Month: August 2021

Shit is such a wondrous waste!

  after the “shit bird” and Dunya Mikhail

No-one gives shit a word of praise, as if shit wasn’t precious. As if shit wouldn’t relieve bodies from toxins and skeletons, brown cores, white bones, orange beaks, and blue feathers. As if shit wouldn’t teach children that stickiness is best when avoided with a sidestep, a jump, a stop. As if shit wouldn’t stage equality between shepherds and wolves, queens and beggars, tyrants and peasants. As if shit wouldn’t seed green trees in grey cities, bringing oxygen to the streets. As if shit wouldn’t release amber smells of other times, feeding silvery flies while flirting with the gods, bringing flowers the strength to burst with pink, lilac, and lavender. As if shit wouldn’t invite life into decay, drawing poets to look at a blank page with the nuances of the nothing that illuminates the day. As if shit wouldn’t bring in patience there where speed was in focus, requesting attention there where habits stiffened. Shit is a wonderous waste, but no-one gives it a word of praise.

Marie Beauchamps

Amsterdam, June 2021

Script

Script: write a list of 10 abstract nouns, then a list of ten concrete nouns. Match them to create metaphors and similes to use in your poem.

  1. Understanding
  2. Knowledge
  3. Freedom
  4. Idea
  5. Beauty
  6. Feeling
  7. Experience
  8. Whish
  9. Fear
  10. Derision
  1. Skin
  2. Eye
  3. Hand
  4. Bird
  5. Water
  6. Mouse
  7. Pen
  8. Table
  9. Ladder
  10. Lamp

I’m so tired I feel my entire body ache like a machine that stood for too long in the cupboard. I embarked on the metaphor exercise but the metaphors seem to work like this unbearable weight upon my body. So I switch gear, thinking I’ll go for the pattern exercise, but the patterns are like a ball of wool rolling down the stairs. What can I follow when there is no energy left to see? Perhaps it’s the metaphors that are still working. Knowledge like a skin that envelops your senses, ready to be shaken off in the midst of a good crisis. Understanding that comes as a hand, leading through the meanders of your own narrative, holding tight then letting go again for you to experience the ladder of your wish. See, I already managed to tell you three of them, and I feel the energy coming back little by little. No longer this eye of derision looking upon my shoulder as I try to craft sentences on the go. Did you notice the fourth one? Perhaps, when we are blocked and shattered by the pen of fear, it is because we don’t allow ourselves to just watch the bird’s beauty, by which I mean: to just stay by the words. In my first draft, bird was linked to feeling as in, it comes and it goes, but the bird’s beauty has the adventage to remind me of the simplicity of colours and the extraordinary expertise of nature to create just the right ones in the right order. I’m not sure which prompt I’m following anymore, but I know that many of my nouns have been matched. The remaining meeting time is one minute and nine seconds and already less than a minute. I’m going to have a cup of tea.

Amsterdam, March, 2021