Skeleton Architecture

Back in 2013 a quiz had me pegged as Batwoman (Batgirl? Surely not?) but I fancied myself as more of a Wonder Woman/Misfit/Sookie Stackhouse mashup, if I had to have super powers. We have just been to see Justice League (which was OK, but would have worked much better as a TV series), so I'm again pondering my superpowers. Now that I'm in my 40s, it seems to me that like so many women in films like Justice League (because we can't see them, ya ken?), my main powers are invisibility and inaudibility, with a heavy dose of empathy thrown in - not so that I can read minds or anything, not so I could send anyone to sleep or make someone afraid, but just so I will cry genuine tears for a sad advert. Sigh.

There is a school of thought that says that feminism is simply the belief in the equality of men and women. It sounds reasonable, but... ...we started from a position of patriarchy - men were in charge and they got to do the most valued things, women had to do the rest, and anything which women did was devalued either because it was devalued first and so women did it, OR (and this is really important) women did it and they were of less value in a patriarchal system (I mean this literally - men were people, women were property), therefore the thing done was less valued. We are well on our way to breaking out of the patriarchal system now, barriers are being removed to women entering the roles that men traditionally did. We have lots of women in power. Most of those women are childless, and this is really important, because women's traditional roles in looking after people, raising children, all that nurturing stuff is still undervalued because of patriarchal hangovers. Until the...

Once a month I get to go to an amazing poetry group at the Glasgow Women's Library (which is also an amazing place). This is one of those things that you do and it feels like the universe has gift wrapped it just for you. I get to work with brilliant women and it is totally inspiring. This month we were looking at a gorgeous poem by Dana Gioia, Nothing is Lost, which someone else has shared here . In it Dana imagines a coin once held by you as a child coming back to you as an adult, and the different ways that you'd understand it at the different times. There is a call there to pause and reflect on the little things and there is also a nod to the things that end up in pockets. As a parent, pockets and bags can be filled with weird things, things that not only you chose for their shape or look or oddness, but other people's little hand-holdy things. The other day I had a blue dinosaur in my pocket. It probably wasn't the one I had in my pocket in my childhood, pull...

This morning I hid real live human beings in drab, contained their hair, but whispered that I knew they were still in there, and I sent them to their undercover work as schoolchildren. This morning I wrestled electric cats into a fairy faraday cage, and took them to the torturer, who weighed their hearts and found them wanting. I rubbed magic potions onto the electric cats gums, and we widened our eyes to each other. This morning I cornered the laundry monster and labelled its parts. It still lives, but the first of its limbs has been wrestled into submission. This morning I bargained with the weather gods and won, for a while, and took the tribbles out to work their way across the grass. And then I stopped for coffee and while I drank the coffee I wrote a tanka on a scrap of paper I've now glued in a notebook and shared it with you. What have you done this morning?

Most of the time I do my writing in the living room. Sometimes, before I'm done, it will be invaded by small people. When I wrote this it was invaded by small people who were watching Avatar, an episode where they were in caves and had to find their way out in the darkness, letting love lead the way.

It has been ages since I've joined in with Sara at Mum Turned Mom's regular Prompt. It's on my list, but my list has got out of hand lately, so I was delighted when I got a reminder from Sara in the form of her very own tanka, go check it out here . Her theme this time was 'CAPTURE', and this is what I came up with: I'm joining in with The Prompt. If you're quick you can join in too!

Today's tanka arose from an image that turned up in my head. I don't know what her name is, or the kid's, I don't know what's happened (although a patriarchal apocalypse springs to mind), nor what she's going to build. But I know she will build it.

I'm throwing order to the winds to get this one in for Halloween, #22 will follow shortly. This is my first experiment in Scots poetry, which I shouldn't really be writing because I can't speak it, but there are some truly awesome words, some of which really need to get wider use! Particularly 'oorie' - that's just glorious. Some of the words are defined below the tankain detail, but really the word oorie is a poem in itself. Basic translation: It seems always cold/and the low lying mist is miserable and eerie/feet are always totally caked in mud/when the ghosties come through./They have tales that need to be told. Specially glorious words: clartit - related to clarty - muddy, clartit means totally caked in mud dayfelly - a low lying mist in a hollow or depression oorie - dismal, gloomy, miserable looking, hanging from the cold, cold and cheerless, depressive, lonely and sad, feeling of the supernatural, eerie, uneasy. I reckon we need to get ...

Sometimes I use the photo prompts from Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge to inspire a tanka (and a photo!). Recently the prompt was 'one of a kind', so I went out into the dreary looking for something that was one of a kind. I must admit that I thought of a selfie, but I wasn't feeling photogenic, and looking around at the grey and the dreary and the still-f**ing-raining, I wasn't feeling that anything was particularly different, or one of a kind. Then I thought of the saying that you can't step into the same stream twice. It might look the same but the water has moved on and changed. The grey dreary might look the same but there is a different quality to the rainclouds, all that water, above and below is moving on, as are we all. Today someone has died, and their loss is felt. Today someone is born. Today all the other things inbetween have happened to someone somewhere. Today is one of a kind, and the only remarkable thing about that is that you can't t...

I have been a woman for ages, and I am no amateur woman either, I'm a professional woman. I've read Caitlin Moran's book and I am fully clued up on How to be a Woman. I went to University for three whole years studying Women's Studies, I represented women as a Women's Officer. I know about womaning. I know about sexual assault and inappropriateness too. Sometimes I was even targeted because of being Women's Officer and doing Women's Studies. I have had lots of experiences, from minor to major, and I have been aware of lots of other women's experiences of all the many and various kinds. I don't think you have to be a professional woman to have this experience, just looking like you might be a woman can get you lined right up for it. So I am not delighted that there are so very many women saying #MeToo at the moment, rather, I am delighted that we are all of us taking the same moment to pick up those disgusting rocks and show the nastiness undernea...

The photo prompt for the Fat Mum Slim Photo a Day challenge the other day was 'favourite'. Favourite is a contentious issue in my house. Miss 7 is desperate for me to admit that she's my favourite and Miss 10 is annoyed that I always describe her as my favourite 10 (or 9, 8 etc) year old.  I know some parents have favourites, and truth be told there are moments when I find a child particularly lovely, or particularly not, but surely a favourite has to be more sustained than that? If so, then I could not possibly say, not even if you hypnotised me! Just a quick note to my favourite sister before you get to the picture... I know you hate fish, and I'm sorry.

My Dad challenged me to write a tanka about a Tonka truck. I was going to ignore this challenge, but then he got his friend to publicly shame me into it on Facebook. So here you go father and friend. 😝 My brother had a Tonka truck when we were little. I thought it was yellow, my Dad thought it was red. My brother says it was red and  yellow. Nobody has it anymore, and it's not in any photos I can find (I have looked for the amount of time you spend on these projects when you should really be doing something more useful), but that was a really good, sturdy, truck. I've definitely attempted to use it as a skateboard when my feet would fit in it, I've also loaded it with animals, Sindy's, and of course, lots of stones. It was the kind of toy you look at and declare that they don't make them like that anymore. My brother is pretty awesome too. He started off as my little brother. Now he towers above me. He's had plenty of health issues, including collecting a...

I wrote this poem on Ada Lovelace day, which was the 10th October this year. I figured I'd find out more about Ada as all I really knew was that she was Lord Byron (the philandering poet)'s daughter, and one of the first computer programmers. I have just dragged myself out of the rabbit warren of finding out about Ada. Why haven't I seen a film about her? Ada came from a seriously messed up family, and was pushed into mathematics and science by her mother (with the help of some brilliant tutors), who was desperate that she shouldn't inherit what she saw as her father's madness and moral depravity. I am using the word 'father' loosely here, he was more of a sperm donor really. Go google Ada, she's fascinating. Anyway, one of the things that Ada turned her attention to was flying. She really wanted to be able to fly, and looking at the way she lived, with her mother having her watched by her friends to look out for failing morals (Ada dubbed them the...

This week's Prompt at Mum Turned Mom (link below) is perfection .  I start my Rose book (which I'm going to do an overhaul on, because I think I'm working out why no one wants to publish it) with a consideration of perfection, which is of course, unattainable, although a near miss is pretty good. We will keep aiming for it though, and beating ourselves up for not achieving it. It's a word that seems to get talked about a lot, particularly when considering beauty, and makeup. I am a big fan of makeup. I love black eyeliner, especially teamed with a smokey eye and minimalistic lipstick. I have been known to paint trees on the side of my face, and that's all good. I love watching people do makeup. I follow Illamasqua and Jonysios on Instagram, and they are both awesome feeds, with totally unnatural, brilliant looks. I love it when it's unnatural. I mean, if you're going to put colours on your face why not go wild and have fun? The thing that creeps me out...

Today I'm linking up with The Prompt over on Mum Turned Mom by Sara, with this poem about whispers. I promise, there are no bodies. Although it's been close a few times over this Easter holidays, with people taking it in turn to be ill, so we've hardly done anything and are all stir crazy! It's my turn now, and I'm feeling better this morning, so hopefully we are done and ready to eat all of the chocolate. Whispers Words whispered in ears light up eyes with the sweet warmth of secrecy but wait:      in whose ear will these words be whispered? Because a whisper winds itself along its way becoming something new. Ears pass to eyes, to lips, to the world and are not, as you know, for real secrets. Real secrets will be whispered to the wind,        to the weeping willow,                        to the West. Words on bodies must be whispered to the bees. Will the whispered wor...

Sara at Mum Turned Mom has chosen the word 'potential' as her latest prompt. To be honest, I was stuck there for a while, but then I was thinking about gravitational potential energy and Wile E Coyote, and I came up with this poem, which I've also done a reading of on Facebook live ( click here for that ): The Potential This poem, poised on the precipice has potential to kill you dead. To whistle its way down to a million-mile-away valley floor landing in its own mini-mushroom puff. But it won't. You'll just beep, and run on by or maybe pause for a moment wondering why it's poised just so, was it put there on purpose? Or has its context  been whittled and abridged away? Perhaps you see my design in balancing this poem here with all its potential. Pause a while longer,  and you'll see yourself in it. Ⓒ Cara L McKee 27/4/17

Last summer we gave our neighbours a gift and swapped homes for a little while with a lovely family who lived in Barcelona. They had a great time exploring Scotland and getting to know our neighbours while we enjoyed being hot in Barcelona. It was incredibly hot, there was a reason the Barcelonians wanted to escape to Scotland, but we enjoyed making friends with their kitten and chilling out in their gorgeous home in the day time, going out in the evening when the heat was more tolerable to explore gorgeous Barcelona. Things we loved most were:  Seeing La Sagrada Familia - we didn't go inside because the kids didn't want to, but there's a great play park behind it where we watched parrots fly and admired the building. Shopping around Las Ramblas - so much fun and lots of silly little shops. The area has a reputation for pickpockets but we were fine with our purses tucked away. The CosmoCaixa museum - this was a fantastic visit, we adored the museum which had so...

Happy New Year! I hope you've had a great Christmas and New Year. We did, although it was a bit quiet. The last week of the holidays dragged, mainly because I got a stinking horrible cold on January 1st, which is making me feel totally rotten. Ugh. Anyway, things are going pretty well on the writing front. I had two poems out last month, and I also got shortlisted for the Great British Write Off, which was totally unexpected, and kinda lovely. I've also had lots of things rejected, and failed to get placed in my local writing group's competition. I worked really hard on that poem and I'm annoyed with myself for not doing better, I'm trying to tell myself it's all subjective, but the usual suspects got placed again. Maybe it's just not my audience. I am slightly gutted that Maddy at Writing Bubble is going to be too busy to run the What I'm Writing Linky this year, but so glad that she's got lots of interesting things on. However, Sara at Mum T...

The prompt at Mum Turned Mom this fortnight is 'Colour', and I've been thinking about what to write and keep coming back to political allegiances, thinking of all my friends with their red and yellow backgrounds to their Facebook posts, to the conversations I keep having about who the hell it is that keeps voting Tory. On the morning after the latest general election I went out for coffee with a friend, to celebrate the Tory humiliation, and mourn the fact that they're still in power. I don't know if that couple were Tories, the poem was originally about a friend, but I've changed it to bad mouth people I don't know. Sorry about that! Wearing our colours We went for coffee to celebrate, to commiserate, to pick over the bones of what was won, what lost, of who let us down and we wished that everyone had to dress in the colours that showed what they did. Then we would know who it was who didn't bother, who hid amongst us, for there had ...

This is a poem I wrote in response to The Prompt from Sara at Mum Turned Mom . I first wrote it thinking of the current situation in British politics, but in the darkness of the terrible event in Manchester recently it also speaks to that situation. I am so sorry for all those who lost loved ones, who were hurt, who were terrorised by the bomb that went off in Manchester.  I am also sorry for all of our young men and women whose fears are targetted by groups like ISIS.  There is always an increase in racism and in anti-immigrant feeling after an event such as this, whipped up by those who wish to keep the people divided and voting for those that would keep the rich rich and the poor in 'their place'. We all get caught up in things, and it is always important to question our thoughts, as well as what we're told.  We do not have to stay on this road to division and hatred. We can stop, help each other, just as the people of Manchester came together to help each o...