Anastasya Shepherd

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Category: Poetry

  • Why?

    ‘Why do it?’ as a question clips your wings
    and locks you in a cage of expectations.
    Don’t ask it.
    Ask: ‘Why not?’

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Overkill

    An observation on metallurgy: if you make a safety net too rigid, it turns into a cage.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Border

    Water relentlessly grinding rocks into sand,
    finer and finer,
    until it cannot be supported
    and filters through
    into the depths.
    And there you are –
    right on the border;
    building castles out of sand
    and fortifying them with water.
    Amazingly, it works.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Words

    (Part of the image is from Dmitri Plavinsky – Word)

    Sticks and stones can break my bones,
    but words can re-define me.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Nightmare

    (Part of the image is from Kliment Redko – Uprising)

    If you want people to hear what you want to say, conceal what you want to say in what they want to hear.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Borders of perception

    In his preamble to ‘Life – A User’s Manual’ Georges Perec talks about the contextual nature of perception, as seen in jigsaw puzzles. He explains how, by manipulating the cut of the pieces and thus taking them out of context, the puzzle-maker can completely determine the puzzle-solver’s experience, ‘the ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles’. I can, of course, sympathise with his desperate hope that the author can determine what the reader experiences while reading his book. But it is delusional. Our perception of an image, a text, or, in fact, a reality is largely determined by our biases and habits of thought. Politicians and advertisers prove it over and over again by inducing a large percentage of the population to ignore what is – in favour of what they think ought to be. So, don’t get unduly upset at writers and artists. They want to believe that they are movers and shakers – and who doesn’t? In fact, they are at best co-conspirators.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Daffodils

    Daffodils growing in a raspberry bush:
    fragile beauty in a cage of thorns;
    a weed among sweet berries…

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Nursery rhyme

    What are people made of?
    What are people made of?
    Pictures and words,
    Hopes and hurts,
    That’s what people are made of.

    What are people made of?
    What are people made of?
    Clothes and skin,
    Mind and machine,
    That’s what people are made of.

    What are people made of?
    What are people made of?
    Cultures and schemes,
    Mirrors and dreams,
    That’s what people are made of.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Requiem

    They say your heart aches.
    Mine doesn’t. My back does.
    There is an uncomfortable feeling in my spine.
    It doesn’t hurt, exactly, I just know it is there every second.
    Tears occasionally leak from my eyes, like pus from a wound.
    They have no meaning and bring no relief.
    My mind is desperately searching for something:
    words, feelings, escape –
    but there is nothing there.
    Just a body:
    stupid,
    mute,
    incomprehensible.
    Experience unmitigated,
    voiceless scream,
    feeling that has no name:
    not sadness,
    not pain,
    not anger –
    nothing eating at my bones,
    squeezing my tear-ducts,
    stripping off words,
    exposing the emptiness inside and out.
    My thoughts go into familiar grooves
    and then slide off again – into nothing…
    I feel old.
    I feel chilly with understanding
    that most things just are.
    Not for something.
    Not because of something.
    They are – and there is the end to it.
    Here.
    Now.
    It.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in
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