Anastasya Shepherd

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Tag: metaphorisms

  • Choices

    Choices are difficult.
    You choose life and passion –
    of course you do!
    But there,
    in the centre,
    in the shadows and folds,
    death lurks.
    Decay of complacency,
    lack of emotional investment today
    breeds the boredom of tomorrow,
    black mold overgrowing your passion,
    smothering it in a soft, furry blanket,
    killing it through comfort,
    illusion of safety,
    abdication of control…
    To keep life
    you have to keep choosing it
    every day,
    every hour,
    every minute.
    And you do –
    of course you do –
    until you tire
    and let the mold take over.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Wound

    The open wound is laughing at me.
    Scarlet lips, glittering teeth of bone deep inside,
    streaks of blood dulling as they congeal…
    I laugh back at it, mouth open wide –
    loudly, victoriously, triumphantly.
    It is only a flesh wound –
    I can master it,
    I can manage it,
    I can thrive in spite
    and feel stronger for it.
    Not like the other ones –
    dull and habitual aching I feel –
    the wounds I can’t reach,
    the wounds I can’t heal,
    they have nothing they teach –
    deep under the skin,
    the wounds closed over.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Who are you?

    First you figure out who you are not;
    then you figure out who you are;
    finally, you figure out you are not who.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • My Love

    “Oh my Luve is like a red, red rose” – Robert Burns

    My love is like a red, red rose
    the flowers and thorns combined.
    The vivid beauty intertwined
    with sharpness. There is no repose.
    The colour of the velvet petals
    Evokes blood, subsists in blood.
    Ambivalence that never settles
    existed there from the bud.
    My love is like a red, red rose
    it’s in my blood least petals dry.
    In me, with me, as me it grows
    and if it dies the I shall die.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • London

    The difference between art and ornamentation is provocation. If it provokes thoughts, feelings, actions, opposition – anything but indifference – it is art. (Me, personal communication)

    London is art.

    I wander around the city,
    from pillar to post,
    from juxtaposition to juxtaposition.

    It has a lot of pillars and posts –
    old and contemporary,
    pretentions and utilitarian,
    faux Greek and real concrete.

    I peel it layer by layer:
    Shiny facades concealing ruins,
    ruins prepared to be reorganised,
    rebuilt, repurposed,
    reabsorbed into nostalgia for the past
    or hope for the future.

    Only dead cities are immutable –
    monuments to past hopes of individual success
    and current delusions of national grandeur.
    Gravestones.

    Living cities have to consist of ruins,
    it is a process of recreation,
    flux and flow of people and things,
    moving between loss and hope,
    provoking innovation and outrage.

    London is art.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Of Rainbows and Fairness

    We long for answers. For a way to clear
    the shadows of doubt from the mind.
    We want uncertainty to disappear,
    confusion and complexity – unwind

    onto the straight and narrow – a pier
    above the murky waters of the mind.
    The only way to go. Nothing queer.
    No thread of Ariadne to unwind.

    We wish for clear weather, warm and dry,
    but clear thinking quickly makes it clear
    as wind sweeps all the clouds from the sky
    the rainbows will also disappear.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • The waters of eternal youth

    My well is deep and almost full of sadness,
    its waters dark, its syrupy contents
    attracting ants and flies and other creatures:
    some birds and mice that sunk under the surface,
    preserved in sugar – feathers, fur and bones,
    like little gods, demanding adoration.
    The lure so sweet: abandon hope,
    abandon disappointment, strife and effort,
    become an angel, paragon of virtue,
    of feathers so smooth, and white, and silky,
    forever undisturbed, forever perfect,
    forever still.
    Intoxicating poison
    of sugar, death and mystery fermented –
    the nectar of the gods,
    the well of legend
    containing waters of eternal youth.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Sleeping Beauty

    With gratitude to a friend and a poet, Yana Kane, who asked this question – and inspired so many others.

    White monolithic marble
    slowly flows into
    blue, where curling spires,
    gradually exhausted,
    fade into sky and vanish.
    Tracing intricate movement,
    my gaze, under its enchantment,
    takes me away and out
    where there is no sound,
    colour or time – just spaces
    still but containing movement.
    Somewhere in these spires
    there’s an enchanted princess
    sleeping a hundred years
    and one.

    And then?
    [question from the audience]

    What happens
    In year one hundred and two?

    And then…

    When a miracle happens it gives you a choice –
    it defies the prediction’s imperious voice.

    If the prince failed to show and give you a kiss
    you can give happy ending a miss.

    You can stay in your own unchanged universe
    and ignore the fairy’s presumptuous curse.

    You can stick middle finger to human endeavour –
    Sleeping Beauty, enchanted forever.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • On the Nature of Poetry

    Trying to describe the indescribable
    is a mug’s game.

    There are no stories
    beyond the power of words,
    for stories are words.

    As we try to get at the magic of experience,
    the enchantment that can transcend facts
    and transmute reality,
    …it turns into a story
    born of words
    and limited by them.
    It rhymes and writhes,
    but artifice of language
    only hints
    at possibility
    of something deeper;
    it makes your reader work,
    inventing meaning,
    while losing your experience forever
    and making you redundant…
    What a pity!

    Poor poet –
    forever betrayed by your tools
    turning experience into stories,
    visceral into abstract,
    dreams into – what?

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in
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