Literary Liaisons – #NaPoWriMo23 – Day 9

#NaPoWriMo23, Other Poetry, Random poetry, Relationships No Comments »

Good morrow, dear reader!

I did write in response to Day 9’s prompt, but I didn’t leave enough time for me to compose this post and get it up on the blog.  Better late than never though, eh?

Day 9’s prompt was:

“Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own sonnet. Incorporate tradition as much or as little as you like – while keeping in general to the theme of “love.”” [from here

I decided to keep the easier rhyming scheme of abab,cdcd,efef,gg and the ten beats/syllables to a line.

 

I write my love a note upon the pad,

He answers by editing what I’ve said,

So then, attempting not to feel too bad,

I tussle with our diff’rences in bed.

A pillow is the perfect place to pose

A question to the better half of me;

He sighs, only pretending there to dose,

As he adds weight to all my fantasies.

 

His whispers shape the ink of wordplay wrought

‘Tween motherhood and wifely life combined,

He teases out experience and thought,

Untethers folds that strive to make me blind.

 

His airy presence keeps me sane and strange,

Our shared dreamscapes the only things that change.

 

As I often do, I was thinking about the way I write, and the conversational poem with my Muse that  I started my blogging adventures with.  Hopefully that is somewhat clear in my Sonnet, for I often feel like I am sneaking off to indulge in creativity, and that it wants to abduct me like some jealous lover I have never been able to resist 😉 and yes, I will happily sit for hours, propped up by pillows, scribbling, tapping, or crafting away in my PJs if left to my own devices.  I am a transient table user in these days of having my own family to tend to.

If you want to look at any other poems I’ve written in the Sonnet form, you can see them here (which is another study of being pulled towards creativity, incidentally) and here.  Hopefully I’ll be back later today for Day 10’s poetic ponderings!

Take care,

 

Monty X

[Image by Tannetje Riek from Pixabay ]

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2023  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!

 

Brave? – #NaPoWriMo22 – Day 27

#NaPoWriMo22, Mental Health, Other Poetry, Parenting, Relationships No Comments »

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?

 

 

silhouetted boys, a bigger one holding an umbrella over the smaller one

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]

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2022  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!

Of Stormy Teas- #NaPoWriMo22 – Day 12

#NaPoWriMo22, Other Poetry, Relationships 1 Comment »

Hi! 😊

 

Yesterday, I challenged you to write a poem about a very large thing. Today, I’d like you to invert your inspiration, and write a poem about a very small thing. [Day Twelve (napowrimo.net)]

What I came up with was also smaller in length than some of my other poems!

 

I try to quell the eddies

When they start:

Smile a little brighter,vintage teacup and saucer

Ask another question

Of the extroverted ones.

 

Stuff a cake in my mouth

While others take their foot out of theirs.

 

Good China can rattle too loudly,

 

It draws attention.

 

Annnnd, onwards to Day 13!! 

Take care 🙂

 

Monty X

 [pic is from here]

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2022  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!

To My Boys – #NaPoWriMo22 – Day 2

#NaPoWriMo22, Childhood, Other Poetry, Parenting, Relationships 2 Comments »

Hi!

 

The prompt from napowrimo.net for Day 2 said:

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on a word featured in a tweet from Haggard Hawks, an account devoted to obscure and interesting English words.

So I chose from the below:

 

and wrote –

 

I glocidate

To educate,

(I cluck to underline)

My care of you’s

Sincere and true;

I’m so glad you are ‘mine’.

 

See you on Day 3! 😉

 

 

Monty X

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2022  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!

Feeling Low? – Day Twenty-Six – #NaPoWriMo21

#NaPoWriMo21, Childhood, Other Poetry, Parenting, Relationships 2 Comments »

Coo-eee!

Welcome back, and have a wee virtual hug from me 🙂

I was tasked with writing a parody today:

Besides being fun, writing parodies can be a great way to hone your poetic skills – particularly your sense of rhyme and sound, as you try to mimic the form of an existing poem while changing the content. Just find a poem – or a song – that has always annoyed you, and write an altered, silly version of it. 

[from napowrimo.net]

 

Well, the song I chose doesn’t annoy me as such, it just has been parodied a lot and gets earwormy after a while 😉 I chose “Let It Go” from the Disney film FrozenHere is a version with the original lyrics if you want to follow along with my take on it in a different tab or something. 

Hubby did suggest that I uploaded a clip of me singing the below, but I doubt I’d get through it without laughing as I attempted to hit some of the ambitious notes 😉

 

I’m out of fight and I’m holding him tight,

Eldest’s bunny is a dream;

Our friend through all isolations

Cutest face you’ve ever seen.

My mind is howling like a twister got inside

Couldn’t keep it in, heaven knows I’ve tried…

Don’t let them in,

Don’t let them see,

Eat secret choc’late in the lavatory;

Banana peels,

Oh heaven knows

This mess just blows…

 

Feeling low?

Feeling low!

Pick your stuff up off the floor,

Feeling low?

Feeling low!

Don’t you dare slam that door!

You’ll soon care:

Fortnite’s going away.

Let the kids rage on

They weren’t gonna get V-bucks anyway.

 

It’s funny how home-schooling

Makes you a big stress ball

And peers through the controller

Can drive you up the wall!

It’s time to come off that X-box

You’ve tested limits lots and lots,

For right and wrong there’s rules you see

Trust meeeeee…

 

Feeling low?

Feeling low!

No more emotes can you buy,

Feeling low?

Feeling low!

Now don’t you start to cry!

Here I stand

And here I’ll stay,

Let the kids rage on…

 

My patience fluctuates until your butt I’ll ground,

My life is spiralling, some pieces of me can’t be found;

Why are your arguments so whiney, lame and crass?

If your pal hopped off a cliff, would you follow his path?!

 

Feeling low?

Feeling low!

Why’d you rise at the break of dawn?!

Feeling low?

Feeling low!

Where’s all the Oatibix gone?!

Here I stand, in the light of day,

Let the kids rage oooooonnnnnn

They’re not buying more V-bucks anyway.

 

Obviously the above makes more sense if you live with kids who play Fortnite!  V-bucks are the currency in the game that they buy things like ‘emotes’ with, and V-bucks cost real money.  So basically, Epic Games (who tout Fortnite as a free-to-own game) want demented parents shelling out silly amounts of money every month due to ‘pester power’.  Not too keen on that!

Don’t worry though, I try not to eat between meals so there’s no secret chocolate stash in our loo.  That was just poetic licence.  Honest… 😉

Well, Day 26 is now done! Take care and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

 

Monty X

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2021  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!

Time Toddles On – Day Twenty-two – #NaPoWriMo21

#NaPoWriMo21, Childhood, Other Poetry, Parenting, Relationships 1 Comment »

Hey 😊

Today I was busy with stuff in the house, so this is going to be up later than usual, but I hope you’ve all been feeling good?

The prompt said: today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that invokes a specific object as a symbol of a particular time, era, or place. [from napowrimo.net]

Weirdly, I wrote ANOTHER rhyming poem.  The syllable counts aren’t uniform, but they aren’t awful 😉

 

BRANCHING OUT

 

The toddler bed nestles

our couch-back, in parts;

I dismantled it

with an ache in my heart.

No toddlers now live here,

nor have for some time;

weight limit’s exceeded,

and this I know fine.

But memories plague me,

and tug at my hem

along with ‘near’ futures:

nest empty. Flown men.

Those dimply wee knuckles

tucked ‘neath sleeping faces

I spied through the bed guards

are gone.  In their places

Are capable digits

and oft-furrowed brows

that puzzle at problems,

seem wisdom-endowed.

But that bed cushioned nightmares

and furthered kid freedom,

furnished the way for

new-grown arboretums.

 

There is something in my eye *fans face with her hand*.

The pic above is of Youngest from last year, with his usual myriad of fluffy friends – and his own topsy turvy take on sleeping conventions! The bed only recommended a kid of up to 50lbs slept in it, and at 8 years old Youngest has just crept over that figure.

He now has one of the single beds my mum had squirrelled away in the eves of her house, which Eldest helped me put together on Saturday.  We must have done a reasonable job because that’s it stayed intact for most of a week!

Well, I’m off to watched an episode of Star Trek with the menfolk before the kids go down, so take care and I’ll catch you tomorrow 😊

 

Monty X

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2021  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!

It Ain’t Junk – Day Ten – #NaPoWriMo21

#NaPoWriMo21, Mental Health, Other Poetry, Random poetry, Relationships No Comments »

Hello!

As I said yesterday, I’m now a third of the way there! It’s felt a bit strange this year, writing after so long away.  It’s nice to get a post out before the day properly starts, to feel like I’ve accomplished something for me, but I don’t know…it still feels like a tug in a dangerous direction?

My prompt for today said:

It’s called “Junk Drawer Song,” and comes to us from the poet Hoa Nguyen.

  • First, find a song with which you are familiar – it could be a favorite song of yours, or one that just evokes memories of your past. Listen to the song and take notes as you do, without overthinking it or worrying about your notes making sense.
  • Next, rifle through the objects in your junk drawer – or wherever you keep loose odds and ends that don’t have a place otherwise. (Mine contains picture-hanging wire, stamps, rubber bands, and two unfinished wooden spoons I started whittling four years ago after taking a spoon-making class). On a separate page from your song-notes page, write about the objects in the drawer, for as long as you care to.
  • Now, bring your two pages of notes together and write a poem that weaves together your ideas and observations from both pages. [From napowrimo.net]

 

Well, I chose “The Beautiful People” by Marylin Manson 😉 because who doesn’t need some industrial/alternative metal to listen to before 7am?! This song was one I was introduced to around the time I decided to go do a University Access Course (at the age of 20).  I was hanging around with some 2nd year students that were friends with a flatmate that the letting agency had thrown into my life.  They signed me into the student union before I even got my own card, and there were glorious rock nights!

This song brings them all back, and that feeling of being in a bubble from life where we circulated thoughts and theories and dress rules were broken, but it was ok because we were young and intelligent and could write/speak our way out of most things…

It’s weird to me that there are so many milestones that I haven’t recorded about my own life.  I really should be my intrepid biographer, using this so-called love I have for writing to document my time on this planet.  But it wasn’t until I ‘had a Google’ that I re-learned that my graduation day was the 3rd of July 2003.  As I had spent the best part of 5 years prior to that aiming for it (not to mention the 13 years of schooling 1982-95), you would think I would be smiling at that date every time it appeared on my calendar. 

But no. 

I had an inkling by then that my intended launch from it into High School teaching wasn’t for me, and I kind of slunk through it all in my head, feeling adrift again. Like I had, in reality, failed. 

The associations with the groups of friends I had accumulated dulled afterwards because it was as if I had broken the covenant that was between us: that we would talk trash and pretend we could be this way forever, but still emerge with degrees and take our places in society with growing modicums of respectability, etc etc.

But hey, the song also reminds me of the early days with Hubby, whom I met on 27th of March 2005, less than two years after I graduated.  We listen to a lot of rock in the car even now. Plus we’ve made two cool little people, and weathered all the ups and downs before and after, so there’s that 😉

Anyway, I have taken a pic of our kitchen junk drawer and I’m sure, if you look hard enough, you can see how heavily my poem is based on its contents!

 

IT AIN’T JUNK

 

Let’s cut up a dance floor

with our bag of bands –

from rock, to cheese, and back

we’ll measure out our alcohol trips.

 

Stick our photos in albums,

string our past along with us

through permanent mistakes

and marked successes.

 

The best days of our lives

form on us like lint

whenever life tries to brush us off.

 

We’ve no instructions, but

our memories are beautiful.

 

It’s getting late and the kids are wanting to watch something with me (I’ve wandered away from  this write-up loads and Hubby has returned from his Saturday morning foodshop already) so I’m offsky til tomorrow…take care of yourselves 🙂 

 

Monty X

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2021  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!

 

Hearken – Day Five – #NaPoWriMo21

#NaPoWriMo21, Mental Health, Other Poetry, Random poetry, Relationships 2 Comments »

Happy Easter Monday!

This prompt challenges you to find a poem, and then write a new poem that has the shape of the original, and in which every line starts with the first letter of the corresponding line in the original poem… [from here]

I had a Google, and ended up choosing this poem:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by W I L D E R (@wilderpoetry)

[above should be a picture of Wilder’s poem that starts “some things are left unsaid” from her collection entitled Nocturnal]

I first found this picture on Pinterest, and then followed it back to Instagram.  I really love the poet’s style and all the art that goes with her poems.  She has notebooks and journals out too, I feel I am going to have to investigate if I can buy some of her merch on the UK Amazon…!

Wilder’s poem has 8 lines and follows a 6,8,7,8,5,5,7,7 syllable pattern.  As it was in the prompt to reuse the first letter of each line, I took it as an excuse to incorporate alliterative play 😉

 

Sequestered suppressed slice

languishes listlessly; leaving

worryful whispers winding

behind baleful banality.

Time tendrils taughten.

Masks, make-up, make-do

leeching lustre, lessening.

Youth yields. Yesteryears yellow.

 

After I wrote the above (and walked down to my kitchen to meet reality, etc) I thought that maybe the poem warranted a different level of “play”.  So I looked closer, and went on to write:

 

some creature shirks the light

like yearned dreamscapes maddeningly

waiting out unconsciousness,

but I will hearken back and feel

the world’s cruel folds and

me once razor-edged

like there could be beauty here

you wanted to return to.

 

I think the second one fits the prompt better? I use the whole words that the poet began with, and the lines are around the same length as Wilder’s, too. I kept the syllables straight for each line, and played a bit with her imagery, but I know there is more I could have done with running the ‘creature’ and ‘dream’ theme through the whole piece.  Anyway, with all my word-wrangling, kid-soothing and keyboard-tapping it is now lunchtime, so I’d better go…

Hope you are well, and I’ll meet you here tomorrow!

 

Monty X

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

Copyright © 2021  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!

My Universal Truth – Day Three – #NaPoWriMo21

#NaPoWriMo21, Childhood, Mental Health, Other Poetry, Parenting, Random poetry, Relationships No Comments »

Howdy-doody-oh?!

Welcome to day three, where the prompt asked me to spend quite a bit of time setting up the material for my poem:

Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the “Personal Universal Deck” originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here.

If you follow the link in the quote above, you will see why the rules necessitated me getting a good chunk of time to myself.  Indeed, number 11 even reads:

Select the words in isolation, preferably alone, with no distractions, in candlelight. Approximate a meditative state. Even the cat must not bother you.

 Well, I don’t have a cat, but I do have an Eldest son.  He could be heard rustling about in his brother’s room at 6.38am this morning.  Upon being questioned (and informed of the time), he rolled his eyes and told me in a not-so-inside voice that he was searching for a book.  He then proceeded to flounce back into his own room (with a few rumpled pages of a comic), complaining of a sore throat, promising that if some honey was administered, he’d go back to sleep (which he categorically did not do) and generally felt slighted that he couldn’t barge into others’ rooms whenever he chose!  My morning only went downhill from there, and so here I am rushing to get my laptop free of my tappings before Youngest commandeers it for his Fortnite forays at 3pm.  

How dare I try and carve out some morning quiet time to be creative?!

Having made my deck of words and roped Youngest into drawing me out 9 cards at lunchtime (Eldest was still in no mood to participate) I finally had all I needed to compose my poem. 

It took me about seven minutes to write. 

I wonder why…?! 😉

 

 

Violent, Breathe, Envelop, Loquacious, Connect, Geometry, Tactile, Yarn, Silky

 

Violent protests meet my small attempts to breathe.

We envelop them in love,

Only to suffer their loquacious assaults.

I had thought my striving to connect

Would mean they understood me, too.

(It seemed just simple geometry

A tactile  triangle of fulfilled needs?)

But my intertwining of words

Is not seen to be as worthy

As, say, my playing with yarn;

That wooly/silky/squishy/fuzzy/touchy-feely stuff

Is OBVIOUSLY good…

 

 

**Sigh**

 

Big hugs, and I’ll catch you tomorrow 😉

 

Monty X

 

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2021  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!

 

In Plain Sight – Day Two – #NaPoWriMo21

#NaPoWriMo21, Other Poetry, Parenting, Relationships 3 Comments »

Hi 😊

Today’s prompt was to write a poem along the lines of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. So, I came up with this, which leaves the reader to search for any other “roads” the narrator may be alluding to:

 

In Plain Sight

 

When she met him, she was hiding:

Toying with possible futures

From inside a retail whirl.

A newly toasted slice

Of utter self-loathing

Glowed from the embers she wouldn’t sweep up.

 

She was good at talking:

That mouth, when properly engaged,

Could spin attractive escape ropes;

Accommodate all angles,

Run far with fantasies

Until even she forgot their falsehoods.

 

So, they hid together,

Worked hard and “grew up”,

Bore new people, tangled with traditional roles.

Dishevelled wings fluttered from their piled laundry,

Followed her around, their offspring

Unravelling fabrics in awkward places.

 

Time squatted between the couple’s brows,

Encircled their smiles

And crept up their necks.

Something old and blue,

Borrowed from their intertwined histories,

Tapped at the veneer of “new normal”s.

 

Two prized photographs moved in –

Now reaped from the home

She’d never revisit,

From people she’d never re-hold –

Catching her on the brink of things

All set to rock her core:

 

The cosy coat of childhood

Still buttoned against the world…

 

The empty scroll of promise

Still clutched by too-thin hands…

 

Her older face, reflected, stared aghast,

Whilst he could see her happy, in the past.

 

I started writing this around 7am this morning, but made the error of going for a coffee break which alerted our eldest that I was awake, so it has taken until this afternoon to get it the way I want it and post it up here 😉 it’s so nice to wake up and know I’ve got a planned writing exercise, though!  I hadn’t realised just how much I’d missed it.

Hope you are all feeling good today, leave me a link in the comments to any poems you have been posting on your websites if you’d like me to visit.  Take care and I’ll be back here tomorrow, so please drop in again!

 

Monty X

 

[Pic is from here]

 

Come visit the Facebook page and follow @ComfyRestless on Twitter

 

Copyright © 2021  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!