A Comfy Kind Of Restless

How Do?!

Another backdated beauty for Day 27, I’m afraid: this April is the fullest month! (Hang on…that’s almost poetic…)

So this is what I had to work with:

“Today, begin by reading Bernadette Mayer’s poem “The Lobelias of Fear.” Now write your own poem titled “The ________ of ________,” where the first blank is a very particular kind of plant or animal, and the second blank is an abstract noun. The poem should contain at least one simile that plays on double meanings or otherwise doesn’t quite make “sense,” and describe things or beings from very different times or places as co-existing in the same space.” [from here]

I conveniently wrote the title to this in the process of messing around with all the complex prompt-stipulations for my poem for Day 8 😉 I may have borrowed a few other things from that poem, too…

Susan,
The Donkey of Self-Doubt,
brays from across the wibbly water
and dares the rabbit
to stop chasing himself,
and hop towards her.
But Susan knows Mr Bunny’s secrets…

Like a horcrux
hoping not to be slain,
Susan does hee-haw
to tempt bravery after that.
It does not behoove her
to play fair;
her subtle plague starts
as if she cares,
asking him questions about his health,
letting him rabbit on –
reminding himself how weak he is.
(Her insincere appraisal of his soliloquy
driving those bolts through his neck)

Prometheus sighs and watches his fire
exit the eyes.
Somewhere an eagle clicks his beak
in anticipation.

And Susan,
satisfied no swimming
will be accomplished today,
gives her big donkey grin
and makes sure to graze
on the greener pasture
by the water’s edge.

Weird enough for ya?! 

See you back here soon…

Monty X

[Photo by Ansgar Scheffold on Unsplash]

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Hiya 🙂

I was very tired after getting lost in a decluttering project (having done the usual householdy stuff and my reading and Duolingo targets) that was actually very interesting because I was looking through all my jewellery and make-up and hair accessories… But I got to bedtime (after scrubbing off lots of very pigmented eye shadow in the shower…) and realised that although I had read a few others’ poems for NaPoWriMo Day 21, I hadn’t written my own!

The prompt said:

“choose an abstract noun from the list below, and then use that as the title for a poem that contains very short lines, and at least one invented word.” [From here]

So I wrote a quick haiku, chopped up the longer line, and was asleep pretty much straight away!

(Yeah, I’m backdating this post again 😉 ). (My self-care accessories are now nicely organised, however, and I let go of quite a bit)

Courage in Failure

One kerfudgulates*,

Pivots,

pirouettes,

re-plans,

Ends ninjabulous*.

Monty’s Glossary:

*Kerfudgulates = messes up spectacularly; to fall on one’s face with a wonderfully onomatopoeic ‘kersplat’.

*Ninjabulous = to be a black belt in coping/getting oneself out of sticky situations/fighting one’s corner (or out of a tight one).

Meet ya back here (later) for Day 22!

Monty X

[Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay]

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How Do?!

This was a fun prompt:

“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the words/order of the alphabet. You could write a very strict abecedarian poem, in which there are twenty-six words in alphabetical order, or you could write one in which each line begins with a word that follows the order of the alphabet.” [from here]


Another
Bleedin’
Crafty
Dafty
Ever so drafty,
Flight into the
Galloping
Hullabaloo that
Is my creative mind.

Just hold onto your hats, peeps!!
Keep your
Limbs inside your vessel at all times
Melissa didn’t and we’ve
Not heard from her in…
Oh..? A
Plethora of
Quarter moons.

Righty-o then,
Shall we away?

Trust nothing, especially those
Unbelievably cute things over yonder:
Vicious they are, rabid, and curiously
Wibbly. Distantly related to the
Xenopus.

You, at the back there!
Zip up that life jacket, things are about to get slimy…

I wrote a poem using this format for NaPoWriMo 2019 (see here) which was even more nonsensical, so I feel I am improving ;-P

Catch you tomorrow for Day 19!

Monty X

[Image by G.C. from Pixabay ]

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Hello 🙂

“Now, try writing a short poem (or a few, if you’re inspired) that follows the beats of a classic joke. Emphasize the interplay between the form of the poem – such as the line breaks – and the punchline.” [from here]

Motherhood:

The season where

You add weight to the little things;

And lots of little things,

In their turn,

Tip the scales for you.

Take the above as you will 😉

Onwards, to Day 14! Where is this month going?!

Monty X

[Image by Myléne from Pixabay ]

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Hi there 🙂

So there were no rhyme or syllable restrictions in Maureen’s NaPo prompt today:

“Begin by reading Charles Simic’s poem The Melon…The poem illuminates the juxtaposition between grief and joy, sorrow and reprieve. For today’s challenge, write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate.” [from here]

I’m just not sure I can go on, Deirdre.                       

I know you’re always telling me to play more,

Relax a little, “enjoy any patch of sunshine” –

But it’s just feeling so hard these days, you know?

Deirdre yawns fanged boredom,

Prods her paws into the lap of her luxury;

While a seagull cackles,

Sharing a joke with the wind.

Another short one today 🙂 Meet you back here for Day 6!

Monty X

[Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay ]

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Hiya 😊

“Today, let’s try writing triolets. A triolet is an eight-line poem. All the lines are in iambic tetrameter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends with the same couplet. Beyond this, there is a tight rhyme scheme (helped along by the repetition of lines) — ABaAabAB.” [From here on the NaPo site]

This year’s prompts are all ones that have popped up in other years.  I last wrote a poem in this style about Covid lockdown back in 2020. I decided to pick a pic from Pixabay and write my triolet from there 😉

Get back! Don’t move! I have some fruit!

Potassium explodes, you know!

Fill this bag now with all your loot –

Get BACK! DON’T move! I have some FRUIT!!! –

Throw in some choc’late bars to boot.

Get off!  I’m not ready to goooo…

Get baaaack…don’t moooove…I have some fruit?

POTASSIUM EXPLODES YOU KNOOOOOW!!

That’ll do me, I think!

See you soon for Day 5 😊

Monty X

 [Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay]

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Hello!

It’s the last day of NaPoWriMo 2022 today, and Maureen asked us all to construct a Cento as our final piece!

“This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems.” [From:  https://www.napowrimo.net/day-thirty-8/]

So I grabbed a few poetry titles from my shelves and got to work:

That would faze all but the most intrepid:

Who gives her soul an empty room

As thick with mould as glass?

She walked to the music of her own mind’s making,

Skeletons of honesty now give way to seedlings;

A woman giving birth to herself.

Lines plucked from:

1. Edwin Morgan: A Voyage

2. Leonard Cohen: Death of a Lady’s Man

3. Anne MacLeod: In the Kibble Palace: Sunday Morning

4. Alice V Stuart: Rencontre

5. Kate Y A Bone: Skeletons of Honesty

6. Liz Lochhead: Mirror’s Song

Books consulted for these lines:

Modern Scottish Women Poets – edited and introduced by Dorothy McMillan and Michael Byrne  

The Song Of Leonard Cohen by Harry Rasky

Virtual and Other Realities by Edwin Morgan

Thank you, as always, for dropping by and reading my month of poetic ponderings. Judging by other years, I will probably pack up my scribbles and wander into the sunset til April 2023 now, but one never knows 😉 please consider subscribing to my blog if you’ve been enjoying it, and when the notion does take me to post again you will be one of the first to know!

Take care, big hugs to all, and I’ll maybe catch you later!

Monty X

[pic is from here]

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Hi 😊

Here we are on the second last day of Maureen’s poetry prompts, again!  My fifth year of writing a poem a day for the month of April is nearly at an end…I really do think it goes by faster every year.

“Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which you muse on the gifts you received at birth — whether they are actual presents, like a teddy bear, or talents – like a good singing voice – or circumstances – like a kind older brother, as well as a “curse” you’ve lived with (your grandmother’s insistence on giving you a new and completely creepy porcelain doll for every birthday, a bad singing voice, etc.).” [ https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-nine-8/]

Being in my mid-forties, and addled by hormones as I almost-permanently feel at the moment, I’m not sure these are very wise probes into how I think about my life.  But I tried to keep the poem from extending into several pages 😉

An innocent, taken to heart

Such a safe, auspicious start:

Many adults to flow between,

Her cute appeal seemed evergreen.

But all good roses have their thorns,

School and life can leave you torn

And, through the holes, we sometimes see

A darker core reality.

Though blessed with blonde and bouncy curls,

And soon creative bent unfurled;

So too did she often possess

Bottomless grief, hard to express.

This melancholy in her soul

Liked whit’ling at her hopes and goals;

Haunted this pretty, lively girl

And kept ‘potential’ in a whirl…

Last day of NaPoWriMo for 2022 tomorrow, meet you back here for that!

Take care, all 🙂

Monty X

[pic is from here]

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Hi!

Today’s prompt challenged me to write a concrete poem:

“In brief, a concrete poem is one in which the lines are shaped in a way that mimics the topic of the poem.”  Day Twenty-Eight (napowrimo.net)

Depending on what device/browser you are viewing my offering on, you may or may not be able to tell, but I tried to shape today’s poem into a cloud.  I have put a forward slash at the end of each line to help with the sense of rhyme.  I’ve also written the poem out ‘normally’ below my cloud 😉

I wanted to be comfort, tend to

pain/ Wave a welcome umbrella in the rain/

I wanted to be loved for being me/ Passionate, a whirlwind,

also kindly./ But now I’ve spent my Thursday tired and torn/In

three-day-old Pyjamas, and I mourn./ This chronic lack of progress, weighty woes/

Make all my courage plummet to my toes./ Birds holler from the boughs ‘bout Spring’s

bounty/ And bursting leaves scream “opportunity!”/ I’d so much like to

walk the world today/ But hidden things keep getting in my way./

How can I be so loving yet so numb?/ I shake my head at why

 I have become/ A source of contradiction and sad words/

When I ‘should’ be as chirpy as those birds.

I wanted to be comfort, tend to pain,

Wave a welcome umbrella in the rain.

I wanted to be loved for being me:

Passionate, a whirlwind, also kindly.

But now I’ve spent my Thursday tired and torn,

In three-day-old Pyjamas, and I mourn;

This chronic lack of progress, weighty woes

Make all my courage plummet to my toes.

Birds holler from the boughs ‘bout Spring’s bounty

And bursting leaves scream “opportunity!”

I’d so much like to walk the world today

But hidden things keep getting in my way.

How can I be so loving yet so numb?

I shake my head at why I have become

A source of contradiction and sad words

When I ‘should’ be as chirpy as those birds.

I hope all of your skies have been clear today.  Take care and I’ll be back for the penultimate day of NaPoWriMo 2022, tomorrow!!

Monty X

[pic is from here]

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Boo! 😉

Almost 4 solid weeks of writing poetry have passed, now!

 “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “duplex.” A “duplex” is a variation on the sonnet, developed by the poet Jericho Brown. Here’s one of his first “Duplex” poems, and here is a duplex written by the poet I.S. Jones. Like a typical sonnet, a duplex has fourteen lines. It’s organized into seven, two-line stanzas. The second line of the first stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the second stanza, the second line of the second stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the third stanza, and so on. The last line of the poem is the same as the first.” [from Day Twenty-Seven (napowrimo.net)]

Having looked into a few more of Brown’s poems, I see that he doesn’t always keep his line at the end identical to the first – see this poem. But, within that poem, he does make the repeated lines identical! So I decided to keep 10 syllables to each line, incorporate rough repeating lines, and make the last line pretty close to the first… 😉

So: what if I’d the sense to be so brave:

Not hatched some beautiful children at all?

Children I love enough to stem beauty

Filtering through me; unbidden, flowing.

My filtered flow would delight readership,

Of strangers – thousands unhugged by my arms;

Arms now stripped of hug hanker by Covid

Only filled by the children I have spawned,

Childish toys, now, my ring of makeshift friends,

Marooned upon an island flecked with gold.

My golden years a way off, green behind;

These settling, middling, comfy-restless days.

My unsettling, and beautiful, entwined!

I’m wondering: in which sense that’s not brave…?

This is definitely not the easiest of poetic forms! I’ve tweaked and tampered a lot with this one since I started it just after lunch.  It was not a 15-minute wonder, that’s for sure.  I’m posting it before midnight so that I don’t keep myself awake tapping at it into the small hours!

Only 3 more days of NaPo to go!  Meet you here tomorrow 😉

Monty X

[pic is from here]

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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!