Month: February 2020

How a poem can come into being:

A writing prompt of Superstition (For the month of February, I am posting a new writing prompt to this blog, with some hints, tips, and thoughts about the prompt). I’m very much enjoying doing this, and find my creative input for the month has gone up considerably!

Some Initial Thoughts:
(These thoughts came to being in the comments section of a friend’s blog. The results show how useful and productive it can be to visit the blogs of people who’s writing you like, because they often have interesting people who also follow their blog, and can lead to interesting though pathways …)

A humorous poem about someone scratching off their cerebrals!? 

Wise owls watching, someone scratching … I’m getting hints of a poem in near rhyme here … 

I’ll work on it, and see if I can get some superstition into it too! 

I don’t have that many humorous poems in my collection-to-be yet, but I am a humorous kind of person, so a funny owl poem might be just the thing!

Owl Superstitions 

In some cultures, having an owl around may signal death …

I’m not a superstitious person, and I loved having this owl living in our shed last summer. I felt privileged, and no-one died because of the owl’s presence. I suspect some mice and other creatures may have died though. I hope the deaths were fast and relatively painless, unlike the one in the poem that was inspired by these thoughts.
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And so, after three days, much thought and some editing, (quite a bit of it, actually) the poem below is the final? result.

Having written that comment, some changes are always possible – it’s my poem and I want it to be as good as it can be!

 

Beware the Hungry Owl

(a poem in ‘near rhyme’)

Wise owl 

watching, 

a silly fool

head scratching –

man’s purpose unclear.

Steady stare, 

owl waits,

with no complaints –

Silly itching duff,

he’s ripping off 

his cerebrals!

 

Not surprised –

owl reaches,

its hunger aroused.

man retches,

brain bits to scoop –

a bloodied soup.

Man falls down,

owl follows to dine,

‘Loves fresh brains!’

owl claims,

‘yummy for my meals!’

 

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Many thanks to my poet friend John Malone , for his inspiration and input into this horrid grisly (but fun) poem!

 

Inspirations come from many places, and can go in weird and wonderful directions! And I love owls, a lot.

 

This poem has a rhyming scheme of
ababccddeef
ghghiijjkkf

Because the poem is written in ‘near’ or ‘slant’ rhyme, the rhyming pattern is not one that immediately hits you in the ear, and with the first rhyme not being there until the first line of the secone stanza, that may not be immediately obvious either.

Poets like playing with words, I think. I know I certainly do, and sometimes the games the poet plays might not result in a poem that receives great acclaim, but it keeps the poet happy, and they will go on happily ‘poeting’! It certainly works that way for me.

After all, I’ve spent hours on the poem in this blog post, and this blog post may be the only place the silly little poem ever gets published!

I’d love to read your thoughts about what I’ve written here. Do you have any thoughts about how some of your poems come into being? I’d love to read all about it, leave a comment!

I love my husband, my son, our dog, my Mum. I love all of my other family members, and I love my wonderful friends. All them are loved in different ways, but I care about them all, and wish them all good lives in their lives.

I also love travelling by car, driving around on country roads all around where I live, to see the crops growing, seeing them getting taller and taller, the heads fuller, ready for harvesting, and then all gone, harvested. I love the occasional wildlife I see in my travels (except for snakes, I don’t love them …), love to see the various creatures, but am worried about them being in danger, too close to the road.

And I love the tall eucalyptus trees all around, I think about them, am concerned about them, when there’s not enough rain, and happy when we get some rain come again. These trees, so elegant, the way their branches bend and move, reaching out, and up to the sun, showing resilience, bend don’t break!

But they do break, the big winds, coming after little rain, get them, and crack, down the big branches come, as well as smaller twigs, and sometimes whole trees go down. I realise that’s Nature’s way, but I don’t love that happening.

I love looking at the night sky, sometimes. Looking for interesting things, the planets that look like big stars, the moon in all of its various phases, and all of those bright and shining stars. Lovely!

These are the big things I love, I also love writing, reading, eating good food, and coffee. The writing prompt on this fourteenth day of February is ‘Love – What Do You Love?’

Take this prompt anywhere you want to take it, and have a good time doing it! If you found this prompt boring, challenging, weird, not interesting, fun, excellent, or whatever else, tell me about it, let me know, leave a comment, ‘cos I’m interested in knowing how other people are going with this Fabulous February of Writing Prompts!

Thirteen, lucky for some, silly superstition for others. But many of us have some kind of superstition, a little something perhaps, or a life time of huge limitations … Black cats have suffered at times from people’s fear of what they may cause to happen, and superstition may teach us to be careful around ladders, which isn’t a bad thing, is it?

Letting superstitions rule your life though, is not a good thing. The truth is that coincidences can become confused with cause and result, and actual truth gets thrown away, in place of superstitions – mistaken beliefs. 

If you have any thoughts about superstitions, why not write about them poetically, because on this thirteenth day of February, SUPERSTITION is the word of the day. And if you see a four leaf clover in the lawn today, you’ve obviously been on the grass! 

I have some horseshoes around the place outside, one hanging on a fence, but I don’t hold to the idea these discarded rusted items will bring any particular ‘good luck’. And if someone around me sneezes, I may well say ‘Bless you’, even though I don’t believe I’m preventing the devil from stealing that person’s soul.

I’m a realist, in the main, and can be cynical, but try not to be in a bad way. I like to think on it as being careful about the truth of things. So, superstitions are things we might inherit, simply because of the society we live in, or they may come to us through trying to make sense of our life experience.

They idea of ‘Superstition’ certainly has attracted the attention of songwriters and musicians over the years. From Stevie Wonder back in the seventies, to more modern times, superstition is a common theme in the songs we hear.

Finding the reason why things happen is such a human thing to do. Do Owls have any thoughts about full moons, or do they just get on with their normal night time things, but with more light? Who knows, not I, that’s for sure. 

It’s time to drag out your superstitions, dust them off, and get writing!

The theme today is Trees. I have quite a few poems written in my poetic life, that are about, or at least mention, trees. And of course anyone who cares about our planet, probably has more than a bit to say/write about trees.

Can you see this plucky pine tree? A seed must have blown over from one of the much bigger pine trees, over to the west of where this potted fern is growing, on our front veranda, and up has come a pine tree! How awesome is Nature? Very awesome, I say! I just love trees, the lungs of the world, feeding spots for some creatures, and shade for all!

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Creative writers can approach subjects in a variety of ways, telling truth through allegory, telling lies that have the feel of the truest of truth ever. Being a poet means you can cut to the chase, leave out anything and everything not needed.

And you can say things from the sides of what they are, or underneath, or from up above them, looking down, and if you can write it in a way that brings more to what you’re saying, than just what the words are, bring a sense of importance, specialness, understanding, then hey, that’s poetry.

And if you show the lives of people who you don’t know, but feel you may have seen them once, and wanted to meet them, because you could see something special in them, a deeper understanding on why stuff happens, the way it does, then that’s poetry too.

Birds that show solidarity, and meaning to life, and can bring poetry. A mountain that tests a person in ways you never thought possible, poetry again. Or the funniest of sad stories or most tragic joke, poetry. 

I can honestly say I’ve barely ever met a tree I didn’t like, they are open, sheltering, forgiving, and some of them, meany of them in fact, bring food to life, for us, and many other creatures, to enjoy.

In the pic above are two cracked open almonds. Someone/something gained good things from our almond trees this recent almond season, but it wasn’t the humans living here, it was the cockatoos … Oh well, there’d have to be some poems in that little drama – I like to eat almonds, but I love having native birds around my place. Sharing is caring, they say, whoever ‘they’ are … Lots of ideas and emotions in this one!

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Go beyond, don’t settle for near enough, try for the best you’ve ever done, and if you don’t get there, write about the humanity of your attempt, and the attempts of your humanity.

Now I lay me down to sleep … Sleep and sleeping have many references in culture, from that sleep time prayer, to aphorisms and phrases, ‘asleep at the wheel’, and others, from the Bible to movies, to songs and more. Finding ways to sleep and sleep well take up much attention for many.

Whether you find it difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep, or to get up, after having a good sleep, we all have ideas, stories and thoughts about sleep. And of course ideas lead to creativity, and what is happening this Fabulous February month is creative writing, in response to prompts!

So for this eleventh day of February, the eleventh day of the Fabulous February Writing Prompt A Day month, don’t fall asleep, because there’s writing to do! Personally, I don’t have troubles sleeping these days,  but I can definitely remember other, more trying times, when waking up in the middle of the night, to worry, or think about, what I had to do the next day.

So wake up and get writing about being asleep, or anything prompted from the idea! Writing prompts can take a writer to all kinds of interesting places, let your mind take you where it will, and enjoy!