant.
She would judge herself harshly but still strive
To paddle against their tide; switch comfort
For perfection,
Teamwork for
Solo
Ire.
Proud
In a
Tight way (for
Failure could loom)
She stored up stories to keep them humble;
Baked and gave. Inauthentically kind.
Good manners with
Smile plastered;
Practiced
Act.
‘Grand’
Kids bore
Grander ones,
That seldom greet
This lonely figure in her scrubbed box, with
More windows than walls. She dusts their framed smiles
By the mountain
She’ll traverse
Before
Sleep.
Hopefully you like what I came up with, and it makes sense…!
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!
Ok, we are on the second day of Global/National Poetry Writing Month!On the site, participants have been challenged to write a poem that culminates in a question.I thought it was time to face the Jimpix generator again – it always makes me enquire about the
meanings of words,
ask myself how the heck I make a cohesive narrative from the fodder it throws up,
seek interesting ways to cobble together sentences and forage for the sense in the chaos… (I have learned that ‘gewgaw’ means ‘a (particularly useless) showy thing’,which tickled me)
He showed me a new gewgaw
Auntie had seen fit to buy
(I need more tat festering
Like a large thorn in my eye)
Her ploy had worked, however:
‘Waylon cuddles’ had ensued
(He rifled through her handbag
With his free hand, which was rude)
Picking through the hovel-y mess
Past Ruscles with his bone,
I then tried to serve dinner (and
Placate my rage hormones)
Husband appeared: the magic sis
Hastening his commute.
Raucous chat over parsnips,
(A floor filthy from his boots)
This man, that boy, this avalanche
Of ‘joy’…!
My brain disjoints.
I wear this weighty wedding ring –
But wonder: what’s the point?
I got a flash of an open-plan living/dining room and a newly-wed woman with PMT trying to entertain – totally at the end of her tether and regretting tying herself into being a wife/step-mum/sister in law…
Where would you have gone with this word selection?!
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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