Welcome back, and have a wee virtual hug from me đ
I was tasked with writing a parody today:
Besides being fun, writing parodies can be a great way to hone your poetic skills â 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 â or a song â that has always annoyed you, and write an altered, silly version of it.Â
Well, the song I chose doesnât annoy me as such, it just has been parodied a lot and gets earwormy after a while đ I chose âLet It Goâ from the Disney film Frozen. Here is a version with the original lyrics if you want to follow along with my take on it in a different tab or something.Â
Hubby did suggest that I uploaded a clip of me singing the below, but I doubt Iâd get through it without laughing as I attempted to hit some of the ambitious notes đ
Â
Iâm out of fight and Iâm holding him tight,
Eldestâs bunny is a dream;
Our friend through all isolations
Cutest face youâve ever seen.
My mind is howling like a twister got inside
Couldnât keep it in, heaven knows Iâve triedâŠ
Donât let them in,
Donât let them see,
Eat secret chocâlate in the lavatory;
Banana peels,
Oh heaven knows
This mess just blowsâŠ
Â
Feeling low?
Feeling low!
Pick your stuff up off the floor,
Feeling low?
Feeling low!
Donât you dare slam that door!
Youâll soon care:
Fortniteâs going away.
Let the kids rage on
They werenât gonna get V-bucks anyway.
Â
Itâs funny how home-schooling
Makes you a big stress ball
And peers through the controller
Can drive you up the wall!
Itâs time to come off that X-box
Youâve tested limits lots and lots,
For right and wrong thereâs rules you see
Trust meeeeeeâŠ
Â
Feeling low?
Feeling low!
No more emotes can you buy,
Feeling low?
Feeling low!
Now donât you start to cry!
Here I stand
And here Iâll stay,
Let the kids rage onâŠ
Â
My patience fluctuates until your butt Iâll ground,
My life is spiralling, some pieces of me canât be found;
Why are your arguments so whiney, lame and crass?
If your pal hopped off a cliff, would you follow his path?!
Â
Feeling low?
Feeling low!
Whyâd you rise at the break of dawn?!
Feeling low?
Feeling low!
Whereâs all the Oatibix gone?!
Here I stand, in the light of day,
Let the kids rage oooooonnnnnn
Theyâre not buying more V-bucks anyway.
Â
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 âemotesâ 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 âpester powerâ. Not too keen on that!
Donât worry though, I try not to eat between meals so thereâs no secret chocolate stash in our loo. That was just poetic licence. Honest… đ
Well, Day 26 is now done! Take care and Iâll catch you tomorrow.
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 was busy with stuff in the house, so this is going to be up later than usual, but I hope youâve all been feeling good?
The prompt said:today Iâd 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. Â The syllable counts arenât uniform, but they arenât awful đ
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 limitâs exceeded,
and this I know fine.
But memories plague me,
and tug at my hem
along with ânearâ futures:
nest empty. Flown men.
Those dimply wee knuckles
tucked âneath 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 thatâs it stayed intact for most of a week!
Well, Iâm off to watched an episode of Star Trek with the menfolk before the kids go down, so take care and Iâll catch you tomorrow đ
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 said yesterday, Iâm now a third of the way there! Itâs felt a bit strange this year, writing after so long away. Itâs nice to get a post out before the day properly starts, to feel like Iâve accomplished something for me, but I donât knowâŠit still feels like a tug in a dangerous direction?
First, find a song with which you are familiar â 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 â or wherever you keep loose odds and ends that donât 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 âThe Beautiful Peopleâ by Marylin Manson đ because who doesnât 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 thingsâŠ
Itâs weird to me that there are so many milestones that I havenât 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 wasnât until I âhad a Googleâ 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.Â
But no.Â
I had an inkling by then that my intended launch from it into High School teaching wasnât for me, and I kind of slunk through it all in my head, feeling adrift again. Like I had, in reality, failed.Â
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 weâve made two cool little people, and weathered all the ups and downs before and after, so thereâs that đ
Anyway, I have taken a pic of our kitchen junk drawer and Iâm sure, if you look hard enough, you can see how heavily my poem is based on its contents!
IT AINâT JUNK
Letâs cut up a dance floor
with our bag of bands â
from rock, to cheese, and back
weâll 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.
Weâve 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 đÂ
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!
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]
[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 poetâs 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 AmazonâŠ!
Wilderâs 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 đ
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 âplayâ. 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 worldâs 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 Wilderâs, 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 âcreatureâ and âdreamâ theme through the whole piece.  Anyway, with all my word-wrangling, kid-soothing and keyboard-tapping it is now lunchtime, so Iâd better goâŠ
Hope you are well, and Iâll meet you here tomorrow!
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!
Welcome to day three, where the promptasked me to spend quite a bit of time setting up the material for my poem:
Today, Iâd like to challenge you to make a âPersonal Universal Deck,â and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the âPersonal Universal Deckâ 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 donât have a cat, but I do have an Eldest son. He could be heard rustling about in his brotherâs 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, heâd go back to sleep (which he categorically did not do) and generally felt slighted that he couldnât barge into othersâ 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. Â
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.Â
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!
Todayâs prompt was to write a poem along the lines of Robert Frostâs 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
Â
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 wouldnât 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 âgrew upâ,
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 coupleâs brows,
Encircled their smiles
And crept up their necks.
Something old and blue,
Borrowed from their intertwined histories,
Tapped at the veneer of ânew normalâs.
Two prized photographs moved in –
Now reaped from the home
Sheâd never revisit,
From people sheâd 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 worldâŠ
The empty scroll of promise
Still clutched by too-thin handsâŠ
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 đ 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!
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 optional prompt for today was for me to write a poem inspired by my favourite music. According to Spotify, I listened to the artist Pink the most last year, so I thought about an episode of Ellen I watched about Pinkâs battle with Corona Virus; and wrote a song. Not commercially viable, of course (!) but here it is:
V1:
Covid-19 you werenât supposed to be mean
To a 3 year old boy
That I shelter.
That helpless young frameâŠ
And despite all my fame
They couldnât test,
And then make him better.
Chorus:
We draw our rainbows large,
Health service supercharged;
Weâre staying on the couch
None of us going out.
The horror on T.V
Could take out you or me
So weâre trying to be kind
Keeping our loved ones in mind.
V2:
Covid-19, oh tell me what does it mean
When can life be resurrected?
We spent Easter alone,
Just ghosts on a phone
Lord tell us:
How many souls are infected?
Chorus:
We draw ourrainbows large,
Health service supercharged;
Weâre staying on the couch
None of us going out.
The horror on T.V
Could take out you or me
So weâre trying to be kind
Keeping our loved ones in mind.
Â
Bridge:
Whatâs with the hospital surge,
Then talk of flattening curves?
A pandemic, but no vaccination –
A president in a rant
About fake news, who canât
Admit failure
Towards his own nation!
(Chorus)
Â
Rap:
How do we fight this disease?
Câmon answer me, please?
Just out for my groceries
And masks are all I can see.
And Iâm searching the skies
Massive tears in my eyes,
Lord, now please hear our cries
Before more thousands die.
Outro
Covid-19, oh tell me what does it mean
When can life be resurrected?
(Chorus to fade)
I hope you are all doing ok today?
I had Youngest out in the back garden yesterday, but Eldest didnât want to join us. He soon regretted his decision, however, when he saw how much scope for hilarious mis-hits the sloping lawn afforded us, and also how many angles Youngest managed to shoot from that frustrated my efforts at goal keeping! Youngest even managed a spectacular chip shot that went perfectly over my head and yet landed before it was in danger of clearing the fence into the lane đ
So Eldest had no complaints today when the garden was suggested again! The kids were giggling a lot, and once more I was suitably rubbish in goalsâŠand also at scoring them. The sun shone for us again too, which is always a great way to lift oneâs spirits.
What shenanigans have you seen kids getting up to in your neighbourhood?
We also made biscuits with the Easter cookie cutters today:
Later we iced them with glossy goopy wonderfulness that tasted goood. Who knew sugar, milk and golden syrup would be that much fun?!
Stay safe, and Iâll catch you soon for Day 16âs piece.
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 give up, it is definitely going the way of the short poem this year!
Day 12âs prompt on the NaPoWriMo site asked me to construct a triolet poem.
Rules of the Triolet Form
The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines. [from here]
I think the author of the above might have a different take on the word âstraightforwardâ to the rest of us?! Anyway, I think I figured it out đ
Introvert In 2020
This staying in is music to my ears,
I never excelled socially at all!
Donât you know Iâm a slave to my fears?
This staying in is music to my ears!
Hatâs off to those with fancy-pants careers
(I know if Iâd to do them, skies would fall)
This staying in is MUSIC to my ears,
I never excelled socially at allâŠ
Big hugs to anybody feeling trapped and hemmed in right now, I can imagine extroverted personalities especially will be feeling very âwrongedâ at the moment. How are you coping with the social distancing restrictions? I hope you are doing ok and that you can find some positives within your day to stop you thinking about the grim side of all this for at least an hour or two.
Iâm looking forward to Day 13âs prompt, NaPoWriMo seems to be flying past this year, but I am sure my days would feel slower if I didnât have the kids about đ Catch you soon!
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!
âToday, Iâd like to challenge you to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Boschâs famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delightsâ said the optional prompt for Day 6âs NaPoWriMo jolly. I had never seen this piece of art, and if you follow the link youâll see why it is such a good prompt to be given!
I chose to write a poem from the point of view of the owner of the third foot in the shell on the manâs back (to the left of centre, towards the bottom of the middle panel, with a description on the website marked âtravel journalâ) đ I decided that foot belonged to a womanâŠ
Â
Again
And again, he muscled in â
Bade me clam up and cleave to him.
My wisdom:
Pearls among swine,
His one wish my eternal command.
I am to be cloistered with his need,
Unobserved by the world;
Just flesh upon
A mere shell of all I was.
Not the happiest little ditty, but one of those that arrived in my handwriting within 5 minutes and I didnât feel the need to tweak (apart from adding one word to the last line). Always a godsend when time is at a premium!
I think I will bookmark this painting and come back to it – so much to look at and think about! What characters do you like the best?
Keep staying safe and well, and Iâll âseeâ you for Day 7!
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. Â
I hope you enjoy them đ
Prefer  Beg  Massive  Library  Stretch  Donkey  Guiltless  Sisters  Story
Â
I prefer to meditate,
Then I feel I do not have to beg
For inspiration.
Â
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.
Â
But it is really the universe
That does the donkey work.
Â
And I can sit here:
Revered and yet guiltless of fraud,
Pulled in the right directions
By a force greater than any of us.
Â
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
Â
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.
Â
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.
Â
Our un-lush grass
Would see me injure myself a lot:
The smallest body
Jumping for the ball.
Â
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.
Â
It doesnât 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!
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