| 15 July |
Windmills at Ways With Words |
The suggestion for the audience poem at yesterday’s Ways With Words Wondermentalist Cabaret came from Satish Kumar, whose suggestion of ‘windmills’ was preferred over ‘cream teas’ and ‘praying mantis’ and did seem to inspire the collective metaphor-making faculties… Here’s the poem as it appears on a Ways With Words poster produced the following morning…
The Wondermentalist Cabaret
Audience Participation Poem - 14 July 2008
Windmills… what are you like?
Do you mind how I wind the windmill will?
Gyratory, vibratory, mistral–seeking blades
Sentinel shifters of airy semaphore
Windmill nimbys, nimwill wind me, spin me
Whisking up clouds for a sunset soufflé
An un-winged plane, going nowhere fast, forever…
Turbine be forever mine
Swish, swoosh, swish, swooshhhhh!!!
Oh how revoltingly Dutch.
Wind mills – (on) tall hills – (are) modern ills – (with) fancy frills
Puffing, blowing, huffing, flowing
Ghostly forms, foolishly arrogant in your ridiculous white attire
Why do your wings wave like a waffle?
A pickled onion spinning with its stick
A Spiro-graph of air-borne flight, fights…
Wind grinding pepper-pot, slow sail stew
Scarecrow comedian making a point
A lighthouse on the land, warning of approaching corn
Making flour by wind power, takes about 59 minutes! Doh!
Big sails waiting for wind kiss, sky caress, open arms
Sail this steeple across swollen sodden swamps
Slender blades generating “power”, strong stems – 3 turning petals
She loves me, she loves me not, “she loves me”
Whooshing, whirling, wheeling
Web, windy, wild, westerly
Focused on flour or flux
Though the mills of god grind slowly, they grind exceedingly small
Revolving doors
A Mandala milling the wind
Ranks of slim white sentinels saving our skins
No ill winds please, keep it sweet
The sails on the mill go round and round…
Who can mill the wind?
And, once ground, what kind of cake would it bake?
Something light and airy? Self-raising? Or f-air-y?
Windmills – do they always wind with time?
Do wind farms really make all the wind?
There once was a windmill in old Amsterdam
Where mice loved to dine on bran flakes and spam
The slow wave of the giant’s arms
Not waving, but drowning.
Written on 14 July 2008 by the audience of the Wondermentalist Cabaret as part of Ways With Words Festival of Words and Ideas: The Great Hall Dartington
Edited and created by Beryl The Feral
Brought to life by Matt Harvey