So! I wandered off for a few months again, it would seem!
But I come back to this blog in March 2020 with a rather different world outside my safe little home, a situation that we didn’t know was brewing back in November 2019.
I hope that wherever you are reading this, you and yours are safe and well, and your family has not been hit too devastatingly with this illness sweeping the globe. I send virtual hugs to everybody, and have nothing but admiration for those of you still out working in key positions, keeping your fellow humans as fed, protected and medically cared for as you possibly can <3 thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone out risking their own wellbeing to serve others. You truly are angels.
We at the Comfy Restless residence are living up to the name nicely here in Scotland after our first week of lockdown 😉 We are incredibly fortunate in that hubby can easily work from home and I am the chief kid wrangler anyway. Of course it is harder keeping ‘home harmony’ when it kinda feels like a holiday and yet the kids are meant to still be looking at schoolwork – and when there are tight restrictions on how we conduct ourselves outside – but our income is secure, we live in a fab community that cares about us, and none of our household are considered to be in a high-risk category for any symptoms we get turning nasty on us. We know far too many families can’t say the same, and we really hate that.
So: if you’re struggling or grieving, overwhelmed – or anything in between – my heart goes out to you. Feel free to send me a comment, or PM my Facebook page, if you need an ear. I have an energetic 7 and 9 year old here charging about giving me cheek and attitude, so feel free to share any parenting woes, too! 😉
I will be participating in NaPoWriMo again this April, and posting my daily ditties around the chaos of the kids being at home for the foreseeable. I don’t know what frivolous topics may be cast up in my poetry, but please believe that I am watching the news with horror as the global death toll goes up, I am hoping for a swift vaccine and I can’t get over how selfless our medical professionals are for being brave enough to endure the swathes of critically ill people and fight the infection, even when they may succumb themselves.
I am hoping to concentrate on brighter things here in the main, however. I think we may all need it?
So, starting tomorrow, I will write a poem a day for a month, using the prompts from the NaPoWriMo site. I will also aim to actually post my endeavours on the correct day – kids permitting 😉
Catch you in my next post! Take care and please stay safe.
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!
Sometimes, I feel the random word generators I use forget about the chaos they are supposed to be subjected to and just push trope offerings directly into my brain instead.
Today I thought I’d share two crime poems I was ‘handed’ over the last week or so:
Sharp Pistol Electric Block Diplomat Circle Tiny Sink Limousine
The sharp pain said:
“Ouch! Pistol-whipped head!!”
I did not attack
Cos the world went black.
Bright electric light
Served to block my sight
When I came back to;
I didn’t see who
The – diplomat – was
Labouring his cause.
That circle of pain
Still my main complaint:
Some tiny, sick breaths
To control my stress…
When that hand came near
I moved through the fear
Felt my teeth sink in
And…
Adrenalin…
Broke the flimsy chair,
Spoilt his gelled up hair,
Untied both my wrists
Let fly with my fists.
Lackeys stood no chance
As my rage advanced.
Then I fled that scene
In their limousine.
I see the first piece as a Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote scenario, and the second more as a Michael Westen from Burn Notice type scrape to get into?!
What TV programmes did they make you think of? Let me know in the comments 😉
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!
Last night I wrote four pieces using random words, and the following was my favourite. Hubby says that it is basically a sketch. I have laid it out like a poem, but given the female speaker dark red text and the male blue. That way you can decide what it is for yourself, while still being able to follow 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!
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!
I have been at the random word generators again, but this time I liked the words that Randomlists gave me so much that I used them two days in a row! The result was a poem and a story, which are below. Enjoy!
(As a quick note on the poem, ‘greet’ can mean ‘to cry’ in Scots)
He would always wave to greet them before sticking out his thumb. Sometimes he knew who the driver would be, he’d been doing this so long, but not always.
It would depend upon the company running the trucks, of course. There were some who had strict regulations these days about picking up extra weight, or stopping before scheduled to and so on. He described all of this as a supreme “pain in the posterior” that was damaging his way of life.
He claimed that he had travelled the whole country beside one trucker or another – worked in various places for a colourful succession of low life cheats or miserly drunks.
He sat writing what he said were songs in a beaten up notebook marinated in the vegetable soup he always ordered. The manager asked him if he could sing once, and whether his old guitar could still do a turn. He said he’d give it a go, and we made good money on the bar that night – he definitely looked the part in his shabby slept-in clothes and with that defiant twinkle to his eye.
I haven’t seen him for a few years, however. There were reports he’d struck gold somewhere doing…something…but no one I’ve talked to has what I’d call concreteknowledge of his whereabouts.
So, I continue to serve cake in this lil backwater place, give free coffee top-ups and hope he blows in again someday soon. I have made a pact with myself that I’ll tell him next time instead of making small talk awkwardly and hanging around waaay too much. Maybe he sensed trouble and that’s why he bailed? Mum has always said that’s what his father was like, too.
Maybe I’ll just have to settle into the thought of wearing this floofy pink-striped apron for at least another year? If he hopes to wait me out he’ll find I can be juuust as stubborn as him.
And that’s all for today, folks! Have you been doing any art or other creative goodness recently that you would like me to come and experience? Please post a link to your blog or website in the comments below this 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!
As I have no doubt mentioned a few times before, I write at least 500 words every day as part of my daily creative practice. Sometimes it is ‘just’ rambles about my day or working out a thought/feeling on the screen (or paper)…but yesterday evening I decided to revisit the Random Word Generator site and write a poem.
This extended to a total of SIX random word poems in the end, so I will share two of my favourite ones below.
Both poems are about relationships that left an impression on the speaker, and both poems use the first two generated words as a small phrase that gave me the idea for the rest of the narrative 😉 I hope you enjoy them!
(As usual I got the generator to spit out nine words for each poem, following the procedure outlined here.)
PAST LIFE LOVE?
With her lucky horseshoe smile
And kind manner
I felt my axis tip;
We all hear that life is no rehearsal
But, in that small café,
I wondered whether there were acts we just forgot we’d aced.
While her eyes were the hook
I knew I should depend upon the frisson ‘cross my skin…
Amber was the liquid of my heart
Her memory suspended there by time.
ALL THE THINGS HE SAID
It was a college confrontation
Every painter, he said, produced rubbish with a plan.
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!
“Our prompt for today (optional, as always), takes its inspiration from the idea of a poem as a sort of tiny play, which can be performed dramatically….today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own dramatic monologue. It doesn’t have to be quite as serious as Browning or Shakespeare, of course, but try to create a sort of specific voice or character that can act as the “speaker” of your poem, and that could be acted by someone reciting the poem”[from the NaPoWriMo site]
I love writing the kind of poem that could be performed! I wrote this one and gave myself the idea for this blog, and I have written quite a few others over the years!
But what to make today’s ‘dramatic monologue’ about? I was really a bit stumped.
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!
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