Poem: The Day Before Christmas

Something on a happy note for a change. Inspired by the classic Night Before Christmas poem, here's my take, just a quick fun idea I wanted to share:

'Twas the day before Christmas
And I just had to smirk
As all of this white stuff
Got me a snow-day from work

Shovelling, and scraping
& chipping the ice
Try not to be naughty
& remember to be nice

So that Santa remembers
To bring me a gift
Of course he's real!
If not, I'd be miffed

With flakes drifting down
& gilding the branches
Coating the roadways
We'll still take our chances

To gather with family
& celebrate with friends
To relax & to give thanks
'Til the holiday ends

So bring on the spirit
& maybe the spirits too =)
Drink eggnog, eat cookies
Enjoy what families do

Until the day is done once more
& to home we have returned
Another year, a memory
A respite we have earned

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, have fun & be safe. Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Poem: Giving Up

The problem with being a perfectionist is that nothing ever gets done ... I wrote this a few days ago, maybe a little over a week & had intentions of going back to polish it up & didn't. But it's not bad even as a first draft. And cobwebs were starting to develop around here ... I'm in a better mood now, but wasn't at the time:

Giving up hope
That anyone will ever understand
Or simply hold my hand
And say things will be alright

Giving up hope
That I will ever find love, or peace
Or contentment, or sweet release
And someone to hold at night

Giving up hope
That I will ever be a part
Of something else, instead of apart
From everyone, in any light

I've got some other ideas to get some more posts flowing over here, but I'm thinking they may not come to fruition until after all this holiday mess. I've got a lot of baking to do this week, so I know I'll be busy trying to fit in normal stuff, let alone new things.

I've got 2 batches of cake balls to make, 2 batches of what I've taken to calling fruity foldovers, both of those recipes for the family cookie exchange this weekend. And then 2 batches of PBB cookies - Peanut-Butter-Butterscotch which is my required dessert at work LOL, I get in lots of trouble if I switch it up with anything else. Plus a hair appointment on Wednesday & and going Thursday to cookie-cut & bake with grandma like 5 or maybe 6 batches of sugar cookies for frosting on Saturday. Cookie pics will show up on MSLP if I remember to take some before eating everything LOL =)

Thanks for reading

~Colette

Another Critter

Ummm... oops. Almost 2 weeks. Naughty me >.>

Here's a doodle to break the doldrums. Just another critter:


Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Critters

Time flies .. haven't exactly been having fun, but time still flies. I don't want this blog to become a project that I just let fall off & never "finish" (not that a blog is ever really finished), but it's been over a week, so I dug up a couple of old critter doodles from the sketchbook:


Kind of look like they could be little Pokemon =) Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Profile Doodle

Well, I've been digging through old sketchbooks when I'm not making new doodles, looking for stuff that I still like enough to post, and I came across this little doodle of a profile. I think I was using something for a refernce, a picture or another drawing, but it's from 3/18/02 & I don't really remember.

Sometimes I'll decide after I've drawn something or someone that it lines up with one of my characters, but I don't really do a good job it seems like if I set out to draw a character. So this is just an anonymous profile:


Thanks for reading =)

~Colette

Dreary Day

Not actually having a very good day. I looked outside earlier, and even though some of the leaves are still pretty, it's turning into a dreary season, with everything dead & brown & crappy looking before it gets covered up with snow ... which I don't particularly like either, but I can appreciate the beauty better than autumn after the leaves have fallen.

Anyway, the stark image of a tree against the clouds kind of stuck in my head & rattled around up there with a few words & the generally empty feeling I've had this week & when I came home I wrote this:

A cold, grey sky
A leafless tree
A lonely heart
A loveless me

If I were on American Idol, I think Simon would tell me I'm being indulgent LOL. But, little though I care for being unhappy, if there's a downside it's that it makes me think of writing even when I don't actually write anything. And seeing as it's been a week again somehow, I obviously should be writing more. So this is something.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Trick Or Treat

OK, this is almost a little absurd, inspired by Poe's The Raven, and it's quite old, I think from 2003 although it's dated incompletely in the notebook. It managed to put a smile on my face when I came across it, and I thought I might as well post it up since I've got some Halloween-ness going on over at MSLP too:

Once upon an evening yearly
The youngest come out the most early
Dressed as the most quaint & curious creatures you could meet
Whilst you chill in you chair, rocking
There will come a steady knocking
And the pitter-patterting of little feet
Quoth the children "Trick or treat!"

Now, I've always been most keen
On this holiday called Halloween
On this date with theme so neat
Wind blowing gently, through the trees & soughing
On this night some still call Samhain
And people stand with candy, ready to greet
The children crying "Trick or treat!"

I used to be able to recite all of The Raven - and for some reason I want to say it's 18 stanzas long, but seriously don't quote me - because I just thought it was one of the coolest poems ever. Well, I still think that, but I wouldn't put money on myself remembering more than a quarter of it after all these years LOL.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Depression Awareness Month

Scrangie's post gave me lots of food for thought. Regarding where I am vs. where I have been ...

I am trying really hard to post like once a week here. But time slips away from me & suddenly it's been 8 or 9 days ... anyway, I dug out some old stuff, this is the end section of a poem I still thought was half decent, from 2002:

I see black
alone
I see blue
pain
I see red
anger
I see nothing
myself
falling
crushed
broken
hopeless
lost
in my blindness
and blinded
by too much
too much thought
too much stress
too much less
less release
less peace
less me
less certainty
in everything

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Yoga Poem

I'm having a rough day. Very frustrated with myself, to sum up what's really bothering me, on top of everything else that a stressful workday entails. I realized earlier it had been a while since I posted on this blog, and intended to find something old to share. But then I sat down, before I changed clothes, and a thought came into my head that turned into another thought & turned into a rough little piece of verse.

Yoga helps with everything. And so that's what I'm going to do in a moment, but this is what that thought brought out of me:

Breathe, exhale, and center find
Calm, be still, and clear my mind
All that came before, put behind
And let every knot unbind

Let every worry drift away
Let every black pain fade to grey
Don't allow fear to have it's say
Let peace uplift, at least today

I should do my yoga every day. Because when I am done, I am at peace. So I'm off to go find that peace, little though it feels possible at the moment. Hopefully you have something that can bring you a little peace too =) Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Lotus Inspired Knot

This started off as a little doodle & I "forced" myself to develop it into a finished piece. First time in probably about a year a doodle has evolved into anything more LOL so I guess the blog is working =)


Lucy, my one & only follower (although I do know I get other people peeking in here, thanks to the Stat Counter), you'd asked about how I come up with my ideas, so I took a few pics with my camera (the finished product above is scanned in) of the process.

It started with a doodle that wasn't even worthy of a pic, that evolved into this line art:


Line art gets expanded into the final design:


Uhm, I'm not very technical, I don't know how to explain the next step other than I just start erasing stuff & darkening other stuff, making the overs & the unders. This is where I remembered that if I have lines that don't connect to anything, they need to end outside of the design, rather than inside:


Start adding some color:


Finish the color & add shading, and ta-da! The finished product above. I draw stuff other than knots sometimes too, but a lot of the time I'm not very pleased with it. Knots are fun & relatively easy & I'm usually very happy with the end product. Thanks for reading.

~Colette

No Reason

Some people sing in the shower ... I compose poetry LOL. I don't usually have time to write any of it down, since my morning routine is timed to the millisecond (I usually punch in at work at maybe 6:28 on the early end ... I start at 6:30), but this stuck in my head long enough to make it to paper. Not quite happy, but happier than normal. Not the greatest, not polished at all (this is the way it came out of my head the first time), but good enough to share:

No reason not to switch it up
No reason not to change
No reason not to make things normal
That once would have been strange
No reason not to suck it up
And go that extra mile
No reason not to be happy
No reason not to smile

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

From The Notebook

At one point I started a notebook exclusively for poetry. I'm sad & somewhat ashamed to admit that it still has a lot of blank pages ... this is from May of 2002, a ridiculously long time ago, but like I said I'm digging through old stuff more right now than I am writing anything new ... looking for inspiration maybe? But even though I still think this is good, it isn't what I want to write anymore. Kind of the wrong kind of inspiration LOL:

How can I be happy

When pleasure is so brief

When every struggling smile

Is too soon stolen by a thief

Good feelings quickly borne away

As though on wind

As though a leaf

And every laugh feels like a lie

Because the mirth so quickly dies

False amusement

From an empty husk

Singled out, within a group

And so alone

Among other people's friends.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Green Spiral Knot

Also from about August of 2007:


~Colette

Pink Star Knot

Hmm, found this looking through some of what I already have scanned into the computer. I want to get some more up here before I lose my nerve LOL. Looks like this is from August of 2007:


Thanks for reading... well, looking I suppose, but there were a few words involved =)

~Colette

Throughout Me

Hi =) To readers from my other blog & new readers alike. I guess this is kind of like a mission statement LOL.

My Simple Little Pleasures is my happy place. And while writing makes me happy, sometimes - ofttimes - it seems like I do my best poetry when I'm sad, or angry, or lonely. So, while I'm not going to call this my sad place, or anything quite so dramatic, it's going to have a little bit of a different vibe that MSLP. I feel like I'm in a better place that I was a few years ago, I just regret that my writing seems to have suffered for it somewhat. I don't want to fall into the stereotype of a maudlin writer, someone who needs to suffer for their art or be in pain to be creative.

So, I hope that having the "obligation" to post will encourage me to write more - much as my obligation to MSLP got me to take better care of my nails. I'm honestly not sure that it will work out that way. I have no clue right now how often I'll be posting. I do have some old stuff that I may expose to the light of day, but a lot of what I find myself doing lately is just jotting down a quick 2 lines of verse that may pop into my head, without ever going back & making something more complete out of it.

This is also going to be home, in addition to my poetry, to some of my artwork. Possibly other things as time goes on - I guess anything that I don't think fits on My Simple Little Pleasures.

I don't know what else to say for this introduction. These things are more of my life's simple pleasures, that for one reason or another I just don't quite feel fit on my original blog. So I guess this is kind of an extension of my first blog. If you plan on hanging around, I hope you enjoy =)

I'll end this first post with a poem, just to get over the emotional hurdle of sharing my work. This isn't my first poem, but it is old ... I don't know how old, but I find it scribbled in notebook margins from years & years ago. It's almost a kind of mantra. A reminder. And now, in a way, the inspiration for this blog:

I can't see
Throughout me
What I need
To be
To become
What I must
I don't trust
Myself

Thanks for reading.

~Colette