a found poem to honour Barbara Sher
Barbara asked her vast team of scanners to add to a list of useless career skills (including me, the fastest necklace untangler known to mankind). I picked out my favourite replies from the responses.
“Just when you think no-one cares, there is always someone who sees your useless career skill as a work of poetry” – Barbara Sher
I can walk on stilts. (I haven’t tried it in a while) I have several friends who are clowns, contortionists, stilt-walkers, unicyclists, hula-hoopers, rope-walkers, jugglers, etc. Sheetrock installation sometimes requires stilts.
I can eat a lemon without making a wince
I can daydream all day taking my journey in the Fairyland
I know many poems by heart (they just pop up)
I can read upside down and backwards
I like to take terms and turn them around like “professional victim” is seen as an insult, but I think it’s a way to show others that surviving something traumatic can be taught and shared
I can talk to just about anyone, if the devil showed up in my apartment randomly one night, I’d probably just talk to him
I used to paint on glass, know lots of stars and constellations by heart, knit various things, do embroidery
I can detect negative and sad energy from people
My brain wants to accept only what my eyes see
I can confuse people