Whispered the NaPoWriMo site to the poetic part of my brain….
I won it in a competition,
Got my picture in the paper
Grinning; with my hands clutched around the unopened box.
I suddenly had a source of isolation
In others’ words
(And from them…)
I could wander with song!
My Grandfather introduced me to the lyrics of Queen,
His neat capitals
On a black and beige cassette;
A gesture I really appreciated
Despite the sarky comment:
TO HER MAJESTY – THE QUEEN, FROM GRANDAD.
Someone had obviously tested
That my prize worked:
A Chris De Burgh tape
Was nestled within.
Grandad approved of him, too.
So: I went for many a walk, man!
Dancing in public was always a risk…
Maybe more smiling than grinning?! 1987, 9 years old, (I’m the one in the middle) having drawn a “house of the future” that was also a rocket. Mum said it was my descriptions of it that swung the deal 😉
Do you have a gadget that you remember fondly from your childhood? Please tell me about it in the comments, or link to your NaPo offering for Day 17. I’d love to read it!
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’s optional prompt, on theNaPoWriMo site, was to “write a poem about a specific place” and to include details to make it feel real to the reader.
Imprint
I stared at the flowers on the wallpaper
And they looked back.
I traced their faces
With imaginary ink,
Whilst sat on the loo.
I look for similar designs
In swathes of
Vintage material.
And a Liberty print,
Or crisp gingham check,
Can catapult me back
To the smell of the tile
In that childhood porch.
(Always that smell!)
And a black marble’s swirl
On a worktop…
But,
Somehow,
The patterns I seek
Are not available to buy.
As we watch more and more Dr Who while the kids are at home all day, I keep seeing ‘portals’ to the past everywhere and reflecting on their significance. I feel this is shaping up to be a bit of a theme…but there are 28 poems to go in the month, so maybe Day 3’s will veer down another path 😉
I hope you are all well and taking time to get creative yourselves? Take care, and I’ll see you in my third NaPoWriMo post…
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 am a bit late this week with a post, time has marched ahead of me as usual. I hope you all had a good weekend?
The poems I am going to share today both came from my dabblings with the Randomlists generator on the 21st, in my writing session after my last post. The first poem floated up after listening to some Mindvalley talks on YouTube (especially by Vishen Lakhiani) and the second just popped into my head from the words I was presented with, as often happens.
I hope you enjoy them 😊
Prefer Beg Massive Library Stretch Donkey Guiltless Sisters Story
I prefer to meditate,
Then I feel I do not have to beg
For inspiration.
Instead, I am handed it
From the massive library of human consciousness –
Melded together in a new form
That seems a stretch for my mind.
But it is really the universe
That does the donkey work.
And I can sit here:
Revered and yet guiltless of fraud,
Pulled in the right directions
By a force greater than any of us.
Come, my soul sisters and brothers,
Let my story wash over you
And bid you strive for greater things.
Volleyball Sheet Calm Jam Lush Injure Collect Next Tempt
The smell of the ink
Made me think of long-ago Sundays
With my dad propped against the sun lounger
Hiding from our games of volleyball;
Turning each smudged sheet
While cultivating calm.
I would keep him company sometimes,
Dribbling strawberry jam
Down my t-shirts
While he pointed out the best football players
Or read to me a bit.
Our un-lush grass
Would see me injure myself a lot:
The smallest body
Jumping for the ball.
He would collect up my limbs,
Count them theatrically
And put me down next to him;
Tempt my smiles back
With sweet treats or songs.
It doesn’t matter how old I get,
Those memories keep me whole.
* WordPress seems to be messing about with the size and position of my images today, but hopefully you get the idea…
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!
The prompt on the NaPoWriMo site had very specific criteria today:
“I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that: • Is specific to a season • Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell) • Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)”
After faffing about writing a kind of ode to our Cherry Blossom tree in the garden (which is looking very pretty just now) and failing to include more than two senses, I came up with the below. I originally forgot to include the rhetorical question, but tweaked the end to incorporate it 😉
Every morning this week The aroma of earth, cut grass and breeze – Collecting up my wanderlust And making me despise routine. Just let the children sleep in! The sun has created a masterpiece In gold and fluffy pink; And the best soundtrack Is peaceful breath From dreaming kids.
(Woodpigeon agrees As his call he silences) I curse the window-squeak As I inch it wider. I’m yearning now For the delicate velvet of petals Against weathered hands, And the unmistakable waft Of neighbours’ charcoal; Seeming to coat my tongue In the promise of feasts…
But the next moment The most pressing ‘spring’ Becomes that in my Youngest’s bladder.
Isn’t it marvellous how perfect A single curl can seem, Burnished by a rogue ray, as he runs?
Only five days of this challenge left! I wonder what I’ll be writing about tomorrow…?!
Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter
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, like The Color of Pomegranates and “City That Does Not Sleep,” incorporates wild, surreal images. Try to play around with writing that doesn’t make formal sense, but which engages all the senses and involves dream-logic.”[from the NaPoWriMo site]
I got to the end of the day and once more was extremely tired, so I think I was actually dreaming when I wrote this poem! It’s a bit Enid Blyton meets nonense-y, which kind of fulfils the prompt? Anyway, it also rhymes, which I thought was impressive for my attention span after lots of Easter fun with the boys in the (sunny!!!) back garden 😉
It is reminiscent of the stuff I used to write in early high school, come to think of it. Awww, my subconscious mind is still semi-childlike (!!)
Oh, and because I was supposed to make the poem a bit weird, I enlisted the Jimpix generator’s help, too…
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, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something mysterious and spooky!”
Not one to deny theNaPoWriMo godstheir fun, I came up with this wee ditty:
It’s eerily quiet
The playroom’s awash
With the sound of their nothing
And tidiness – gosh!
One of the last schoolday cuddles of them being 8 and 5!
There’s none of the bickering/
Playing the fool
I do believe…
…what’s that…?
They’ve gone back to school?!!
Two weeks have gone by rather quickly, all in all, and I will be walking our boys down the road on Monday a ‘whole year’ older (and with a few sad little hugs along the way, no doubt). They are getting so BIG and, although it is rather full-on parenting 12+ hours every day for two weeks, the house will indeed be ghostly without them.
They will be off again on the 19th and 22nd for Easter, mind you – and so will hubby! 😉
I’ll see YOU here tomorrow, as it also marks the end of the second week of Glo/NaPoWriMo! Exciting!
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, taking a leaf fromElhillo’s work, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of origin. Where are you from? Not just geographically, but emotionally, physically, spiritually?”
I can feel a bit of emotional turmoil coming on…
My ‘reality’ lies in a place far from here
(That I carry around every day)
In a flounce of blonde curls
In the twirl of a dress
In the unfettered rapture of play.
My ‘comfortable’ lies in the accepting smiles
Of a generation I still miss,
In a record’s crackle,
In the stories and songs;
In the slow and muted Sunday bliss.
My empathy mourns at too many graves.
Borne too early, it’s said from ‘misdeed’;
The silt of their follies
The sting of their regrets:
All that potential joy gone to seed…
In a church wrapped in mist, sits a being of light
(Who is male, because that’s what I craved)
He sees only my good,
I’m fin’lly understood!
He just loves: needs no deference or slave.
What do you feel are your roots…?
Meet you back here tomorrow to see what new poem originates from my keyboard!
(Yes, I am definitely missing my biros and pencils, but I am having to speed-write these as the kids are off…so it is straight into type at the moment!)
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!
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
Recent Comments