Packing our bags,
as if never coming back,
to never look back
at these baggy bags.

These baggy bags,
have you and me.
Memories,  now they flee,
with the bagginess these bags.

The park swing still swings,
as if it never missed our bubbling
nor the crazy chattering,
on that swing we used to swing.

Eccentric we were,
in terms of termly terms
like love,we had to squirm
and worm to who we were.

The park swing had bid adieu long ago,
but these baggy bags,
memory and love it drags;
these baggy bags don't flow with the foe.

These baggy bags,
packed bags,they sack
nothing but love and faith-
that, we once had.

We live in a world filled with stereotypes.
Stereotypes that make us ashamed of who we are.
There’s a woman in my neighborhood who wears tight clothing and high heel shoes but that doesn’t mean she’s a ******.
There’s a boy in my class who listens to rap music and wears baggy clothes, but that doesn’t mean he’s out on the street selling dope.
There’s a girl in my class who rarely says to words and get’s straight A’s, but that doesn’t mean she’s a goody goody.

People ask us all the time of who we think we are,
but it doesn’t matter to them because before we can even digest the question and regurgitate the answer they have already made their mind up of who they think we are.

Some people are considered a brain.
Some a trouble maker
or a ****.
A princess
or a ******
But the truth is we are all smart, just in different ways.
Everyone of us has some athleticism in us.
Everyone one has gotten into some trouble.
We have all had are princess or prince moments.
And everyone of us is weird,
some people are just better at hiding in it.

You remember my neighbor I told you about?
She dresses like that, not because she is trying to sell herself
but because when she was younger she got bullied and no one ever noticed her because she never had designer clothes because her mother had no job and her father left when she was 4. And ever since then she made herself a promise that she would make sure people noticed her.
And that boy with the baggy clothes?
He wears those baggy clothes to cover up the cuts and bruises his father comes home from the and had one to many drinks.
And the girl who get’s straight A’s and doesn’t say much?
She get’s those straight A’s because if she doesn’t she gets a straight hand across the face and she doesn’t talk because she has sever anxiety.

So the next time you point and laugh at someone remember that they’re 3 fingers pointing back at you.
And the next time you assume something about something remember that when yo assume yo make an *** out of U and ME.

Like a psychotic docent in the wilderness,
I will not speak in perfect Ciceronian cadences.
I draw my voice from a much deeper cistern,
Preferring the jittery synaptic archive,
So sublimely unfiltered, random and profane.
And though I am sequestered now,
Confined within the walls of a gated, golf-coursed,
Over-55 lunatic asylum (for Active Seniors I am told),
I remain oddly puerile,
Remarkably refreshed and unfettered.  
My institutionalization self-imposed,
Purposed for my own serenity, and also the safety of others.
Yet I abide, surprisingly emancipated and frisky.
I may not have found the peace I seek,
But the quiet has mercifully come at last.

The nexus of inner and outer space is context for my story.
I was born either in Brooklyn, New York or Shungopavi, Arizona,
More of intervention divine than census data.
Shungopavi: a designated place for tribal statistical purposes.
Shungopavi: an ovine abbatoir and shaman’s cloister.
The Hopi: my mother’s people, a state of mind and grace,
Deftly landlocked, so cunningly circumscribed,
By both interior and outer Navajo boundaries.
The Navajo: a coyote trickster people; a nation of sheep thieves,
Hornswoggled and landlocked themselves,
Subsumed within three of the so-called Four Corners:
A 3/4ths compromise and covenant,
Pickled in firewater, swaddled in fine print,
A veritable swindle concocted back when the USA
Had Manifest Destiny & mayhem on its mind.

The United States: once a pubescent synthesis of blood and thunder,
A bold caboodle of trooper spit and polish, unwashed brawlers, Scouts and      
Pathfinders, mountain men, numb-nut ne'er-do-wells,
Buffalo Bills & big-balled individualists, infected, insane with greed.
According to the Gospel of His Holiness Saint Zinn,
A People’s’ History of the United States: essentially state-sponsored terrorism,
A LAND RUSH grabocracy, orchestrated, blessed and anointed,
By a succession of Potomac sharks, Great White Fascist Fathers,
Far-Away-on-the Bay, the Bay we call The Chesapeake.
All demented national patriarchs craving lebensraum for God and country.
The USA: a 50-state Leviathan today, a nation jury-rigged,
Out of railroad ties, steel rails and baling wire,
Forged by a litany of lies, rapaciousness and ******,
And jaw-torn chunks of terra firma,
Bites both large and small out of our well-****** Native American ***.

Or culo, as in va’a fare in culo (literally "go do it in the ***")
Which Italian Americans pronounce as fongool.
The language center of my brain,
My sub-cortical Broca’s region,
So fraught with such semantic misfires,
And autonomic linguistic seizures,
Compel acknowledgement of a father’s contribution,
To both the gene pool and the genocide.
Columbus Day:  a conspicuously absent holiday out here in Indian Country.
No festivals or Fifth Avenue parades.
No excuse for ethnic hoopla. No guinea feast. No cannoli. No tarantella.
No excuse to not get drunk and not **** your sister-in-law.
Emphatically a day for prayer and contemplation,
A day of infamy like Pearl Harbor and 9/11,
October 12, 1492: not a discovery; an invasion.

Growing up in Brooklyn, things were always different for me,
Different in some sort of redskin/****/****--
Choose Your Favorite Ethnic Slur-sort of way.
The American Way: dehumanization for fun and profit.
Melting *** anonymity and denial of complicity with evil.
But this is no time to bring up America’s sordid past,
Or, a personal pet peeve: Indian Sovereignty.
For Uncle Sam and his minions, an ever-widening, conveniently flexible concept,
Not a commandment or law,
Not really a treaty or a compact,
Or even a business deal.  Let’s get real:
It was not even much in the way of a guideline.
Just some kind of an advisory, a bulletin or newsletter,
Could it merely have been a free-floating suggestion?
Yes, that’s it exactly: a suggestion.

Over and under halcyon American skies,
Over and around those majestic purple mountain peaks,
Those trapped in poetic amber waves of wheat and oats,
Corn and barley, wheat shredded and puffed,
Corn flaked and milled, Wheat Chex and Wheaties, oats that are little Os;
Kix and Trix, Fiber One, and Kashi-Go-Lean, Lucky Charms and matso *****,
Kreplach and kishka,
Polenta and risotto.
Our cantaloupe and squash patch,
Our fruited prairie plain, our delicate ecological Eden,
In balance and harmony with nature, as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce instructs:
“These white devils are not going to,
Stop ****** and killing, cheating and eating us,
Until they have the whole ******* enchilada.
I’m talking about ‘from sea to shining sea.’”

“I fight no more forever,” Babaloo.
So I must steer this clunky keelboat of discovery,
Back to the main channel of my sad and starry demented river.
My warpath is personal but not historical.
It is my brain’s own convoluted cognitive process I cannot saavy.
Whatever biochemical or—as I suspect more each day—
Whatever bio-mechanical protocols govern my identity,
My weltanschauung: my world-view, as sprechen by proto-Nazis;
Putz philosophers of the 17th, 18th & 19th century.
The German intelligentsia: what a cavalcade of maniacal *******!
Why is this Jew unsurprised these Zarathustra-fueled Übermenschen . . .
Be it the Kaiser--Caesar in Deutsch--Bismarck, ******, or,
Even that Euro-*****,  Angela Merkel . . . Why am I not surprised these Huns,
Get global grab-*** on the sauerbraten cabeza every few generations?
To be, or not to be the ***** bullgoose loony: GOTT.

Biomechanical protocols govern my identity and are implanted while I sleep.
My brain--my weak and weary CPU--is replenished, my discs defragmented.
A suite of magnetic and optical white rooms, cleansed free of contaminants,
Gun mounts & lifeboat stations manned and ready,
Standing at attention and saluting British snap-style,
Snap-to and heel click, ramrod straight and cheerful: “Ready for duty, Sir.”
My mind is ravenous, lusting for something, anything to process.
Any memory or image, lyric or construct,
Be they short-term dailies or deeply imprinted.
Fixations archived one and all in deep storage time and space.
Memories, some subconscious, most vaporous;
Others--the scary ones—eidetic: frighteningly detailed and extraordinarily vivid.
Precise cognitive transcripts; recollected so richly rife and fresh.
Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory reloads:
Queued up and increasingly re-experienced.

The bio-data of six decades: it’s all there.
People, countless, places and things cataloged.
Every event, joy and trauma enveloped from within or,
Accessed externally from biomechanical storage devices.
The random access memory of a lifetime,
Read and recollected from cerebral repositories and vaults,
All the while the entire greedy process overseen,
Over-driven by that all-subservient British bat-man,
Rummaging through the data in batches small and large,
Internal and external drives working in seamless syncopation,
Self-referential, at times paradoxical or infinitely looped.
“Cogito ergo sum."
Descartes stripped it down to the basics but there’s more to the story:
Thinking about thinking.
A curse and minefield for the cerebral:  metacognition.

No, it is not the fact that thought exists,
Or even the thoughts themselves.
But the information technology of thought that baffles me,
As adaptive and profound as any evolution posited by Darwin,
Beyond the wetware in my skull, an entirely new operating system.
My mental and cultural landscape are becoming one.
Machines are connecting the two.
It’s what I am and what I am becoming.
Once more for emphasis:
It is the information technology of who I am.
It is the operating system of my mental and cultural landscape.
It is the machinery connecting the two.
This is the central point of this narrative:
Metacognition--your superego’s yenta Cassandra,
Screaming, screaming in your psychic ear, your good ear:

“LISTEN:  The machines are taking over, taking you over.
Your identity and train of thought are repeatedly hijacked,
Switched off the main line onto spurs and tangents,
Only marginally connected or not at all.
(Incoming TEXT from my editor: “Lighten Up, Giuseppi!”)
Reminding me again that most in my audience,
Rarely get past the comic page. All righty then: think Calvin & Hobbes.
John Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year old boy,
Subject to flights of 16th Century French theological fancy.
Thomas Hobbes, a sardonic anthropomorphic tiger from 17th Century England,
Mumbling about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Taken together--their antics and shenanigans--their relationship to each other,
Remind us of our dual nature; explore for us broad issues like public education;
The economy, environmentalism & the Global ****** Thermometer;
Not to mention the numerous flaws of opinion polls.



And again my editor TEXTS me, reminds me again: “LIGHTEN UP!”
Consoling me:  “Even Shakespeare had to play to the groundlings.”
The groundlings, AKA: The Rabble.
Yes. Even the ******* Bard, even Willie the Shake,
Had to contend with a decidedly lowbrow copse of carrion.
Oh yes, the groundlings, a carrion herd, a flying flock of carrion seagulls,
Carrion crow, carrion-feeders one and all,
And let’s throw Sheryl Crow into the mix while we’re at it:
“Hit it! This ain't no disco. And it ain't no country club either, this is L.A.”  

                  Send "All I Wanna Do" Ringtone to your Cell              

Once more, I digress.
The Rabble:  an amorphous, gelatinous Jabba the Hutt of commonality.
The Rabble: drunk, debauched & lawless.
Too *****-delicious to stop Bill & Hilary from thinking about tomorrow;
Too Paul McCartney My Love Does it Good to think twice.

The Roman Saturnalia: a weeklong **** fest.
The Saturnalia: originally a pagan kink-fest in honor of the deity Saturn.
Dovetailing nicely with the advent of the Christian era,
With a project started by Il Capo di Tutti Capi,
One of the early popes, co-opting the Roman calendar between 17 and 25 December,
Putting the finishing touches on the Jesus myth.
For Brooklyn Hopi-***-Jew baby boomers like me,
Saturnalia manifested itself as Disco Fever,
Unpleasant years of electrolysis, scrunched ***** in tight polyester
For Roman plebeians, for the great unwashed citizenry of Rome,
Saturnalia was just a great big Italian wedding:
A true family blowout and once-in-a-lifetime ego-trip for Dad,
The father of the bride, Vito Corleone, Don for A Day:
“Some think the world is made for fun and frolic,
And so do I! Funicula, Funiculi!”

America: love it or leave it; my country right or wrong.
Sure, we were citizens of Rome,
But any Joe Josephus spending the night under a Tiber bridge,
Or sleeping off a three day drunk some afternoon,
Up in the Coliseum bleachers, the cheap seats, out beyond the monuments,
The original three monuments in the old stadium,
Standing out in fair territory out in center field,
Those three stone slabs honoring Gehrig, Huggins, and Babe.
Yes, in the house that Ruth built--Home of the Bronx Bombers--***?
Any Joe Josephus knows:  Roman citizenship doesn’t do too much for you,
Except get you paxed, taxed & drafted into the Legion.
For us the Roman lifestyle was HIND-*** humble.
We plebeians drew our grandeur by association with Empire.
Very few Romans and certainly only those of the patrician class lived high,
High on the hog, enjoying a worldly extravaganza, like—whom do we both know?

Okay, let’s say Laurence Olivier as Crassus in Spartacus.
Come on, you saw Spartacus fifteen ******* times.
Remember Crassus?
Crassus: that ***** twisted **** trying to get his freak on with,
Tony Curtis in a sunken marble tub?
We plebes led lives of quiet *****-scratching desperation,
A bunch of would-be legionnaires, diseased half the time,
Paid in salt tablets or baccala, salted codfish soaked yellow in olive oil.
Stiffs we used to call them on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.
Let’s face it: we were hyenas eating someone else’s ****,
Stage-door jackals, Juvenal-come-late-lies, a mob of moronic mook boneheads
Bought off with bread & circuses and Reality TV.
Each night, dished up a wide variety of lowbrow Elizabethan-era entertainments.  
We contemplate an evening on the town, downtown—
(cue Petula Clark/Send "Downtown" Ringtone to your Cell)

On any given London night, to wit:  mummers, jugglers, bear & bull baiters.
How about dog & **** fighters, quoits & skittles, alehouses & brothels?
In short, somewhere, anywhere else,
Anywhere other than down along the Thames,
At Bankside in Southwark, down in the Globe Theater mosh pit,
Slugging it out with the groundlings whose only interest,
In the performance is the choreography of swordplay and stale ****** puns.
Meanwhile, Hugh Fennyman--probably a fellow Jew,
An English Renaissance Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen—
Meanwhile Fennyman, the local mob boss is getting his ya-yas,
Roasting the feet of my text-messaging editor, Philip Henslowe.
Poor and pathetic Henslowe, works on commission, always scrounging,
But a true patron of my craft, a gentleman of infinite jest and patience,
Spiritual subsistence, and every now and then a good meal at some,
Sawdust joint with oyster shells, and a Prufrockian silk purse of T.S. Eliot gold.

Poor, pathetic Henslowe, trussed up by Fennyman,
His editorial feet in what looks like a Japanese hibachi.
Henslowe’s feet to the fire--feet to the fire—get it?
A catchy phrase whose derivation conjures up,
A grotesque yet vivid image of torture,
An exquisite insight into how such phrases ingress the idiom,
Not to mention a scene once witnessed at a secret Romanian CIA prison,
I’d been ordered to Bucharest not long after 9/11,
Handling the rendition and torture of Habib Ghazzawy,

An entirely innocent falafel maker from Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens.
Shock the Monkey: it’s what we do. GOTO:
Peter Gabriel - Shock the Monkey/
(HQ music video) - YouTube//
www.youtube.com/
Poor, pathetic, ******-on Henslowe.


Fennyman :  (his avarice is whet by something Philly screams out about a new script)  "A play takes time. Find actors; Rehearsals. Let's say open in three weeks. That's--what--five hundred groundlings at tuppence each, in addition four hundred groundlings tuppence each, in addition four hundred backsides at three pence--a penny extra for a cushion, call it two hundred cushions, say two performances for safety how much is that Mr. Frees?"
Jacobean Tweet, John (1580-1684) Webster:  “I saw him kissing her bubbies.”

It’s Geoffrey Rush, channeling Henslowe again,
My editor, a singed smoking madman now,
Feet in an ice bucket, instructing me once more:
“Lighten things up, you know . . .
Comedy, love and a bit with a dog.”
I digress again and return to Hopi Land, back to my shaman-monastic abattoir,
That Zen Center in downtown Shungopavi.
At the Tribal Enrolment Office I make my case for a Certificate of Indian Blood,
Called a CIB by the Natives and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The BIA:  representing gold & uranium miners, cattle and sheep ranchers,
Sodbusters & homesteaders; railroaders and dam builders since 1824.
Just in time for Andrew Jackson, another false friend of Native America,
Just before Old Hickory, one of many Democratic Party hypocrites and scoundrels,
Gives the FONGOOL, up the CULO go ahead.
Hey Andy, I’ve got your Jacksonian democracy: Hanging!
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) mission is to:   "… enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. What’s that in the fine print?  Uncle Sammy holds “the trust assets of American Indians.”

Here’s a ******* tip, Geronimo: if he trusted you,
It would ALL belong to you.
To you and The People.
But it’s all fork-tongued white *******.
If true, Indian sovereignty would cease to be a sick one-liner,
Cease to be a blunt force punch line, more of,
King Leopold’s 19th Century stand-up comedy schtick,
Leo Presents: The **** of the Congo.
La Belgique mission civilisatrice—
That’s what French speakers called Uncle Leo’s imperial public policy,
Bringing the gift of civilization to central Africa.
Like Manifest Destiny in America, it had a nice colonial ring to it.
“Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent,
Allotted by Providence for the free development,
Of our yearly multiplying millions.”  John L. O'Sullivan, 1845

Our civilizing mission or manifest destiny:
Either/or, a catchy turn of phrase;
Not unlike another ironic euphemism and semantic subterfuge:
The Pacification of the West; Pacification?
Hardly: decidedly not too peaceful for Cochise & Tonto.
Meanwhile, Madonna is cash rich but disrespected Evita poor,
To wit: A ****** on the Rocks (throwing in a byte or 2 of Da Vinci Code).
Meanwhile, Miss Ciccone denied her golden totem *****.
They snubbed that little guinea ****, didn’t they?
Snubbed her, robbed her rotten.
Evita, her magnum opus, right up there with . . .
Her SNL Wayne’s World skit:
“Get a load of the unit on that guy.”
Or, that infamous MTV Music Video Awards stunt,
That classic ***** Lip-Lock with Britney Spears.

How could I not see that Oscar snubola as prime evidence?
It was just another stunning case of American anti-Italian racial animus.
Anyone familiar with Noam Chomsky would see it,
Must view it in the same context as the Sacco & Vanzetti case,
Or, that arbitrary lynching of 9 Italian-Americans in New Orleans in 1891,
To cite just two instances of anti-Italian judicial reach & mob violence,
Much like what happened to my cousin Dominic,
Gang-***** by the Harlem Globetrotters, in their locker room during halftime,
While he working for Abe Saperstein back in 1952.
Dom was doing advance for Abe, supporting creation of The Washington Generals:
A permanent stable of hoop dream patsies and foils,
Named for the ever freewheeling, glad-handing, backslapping,
Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF), himself,
Namely General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man they liked,
And called IKE: quite possibly a crypto Jew from Abilene.

Of course, Harry Truman was my first Great White Fascist Father,
Back in 1946, when I first opened my eyes, hung up there,
High above, looking down from the adobe wall.
Surveying the entire circular kiva,
I had the best seat in the house.
Don’t let it be said my Spider Grandmother or Hopi Corn Mother,
Did not want me looking around at things,
Discovering what made me special.
Didn’t divine intervention play a significant part of my creation?
Knowing Mamma Mia and Nonna were Deities,
Gave me an edge later on the streets of Brooklyn.
The Cradleboard: was there ever a more divinely inspired gift to human curiosity? The Cradleboard: a perfect vantage point, an infant’s early grasp,
Of life harmonious, suspended between Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Simply put: the Hopi should be running our ******* public schools.

But it was IKE with whom I first associated,
Associated with the concept 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I liked IKE. Who didn’t?
What was not to like?
He won the ******* war, didn’t he?
And he wasn’t one of those crazy **** John Birchers,
Way out there, on the far right lunatic Republican fringe,
Was he? (It seems odd and nearly impossible to believe in 2013,
That there was once a time in our Boomer lives,
When the extreme right wing of the Republican Party
Was viewed by the FBI as an actual threat to American democracy.)
Understand: it was at a time when The FBI,
Had little ideological baggage,
But a great appetite for secrets,
The insuppressible Jay Edgar doing his thang.

IKE: of whom we grew so, oh-so Fifties fond.
Good old reliable, Nathan Shaking IKE:
He’d been fixed, hadn’t he? Had had the psychic snip.
Snipped as a West Point cadet & parade ground martinet.
Which made IKE a good man to have in a pinch,
Especially when crucial policy direction was way above his pay grade.
Cousin Dom was Saperstein’s bagman, bribing out the opposition,
Which came mainly from religious and patriotic organizations,
Viewing the bogus white sports franchise as obscene.
The Washington Generals, Saperstein’s new team would have but one opponent,
And one sole mission: to serve as the **** of endless jokes and sight gags for—
Negroes.  To play the chronic fools of--
Negroes.  To be chronically humiliated and insulted by—
Negroes.  To run up and down the boards all night, being outran by—
Negroes.  Not to mention having to wear baggy silk shorts.



Meadowlark Lemon:  “Yeah, Charlie, we ***** that grease-ball Dominic; we shagged his guinea mouth and culo rotten.”  

(interviewed in his Scottsdale, AZ winter residence in 2003 by former ESPN commentator Charlie Steiner, Malverne High School, Class of ’67.)
                                                        
  ­                                                                 ­                 
IKE, briefed on the issue by higher-ups, quickly got behind the idea.
The Harlem Globetrotters were to exist, and continue to exist,
Are sustained financially by Illuminati sponsors,
For one reason and one reason only:
To serve elite interests that the ***** be kept down and subservient,
That the minstrel show be perpetuated,
A policy surviving the elaborate window dressing of the civil rights movement, Affirmative action, and our first Uncle Tom president.
Case in point:  Charles Barkley, Dennis Rodman & Metta World Peace Artest.
Cha-cha-cha changing again:  I am Robert Allen Zimmermann,
A whiny, skinny Jew, ****** and rolling in from Minnesota,
Arrested, obviously a vagrant, caught strolling around his tony Jersey enclave,
Having moved on up the list, the A-list, a special invitation-only,
Yom Kippur Passover Seder:  Next Year in Jerusalem, Babaloo!

I take ownership of all my autonomic and conditioned reflexes;
Each personal neural arc and pathway,
All shenanigans & shellackings,
Or blunt force cognitive traumas.
It’s all percolating nicely now, thank you,
In kitchen counter earthen crockery:
Random access memory: a slow-cook crockpot,
Bubbling through my psychic sieve.
My memories seem only remotely familiar,
Distant and vague, at times unreal:
An alien hybrid databank accessed accidently on purpose;
Flaky science sustains and monitors my nervous system.
And leads us to an overwhelming question:
Is it true that John Dillinger’s ******* is in the Smithsonian Museum?
Enquiring minds want to know, Kemosabe!

“Any last words, *******?” TWEETS Adam Smith.
Postmortem cyber-graffiti, an epitaph carved in space;
Last words, so singular and simple,
Across the universal great divide,
Frisbee-d, like a Pleistocene Kubrick bone,
Tossed randomly into space,
Morphing into a gyroscopic space station.
Mr. Smith, a calypso capitalist, and me,
Me, the Poet Laureate of the United States and Adam;
Who, I didn’t know from Adam.
But we tripped the light fantastic,
We boogied the Protestant Work Ethic,
To the tune of that old Scotch-Presbyterian favorite,
Variations of a 5-point Calvinist theme: Total Depravity; Election; Particular Redemption; Irresistible Grace; & Perseverance of the Saints.

Mr. Smith, the author of An Inquiry into the Nature
& Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),
One of the best-known, intellectual rationales for:
Free trade, capitalism, and libertarianism,
The latter term a euphemism for Social Darwinism.
Prior to 1764, Calvinists in France were called Huguenots,
A persecuted religious majority . . . is that possible?
A persecuted majority of Edict of Nantes repute.
Adam Smith, likely of French Huguenot Jewish ancestry himself,
Reminds me that it is my principal plus interest giving me my daily gluten.
And don’t think the irony escapes me now,
A realization that it has taken me nearly all my life to see again,
What I once saw so vividly as a child, way back when.
Before I put away childish things, including the following sentiment:
“All I need is the air that I breathe.”

  Send "The Air That I Breathe" Ringtone to your Cell  

The Hippies were right, of course.
The Hollies had it all figured out.
With the answer, as usual, right there in the lyrics.
But you were lucky if you were listening.
There was a time before I embraced,
The other “legendary” economists:
The inexorable Marx,
The savage society of Veblen,
The heresies we know so well of Keynes.
I was a child.
And when I was a child, I spake as a child—
Grazie mille, King James—
I understood as a child; I thought as a child.
But when I became a man I jumped on the bus with the band,
Hopped on the irresistible bandwagon of Adam Smith.

Smith:  “Any last words, *******?”
Okay, you were right: man is rationally self-interested.
Grazie tanto, Scotch Enlightenment,
An intellectual movement driven by,
An alliance of Calvinists and Illuminati,
Freemasons and Johnny Walker Black.
Talk about an irresistible bandwagon:
Smith, the gloomy Malthus, and David Ricardo,
Another Jew boy born in London, England,
Third of 17 children of a Sephardic family of Portuguese origin,
Who had recently relocated from the Dutch Republic.
******* Jews!
Like everything shrewd, sane and practical in this world,
WE also invented the concept:  FOLLOW THE MONEY.

The lyrics: if you were really listening, you’d get it:
Respiration keeps one sufficiently busy,
Just breathing free can be a full-time job,
Especially when--borrowing a phrase from British cricketers—,
One contemplates the sorry state of the wicket.
Now that I am gainfully superannuated,
Pensioned off the employment radar screen.
Oft I go there into the wild ebon yonder,
Wandering the brain cloud at will.
My journey indulges curiosity, creativity and deceit.
I free range the sticky wicket,
I have no particular place to go.
Snagging some random fact or factoid,
A stop & go rural postal route,
Jumping on and off the brain cloud.

Just sampling really,
But every now and then, gorging myself,
At some information super smorgasbord,
At a Good Samaritan Rest Stop,
I ponder my own frazzled neurology,
When I was a child—
Before I learned the grim economic facts of life and Judaism,
Before I learned Hebrew,
Before my laissez-faire Bar Mitzvah lessons,
Under the rabbinical tutelage of Rebbe Kahane--
I knew what every clever child knows about life:
The surfing itself is the destination.
Accessing RAM--random access memory—
On a strictly need to know basis.
RAM:  a pretty good name for consciousness these days.

If I were an Asimov or Sir Arthur (Sri Lankabhimanya) Clarke,
I’d get freaky now, riffing on Terminators, Time Travel and Cyborgs.
But this is truth not science fiction.
Nevertheless, someone had better,
Come up with another name for cyborg.
Some other name for a critter,
Composed of both biological and artificial parts?
Parts-is-parts--be they electronic, mechanical or robotic.
But after a lifetime of science fiction media,
After a steady media diet, rife with dystopian technology nightmares,
Is anyone likely to admit to being a cyborg?
Since I always give credit where credit is due,
I acknowledge that cyborg was a term coined in 1960,
By Manfred Clynes & Nathan S. Kline and,
Used to identify a self-regulating human-machine system in outer space.

Five years later D. S. Halacy's: Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman,
Featured an introduction, which spoke of:  “… a new frontier, that was not,
Merely space, but more profoundly, the relationship between inner space,
And outer space; a bridge, i.e., between mind and matter.”
So, by definition, a cyborg defined is an organism with,
Technology-enhanced abilities: an antenna array,
Replacing what was once sentient and human.
My glands, once in control of metabolism and emotions,
Have been replaced by several servomechanisms.
I am biomechanical and gluttonous.
Soaking up and breathing out the atmosphere,
My Baby Boom experience of six decades,
Homogenized and homespun, feedback looped,
Endlessly networked through predigested mass media,
Culture as demographically targeted content.

This must have something to do with my own metamorphosis.
I think of Gregor Samsa, a Kafkaesque character if there ever was one.
And though we share common traits,
My evolutionary progress surpasses and transcends his.
Samsa--Phylum and Class--was, after all, an insect.
Nonetheless, I remain a changeling.
Have I not seen many stages of growth?
Each a painful metamorphic cycle,
From exquisite first egg,
Through caterpillar’s appetite & squirm.
To phlegmatic bliss and pupa quietude,
I unfold my wings in a rush of Van Gogh palette,
Color, texture, movement and grace, lift off, flapping in flight.
My eyes have witnessed wondrous transformations,
My experience, nouveau riche and distinctly self-referential;
For the most part unspecific & longitudinally pedestrian.

Yes, something has happened to me along the way.
I am no longer certain of my identity as a human being.
Time and technology has altered my basic wiring diagram.
I suspect the sophisticated gadgets and tools,
I’ve been using to shape & make sense of my environment,
Have reared up and turned around on me.
My tools have reshaped my brain & central nervous system.
Remaking me as something simultaneously more and less human.
The electronic toys and tools I once so lovingly embraced,
Have turned unpredictable and rabid,
Their bite penetrating my skin and septic now, a cluster of implanted sensors,
Content: currency made increasingly more valuable as time passes,
Served up by and serving the interests of a pervasively predatory 1%.
And the rest of us: the so-called 99%?
No longer human; simply put by both Howards--Beale & Zinn--

Humanoid.

Find the lighter, use it as a lighthouse on a walk below the wall you watch along the wave-formations. Who Wants a Cold One? a Coors Light ad corrects.. When it comes to your home, the little things matter.. an insurance ad blares.. my computer is infected with 3rd party applications unremovable to my meagre tech-ability.. there is a hero as Joseph Campbell once theorized.. in myself like a sick bastardly virus waiting for moments to prove to me "I AM THE SAVIOR, I AM THE CHRIST, I AM THE WARLORD, MICE, MAN, AND VICE".. the windows of opportunity close, I am left waiting the door

& the elevator.

Thirty-thousand years ago, there was nothing but a breeze.. a viscous breeze across chill-spined pterodactyls.. warm-under-the-jungle-brush tyrannosaurus rex, and to think one day I will be just a legend in bone..
Charlotte said she thinks of death and so did Jen. They sat next to the all-you-can-eat and discussed the inevitable. I was sour and playful with no-will-to-understand, just reminding my hair of breezy summer days of 10, thinking of strangeness, of place I was in.

When it's quiet sometimes, I think of old dreams.. dreams I sunk below drown-level as a child in bed and belief. Both mommy and daddy were arguing in the kitchen, this was 7 or 8.. they argued so often one could hear mom begin to cry sometimes, and dad I could see in minds-eye with a grimace so closed and so creased he was hurt and yet honest.. I did not understand so I hid under-stood-silhouettes, oh adulthood..

once in dream I was in pulsing green graveyard like crayon realism strobe lights, tombstones all-round and faint-buzz of outside and one of those strange balded henchmen of badguy Jafar from Disney's Aladdin came peaking outta nowhere with curled eyebrow and baggy one-thousand-one Arabian nightlives parachute pants, curled toes brown-beige moccasins to.. he let out conniving 'HEUHEE!' and slapped me right-side cheek and I JOLTED up bedwise in real time to feel actual physical sting for a few lingered seconds then the sobs of poor mother outside.. I never remembered a dream so clearly again.. they all come, Pro-Found, and dizzy away after hour or two for rest of eternity or perhaps to Place I Can Visit at Death to Review Every Vision and I wonder... when your life flashes before your eyes and the light is encroaching, scenes of mother, brother, father, son, daughter, best-friend, party, break-up, heartbreak, slip-fall, first-sip, first-drag, last-leg, first-kiss, first-hit, first-game, fear, love,  HATE, wait.. do the Dreams come to? Are they all flesh-ed before your eyes as you pass into Light? Are they brought to direct remembrance as you cross the border with Passport of Gods and a Goddess (and which Picture appears on the Page)..?

I remember the old eczema taking bits of skin to carpets round-town and round-lower-mainland to disgust of friends old and new-- this was era where confidence ate itself in mirrors, the sober reality of ugly-ness chiseling away at my Goodness Attempts.. All That Pointless Pain was no Exception nor a Rule, it just **** Happens every once-and-again to the sound of life farting. I used to miss school for feet so impossible to walk on, pussing and bleeding and staining the sheets, shoe soles, carpets, and soul.. limp thru the hallways of Brooks Secondary feeling like bad flavor additive to multicultural Planet Earth-- sleeping 'til the bell rang drinking coffee singing songs I said '**** the ******* educational system and **** me I'm so flatlined..' someday I felt things would really get better and lucky young me I was right.

A half-decade later, I am 21 and hoping, floating, free in the breeze as the wings I have grown keep on wishing the subsistence down. The girl, whoever-she-might-as-well-be, sits immediately vertical chatting frantically to boy with a bit of a cowlick slouching on-up over a bundle of colored paperwork. It seems late in the season for homework, and assume they may have some affiliation with a crazy-hep computer design group in the tradition of Nouevau Silicon Valley.... I sit at my laptop, inching a word a million cubic millimeters closer to God or Divinity or Crescendo or A Bunch More ******* You'll End Up Ignoring---

It's a sunny day, the rain having slathered-off into obscurity somewhere with the Monsoons when the Sun gave the Moon a Soft Slap and the poor purity white-kid went off whimpering, bleeding nose-- I sat, the other night, playing another Grand Strategy game as Tom divided his time between a vaulted and damaged lover, his labor, and his life (friends, food, video-games, vice)... Chai, old Chai the Thai Guy mentioned past his nose in previous iterations of Depictions sat and described his pins-and-needles upset at his bosses at one his three many jobs.. desperately firing text-messages into receiving-space-panel and reflect and back unto Tom's smartphone dash asking him to order a six-pack from a local delivery service cuz his adrenal was giving him heartpain with hurt, and Tom being Busy as All-Ways Tom Is wasn't able to decipher the scramble in-time to make contact before closure of the liquor stores.. poor not-so-poor Chai at first felt castrated at realization he would miss the 11 PM dot-time, but didn't mind as he rendezvoused with Tom and I at Willows Beach where Tom reminded him of a whiskey he'd bought sitting counter-wise at his place.. we kissed a few Mary Janes rightsideup, dragging our butts in the sand to discuss what was wrong (each of us had a problem that night, save for perhaps a less-vocal Tom, I describing my annoyance that a lazy consensus had erupted in my sorry-hometown between my sorta-friends and friends-of-friends that my writing and sharing my writing was arrogant and I an arrogant *** for sharing and I just confounded that they would find my passions so trivial-- perhaps jealousy, perhaps complacency and judgement-for-lack-of-anything-better-to-do and ah **** em all if they think like that, I'll write and be the arrogant me they think I am and share 'til I'm blue in the face and dead perhaps for outspoken intellectualism in their autocratic pointless-waste worldviews.. sad that I dislike them only on the basis they disliked me first..)

I had planned to stay late and leave early-morn (5 or 6 AM) to catch a first-off morning bus back home and sleep, hoping for most part to avoid the shattered-***-mess of a home I was living in.
About 2 days ago, give or take, a water-line for the laundry machine had erupted to soak our entirely-carpeted basement suite, forcing the poor new landlord (a sweetheart of a man named Ron having just taken possession of the house from previous owner on May 1st and, it seems, left 'holding the bag' as they'd call it in day-trading-investment-lingo) to tear out the entirely-soaked carpet and replace it with sensible laminate flooring and rendering the entire suite virtually unlivable for indefinite-few-days and so for me work and friends and especially writing become a welcome reprieve to I, a first world Refu-Jeez.. us, so terribly-off I sip a latte near sunny panorama windows-so-clear-they're-not-there overlooking the crosses of Yates and Blanshard with European church of Gothic architectural style poking heedlessly into empty-open blue.. ironically and strangely there is a liquor store quite literally right next door, and's one I shop at often for its decent prices (God is Dead or Just Drinking to Cope with Sartre and Kierkegaard's Ultimate Thesis) (Kierkegaard especially '*** Kierkegaard seems a good and long friend of God the Almighty) (...I talk with such Judaeo-Christian Catholic rhetoric it never ceases to amaze myself as it bleeds to page..) (stranger thing is, tho, there is no beginning, no middle, no end.. you read or you are bored and either/or is just fine..)

There is some hypothesized crescendo-bliss Tech Singularity on the way in the try-dition of Ray Kurzweil and William Burroughs.. Oscar Wilde to.. (see The Soul of Man Under Socialism in essay-collect book De Profundis).. one day we will all be eternal happiness expressed in song and dance and LED erected-projections of Imperfect Universe (Our Imperfect Earth) with lives stuck on infinite repeat.. our idea of Paradise.. and for those with ability to remain rushed to cortisol (stress-the-best hormone) it will be Hell on Earth, so DRAB and THE SAME all the TIME and it's READ and it's WRITE and it's RIGHT.. the world runs faster with every passing day so desperate to discover the Globe is Flat so we can Hop Off the Other Side into what one might assume to be The Better Place.. elusively picking-up speed thinking 'closer now definitely closer now' unaware (or, secretly aware and unwilling to admit for what will one do when one cannot run?) they are Running in Circles Over and Over and Over and Over and Over Again... cannot take the hint in the fact the Pacific (same Pacific) has been crossed a hugeillion times, nor the same McDonald's in the Azores of Atlantic Portugal is the Same ******* McDonald's stopped-thru on the then-trillionth time last year... and all whilst the International Space Station remains muted up-above crossing 'round and 'round 'til the Jehovah'n Day of Judgement (Chris Hadfield now below with advice for how to run a little faster even blinded in one eye..) then there are the dying Prophets Predicting Industrial Collapse who preach upon the Mount of Internet Sinai Eternal and state "the world is now unsalvageable and we are all about to die.. if ever you wished to find Buddhistic Nirvanic Peace, now is the time so start meditating and imagine Death as New Life and Geopolitics as Game".. forever and ever and ever and ever.

It is only natural to find existence to be 'weird..' layered with Who's That's and giant What The ***** everywhichway you turn.. did it start in a Big Bang, will it end in a Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang.. ? all questions once ignored for certain ignorance and resurrected as questions concerning the Nature of the What The ***** (also known as 'Science').. and if it did start in a Big Bang, did I start in a Big Bang..? and if it does end in a Big Crunch, will I end in a Big Crunch..? am I a sudden flash of REAL in a Universe that isn't me..? or am I an entire Universe.. perhaps even more than that...? the questions pulse in youth like bad words or bullets. I once stayed up all-night thinking of infinity with my head soaring space-wise forever and ever and ever and I stopped in sudden panic thinking: I could lie here up all night and all day 'til the towered age of 37 (I was 14 at the time) and still be no further on the Universal Map than from thumb-tip-middle to thumb-nail so I wrapped up the attempt with a mix of fear and incredulity, went to school next-day exhausted and tried to explain it all to friends.. they got it, I suppose, but we were all 14 and played basketball instead (I imagined infinite-spinning-basketball on thumb of Michael Jordan).

It's always best describing life in form of Disembodied Poetics.. sure some Philistines won't understand '*** their minds are made of Clockwork, Digits, and Blockthought.. but the general psychic underly implied in all with human faculty will ring-a-ding-ding! and remember all such ancient thoughts and feels as forgotten as a child, locked away until the Spirit rose-up from a rosey thorn prickle to flower straight-up into a Rose! or so I hope as a one-of-many writers-- all of which will write so-as to speak on your behalf.. all floaty and marking a purpose.

I believe in smiling at strangers. I believe in saying hello. I believe in shyness. I believe in fear of rejection. I believe in the need of affection. I believe in the need of reminders. I believe in candles, especially those that smell of vanilla or christmas. I believe in wearing small crystals around my neck. I believe in energetic vibrations. I believe in colours - I think each person has their own colour. I believe every feeling is valid. I believe in chapstick and I believe in mascara that doesn’t clump. I believe in nail polish - every colour of nail polish. I believe that the only reason we lie is because we fear something. I believe in poetry. I believe in bluntness. I believe in the intention behind words, but I don’t necessarily believe in words. I believe in travel. I believe in travelling solo. In fact, I believe in travelling so much that it is pretty much all I want to do. I believe in music. Boy, do I believe in music. I believe any kind of musical composition can change a person. I believe music can cure depression. I also believe music can feed depression. I believe a melody can say more than lyrics and I believe that lyrics can be what someone couldn’t put together themselves to explain exactly how they are feeling. I believe anyone can create a song, even though they believe they cannot. I believe a single note can sound like the most beautiful sound in the world. I believe if someone records a song when they’re in an ugly mood, the ugliness emits to its listeners and can drain them. I believe in art. Of course I do. I believe in acrylic paint. I believe in oil paint and watercolours, but not as much as I believe in acrylic. I believe in fingerprinting. I even believe in painting with your toes. And I believe in dancing; even if it looks weird. I believe in flailing your arms even, as long as it feels good and right. I believe in dancing ‘til you sweat, though I don’t like that icky feeling too much. I believe that a babe can be a very ugly person and a physically unattractive person can be a very beautiful person. I believe that people who smile are beautiful. I believe that people who frown are beautiful too, just in a different way. I believe that there are sincere smiles and there are manipulative smiles. I believe that some people just know how to use their eyes well. I believe in eye contact. I believe in engaging. I believe in listening and dropping everything else that is going on in your mind just to listen to what a person is trying to share with you. I believe in sharing - sharing cookies and sharing love. I believe in the frosty cold. I believe that it doesn’t have to feel as cold as it really is. I believe that people complain a lot. I believe that people often have too much pride to be happy. I believe that we should embrace our discomforts and shames, that we should welcome them wholeheartedly so that we can be happy. I believe in honesty. I believe in empathy. I believe in tea. I believe in jelly donuts but only on certain occasions. I believe in quirky bow ties. I believe in knit toques and mittens and scarves. I believe in dresses. I believe in flirting. I believe in coffee in the morning. I believe in big comfy beds. I believe in walking around your empty house in your underwear or birthday suit, singing loudly. I believe in singing in the shower. I believe in singing on the street. I believe in stage fright. I believe in meditation, though I don’t really strictly set times to do it anymore. I believe mundane activities can be done in a meditative state of mind. I believe in clarity. I believe in not judging people because everyone is human. I believe every human has something very interesting about them. I believe in boring people too. I believe in christmas music - not the radio kind, the choral kind. I believe in cheap sweet wine. I believe in Billy Joel and I believe in The Beatles. I believe in Regina and Sufjan too. I believe that the ukulele is a very overrated instrument. I believe in having healthy hair. I believe in moisturizer. I believe in getting to pick a coloured toothbrush at the dentist. I believe in thick wool socks. I believe in baggy sweaters. I believe in yoga gear but I do not believe in sweatpants. I believe that yoga is one of the healthiest things for a person - ever. I believe in buying a friend drinks or dinner once in awhile. I believe in collecting shoes and scarves and rings. I believe in chords but I don’t really believe in jeans. I believe in hot chocolate with whip cream but not with marshmallows. I believe in dorky Christmas sweaters. I believe in baking cookies instead of cake. I believe in eating disorders - I do not support them, but I do believe they are much more severe and various than most people think and I believe there should be better/proper help for those who suffer instead of the usual cruel inpatient/outpatient care. I believe in trichotillomania and I believe in dermatillomania and the severity and impact it can have on its sufferers. I believe in gardens. I believe in every single flower. I believe that everyone is always doing their best. I believe that most people love to struggle. I believe in hope. I believe in having faith in yourself. I believe in iPod playlists. I believe in gym memberships in the winter, not the summer unless it’s to swim. I believe in matching underwear every day. I believe in Value Village. I believe in singing in bus shelters when you’re waiting for the bus. I believe in dressing up according to holidays. I believe in Grey’s Anatomy and I believe in Community. I believe in skirts and dresses that twirl like the ‘ol days. I believe in longboards more than skateboards. I believe in plaid like most young people do. I believe in bows in my hair, but not as much as I used to. I believe in foot massages and hand massages. I believe in reflexology and reiki and essential oils and chakras and crystals and holistic nutrition. I believe in anxiety; even crippling anxiety. I believe in awkward romances. I do not believe in flip flops. I do not believe in Beatles covers unless they are really insanely good; then my mind is blown. I believe in having long enough nails to scratch someone’s back appropriately. I also believe in biting nails. I do not believe in telephone calls unless I am extremely comfortable with the person. I believe in blogs. I believe in journals. I believe in naming special inanimate objects like journals, instruments, technology and furniture. I believe in the idea of cats more than I believe in cats. I believe in sharpies or thin pointed permanent markers. I believe in temporary tattoos. I believe in streaming movies online. I believe in royal gala apples. I believe in avocados. I believe in rice cakes. I believe in popcorn. I believe in airports but I hate the LA airport. I believe in openly talking about *** but I don’t believe in making it seem shameful and gross. I believe there should be no shame regarding sexuality. I believe in reading some great books more than once. I believe in laying on the couch under cozy blankets, watching a great suspenseful tv show or movie. I only believe in having a couple bites of cheesecake. I don’t really believe in lulu lemon. I don’t believe many people can pull off the colour yellow. I believe in buttons over zippers even though zippers are easier, they just look kind of dumb and cheap. I believe in the sun and the moon equally. I believe in closets over dressers. I believe in staring out the window for a good hour or so.

Fat fat but nobody knows
Fat fat it doesn't really show
Fat fat like nobody cares
Fat fat baggy clothes she wears
Fat fat but she's always cold
Fat fat her excuses are old
Fat fat she starts to cry
Fat fat her monstrous thighs
Fat fat say something nice
Fat fat give some advice
Fat fat just be kind
Fat fat change her mind
Fat fat?

I was on my way to a party
Dressed in heels and a crop top
When I entered the corner store
To purchase some snacks
And on my way to the cashier
A man standing in an aisle
Browsing through peanuts
Glanced up and stopped mid-search
When I clicked past him
And proceeded to uncomfortably stare

I walked into the gas station
Wearing dark wash jeans and a v-neck
With my best friend at 2 AM
When two drunken men stumbled in
And began eyeing us up and smirking
My friend leaned in to me and whispered,
     "I'm really scared."
Overhearing her, one man elbowed the other
And with a smile on his face taunted,
          "Oh no, we're scaring them."

I was at the laundry mat one night
Wearing shorts and a baggy shirt
When a middle aged man across the room
Kept gawking at me from over the washers
Uneasy, I went outside to smoke
To which he stood at the window
And kept a close eye on me
I called a friend and stayed on the phone
Because I was afraid to go back
And get my clothes alone

I stepped out of my vehicle
In my sweatpants and flipflops
To grab some cigarettes quick
When a white bearded man
Was already at my heels
"Hey, how're you honey?"
I quickly replied, "fine".
And hurried into the store
Without looking back

It seems like every time I leave the house
It doesn't matter what I'm wearing
It could be "provocative" or a burlap sack
I always end up feeling threatened
     Heartbeat in my ears
          Cold sweat on my back
So don't blame it on my outfit
Don't blame it on my actions
Because I'm not asking for it
I just want to be left alone

i don’t count aloud anymore.
i can't stand to hear your name,
such a common word.
it doesn't matter the context-
i still go quiet every time.

i used to pick up pennies, called them lucky.
i remember picking up a few
on our way back to your place.
nowadays i don't give them a second glance.
it's not their worth i've forgotten.

they say one is the loneliest number.
is that why you did it?
because you felt you’d earned it
after all this time being by yourself--
that you deserved it?
what about me,
did i?

i remember exactly what i wore that day:
short shorts, a big baggy t shirt.
i haven't worn those shoes since (and i so loved them).
they were these expensive purple velvet platforms;
i'd actually had to beg my mother to buy them for me.
"you better wear them", she warned.
that day i went home with you was
the first time i'd ever worn those shoes.
and the last.
sorry mom.

From the cultured hood of Beverly Hills
Young rich white kid rapping
Blonde hair perfectly combed and trimmed
Blue eyes shaded from California sun

Spitting ghetto slang about unfair pain,
Affirmative action, cultural injustices
Daddy’s allowance, racial profiling

****[le] mobile and spinning rims
Gold plated teeth over pearly whites
Slinging 401k’s and time shares

Baggy pants sagging down past his ***
Tugging at his crotch
His hand permanently attached
To his little white flaccid ****

Trying to keep from tripping
While he’s running from the police

Wanted for questioning
On insider trading
And insurance scams

Inequalities of this fed up society

i won't stay silent
i won't sit down
i will fight
i will stand
i will scream and I will shout.
to all you haters
who think I'll give up
you're wrong
when you tell me to shut up I'll just get louder
louder
louder.
because the words that you say echo on my face
right here and right now
it's you who makes my skin crawl

you ask me the same question six different times
you accuse me of loving a girl
as if I've committed a crime

i have one foot in the closet and one foot out
but you rip my world apart
you make me want to slide back in
you make me beg and plead that this isn't me
i beg to be a somebody, somebody other than me

just to be straight
you make me want to be straight

i try and deny it
i tell myself it's a phase
i tell myself that it's okay
that I just have to hide away
hide from the gay
but it doesn't work that way
those are your words that I say

you say “f" without a second of thought
as anger bubbles in my blood
do you realize what those words mean?
do you realize what you're saying?
Are you listening?
you pretend it's joke
but it maddens me
and now that I'm mad you tell me to chill
But NO!
you don't comprehend the words I'm trying to say
the voice I'm trying to speak
i don't need you to have rainbows on you walls
but could you at least try and respect me?

your eyes pop out
and your tone insults
proud that you've brought me down
I force myself to clench my teeth
Try and breathe
because what you said directly hurts me
your words just **** me
and it isn't funny.
Respect.
don't think that's in your vocabulary

while you laugh at me
i fight for the rights of people that are lacking
as you try and tell me who I have to be
but I will not fit the mold that you have made me

you think I'm a freak
cuz I go to GSMC every single week
you don't understand the deeper meaning
that is hidden behind those four letters
it's a safe place
an escape from you
people who understand
it's 40 minutes that save me
when you try and drown me

yes, I'm wearing a men's shirt.
you get mad cuz you think it's too baggy
but f**
i don't dress for you
i dress for me
please
my biology doesn't have to correlate
with the clothes that are covering me

I'm done with you
I'm proud of who I am
I'm proud of what I do
I refuse to fit this society's dumb rules
I'll break these stereotypes every single chance I get
I'm just me
maybe a little more masculine than you want me to be
but that's me
throw me labels all you want
but I really don't need you to be my label maker
i am not a container of strawberries
sitting in your refrigerator.
I am a human being

you do not understand
what hiding behind a closet is like
struggling to find an identity
as you try and crush me
Hell no, it's not easy

it's the 21st century
but we still fighting for human beings?
Human beings
that's it
Are we still not equal?
someone explain to me
the nonsense of this ******* up society
why can't you embrace our diversity?
i am me, only me
I will not apologize for being me
But you could apologize for hating on me
and not just me
but an entire community
because I am done with your bigotry

My mom says,

"You look beautiful today"
She asks "have you lost any weight honey? Here's a salad before you go to work.
You dont want to get fat"

Mom says, life is always easier for skinny girls and that I haven't had it easy so maybe my weight is the problem.

I tell her I'm comfortable.
But as I walk away, I find myself gazing into my bedroom mirror pinching at the fat on my stomach
Wishing it was nothing but paper, because then I could cut it off and maybe then I would be happy and maybe then my mom would think I was good enough.
Mom says, "those leggings aren't flattering on you. And don't you know what people will say about you if you walk around dressed like that? Hide your body. Hide your curves, the world doesn't need to see your fat seeping through those nylon pants. "

I yell back " I don't care what you think! I LIKE THEM"
Mom says "yes you do, I know you do. Now go change and come eat your salad."

I force feed myself a salad for the 5th time this week and change into a baggy sweatshirt and some sweatpants.

I want to believe that I don't care what she thinks but her words feel like bee stings prickling my entire body and no matter how many times they attack, I don't grow numb to them.

I weighed myself today, I lost 5 pounds this week but im starting to feel sick from hunger, I'm light headed.

I head downstairs, the thought of inhaling every carb we have in the kitchen because it's been 2 weeks since ive had one and the cravings are too strong.

Just as I'm about to make some pasta mom comes into the kitchen.

"You look amazing," she says.
"You're so beautiful hunny I'm so proud of you. Wait... is that pasta? What are you doing? If you eat that you'll get fat again. If you're fat you won't be happy. You can't be happy. Put that down. Here's a pill for you hunny"

Take it when you're hungry, it'll take away the cravings and surpress your appetite.

I take the stupid pills that mom seems to think work like magic and I go back up to my room, staring at this body of mine that doesn't feel like mine anymore.

I hate myself.
I hate that I want to eat carbs and I hate that I dream of sugar every night.
I hate that my mom thinks I need a pill to fix who I am, as if I am unlovable when i am not losing weight.
Even as her daughter.

Growing up, we're always taught that our mothers are our protectors...
But I realize now my mother is the reason I never feel like I'm good enough.
I never feel like I'm loveable.

Mother's are suppose to make their daughters feel beautiful and empowered.

I spent my entire childhood on a diet.
To this day, I still hear her voice in my head.
Have a salad honey.
It will be easier if you're skinny.
Change into something else.

I wonder, if this will follow me forever.
If I will always be haunted, by my mother's shame.

I promise though,
If I ever have a daughter,
I will empower her to love herself no matter what.
I will teach her that love isn't based on your waist size and neither is acceptance you can find love at 400 pounds the same way you can at 130 pounds.
I will teach her she is beautiful.
I will make sure that when she grows up, she's not afraid to touch pasta, or have a sweet.
I will teach her, no matter what, SHE IS LOVEABLE. And so are you.. And so am I... I think...

Hidden Weapon
By: James Desire

See me walking on the vacant street
What’s your first thought?
Black kid up to no good
See me- surrounded by others, my brothers
What is your second thought?
Black kid in some gang
Must be tattooed and tough
Discrimination- Hidden Weapon
See the clothes I am wearing
Big baggy pants, dark Du-Rag and Ripped shirt
What is your final thought?
Poor old ****** living in a ghetto
Discrimination- Hidden Weapon
Now Listen,
You see me jetting through the silent streets
What would you assume then?
Arrest!
Call the cops
Must have been a ******, a robbery,
Another black boy crime
Discrimination- Hidden Weapon
I am just a black boy trying to survive
Trying to enjoy-just to stay alive
On the street
People judging me cause
The blackness of my skin
The types of clothes I’m in
Discrimination- Hidden Weapon  
Unsuspecting black child taunted, haunted…
Fearing that one word-*****
Should I be blamed for crimes committed in the past?
Choice-less decisions made
Pressure reaches ******
Everything seems lost
At the end
I feel blamed
Nevertheless, I blame you
Whites
Rejecting
Hurting
Me- hopeful
Pride-earned-not given
Defending
Defending my dignity
Discrimination- Hidden Weapon  
Should I be judged/blamed for past generations?
Then, blame me for…
The jazz of Louis Armstrong
The voice of Billie Holiday
The poetry of Langston Hughes
The photography of Gordon Parks
The character of Martin Luther King Jr.
The power of Coretta Scott King
The dignity of Fredrick Douglas
Finally, the individuality of James Desire
You seek evil in blacks
The past has also proven a positive…
A positive outcome
That helped the development…
OF OUR WORLD!

Tight pants and baggy shirts
I haven't eaten yet today
Right now my stomach hurts
Smoke later and I'll be okay

I have this obsession
With being sickly thin
Caused by my depression
I hate the shape I'm in

I'm already so skinny
So there isn't any logic
You probably wouldn't pin me
For someone who cannot stop it

My mind hates my body
My soul hates my mind
My mind tries to rob me
My soul leaves me blind

So I wage this war daily
Until one of them fails me
For now I let my ribs show
Like feelings you'll never know

And this isn't some kind of joke
Or some sad poetic fiction
I live off cigarettes and Coke
Struggling with this odd addiction

I push the button,
3
2
1
The jaws of the train clunk as its mouth opens,
the 9am crowd surging through its hollow body,
eying up the row of sickly plastic benches.
The wheels tighten, I loosen my tie,
off to the office, I sigh,
as I pull out today’s ‘New York Times’.

My eyes drift towards the woman across from me.
A fragrance of citrus and strawberry drifts off her shoulder
as she plumps her pout in the screen of her smartphone.
A bead of sweat poised on her collarbone
glitters like the diamantes on her nails.

We slow,
screeching against the rusted tracks
before the machine-lady hybrid speaks:
‘East-
a split second pause
-Sixty Seven Street’.
No one gets off, so we simply sit
beneath the sizzle of electric bulbs,
their garish light numbed by ***** glass
that cradles the bodies of last week’s flies.

Like an aged rattlesnake, the train creaks and hisses through the tunnel.
I’m attacked by a river of thick black hair
belonging to an olive-skinned woman who yaps into her cellphone:
‘no, no, quiero ver Times Square!’
I close my eyes and listen as her tongue rolls and dives
taking a bite of my bagel from Starbucks.

‘East-
anticipation
-Seventy Two Street’.
Although preoccupied with different thoughts,
expressions
destinations
the bodies on the carriage drift and sway with the motion of the train,
as it stops
and starts once more.

Two children in uniforms twirl around the carriage,
their laughter more electric
than the current that bristles below our feet.
A man
tickled by the dreadlock that sweeps over his face,
looks on with jeans so baggy
his legs melt into the seat.
The Jamaican flag blares from his t-shirt.

Next to him, a man bakes in a moth-eaten waistcoat
clutching a wallet with quivering fingers.
I follow his gaze to a picture of a woman
black and white with coffee stained edges.
His wrinkles deepen as he smiles at his
wife?
alive?
I notice glittery pools of the past forming in his eyes,
perhaps not.

‘East-
my stop
-Seventy Nine Street’.
As I glance down at the platform’s monotonous shades of concrete,
and brush the dust from my grey tweed suit,
I think to myself
how colourful Upper-East Side is.
I shall never stop travelling on the 9am subway to Seventh Avenue.
Without it,
how boring my life would be.
Without it,
I wouldn’t be me.

I have not been anywhere,
done anything, thought anything,
and feel nothing.

At least,
that’s what my blank, plain-clothed
T-shirt would indicate to other people.
A man walking the earth with
no visible identity.

When I put on my Hawaiian shirt, however,
they believe my mind to be full of
pineapples, hula girls swinging softly in the
ukulele moonlight, palm fronds swaying
in the dacron, or is it rayon, ripples
of my baggy upper man.

Let others think what they might
of my images, or the lack of words
and logos.
My inner tag says that
I’m size “L” and that I’m made on
factory looms in China, that my buttons
are constructed to look like the
real thing–a round slice of bone or
perhaps ivory.

I am not so much anywhere on the
outside, even though there are places
I would like to go fling my few dollars.
Inside, however, I am lost,
pleasantly lost and hiding, within the
convenience of my unprinted shirt.

My most favorite thing
Is when they still have long hair
And dress like guys do now
Not super baggy pants
But not form fitting either

And you take them to bed,
Or, knowing stems,
They take you to bed.
And all that manliness
About them is still
Just barely there,
In the ***** of their shoulders
And the way their hands touch you

But then they get undressed
And it's the most beautiful
Combination
Of boy and girl.
They're so fresh and confident
But not cocky

They're respectful and talented
And it's like they try to only
Show the manly side

But then you get into bed
And it's like unwrapping
A present
That only gets better
Every time you unwrap it

A little piece of their femininity
Uncovered just for you,
In that moment only.

Paris has traditionally been the city where inter­national designers – from Australia and England to Beirut and Japan – opt to unveil their collections. However, Karen Ruimy, who is behind the Kalmar label, chose the runways of Milan Fashion Week for her debut showcase in September.

The Morocco-born, London- based designer hosted an intimate al fresco event in a private palazzo to launch her holiday line of fine cotton and silk jumpsuits, breezy kaftans, long skirts, playsuits and off-the-shoulder tops in tropical prints.

Ruimy had a career in finance before moving into the arts – she owns a museum of photography in Marrakech – and has become increasingly involved in fashion and beauty, thanks to her personal interest in holistic therapies.

These are clothes, she explains, that marry luxury and wellness, and are the things she would wear when she wants quality time by herself. The fact that they are made in Italy, convinced her that Milan was the right place for her debut – where she showed alongside the likes of Gucci, Prada, Verscae and Marni.

On fashion calendars, Milan has conventionally been the place where the runways confirm the trends and themes hinted at ­earlier, in New York and London. However, this season, the Italian designers did not speak with one voice, making Milan Fashion Week all the more refreshing for it.

Often, there might be an era or style of design that dominates the runways during a particular season, but for spring/summer 2017 in Milan, there was a standout showing of techno sportswear and techno fabrics employed in updated classics such as coats and box-pleat skirts, or with references to north African and Native American themes.

The Italian designers sent looks that would appeal to everyone, from the haute bohemian and athletic woman, to the cool sophisticate and the art crowd, as well as – as in the case of Moschino – to the iPhone generation.

Only three seasons ago, Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele was lauded for his complicated maximalist styling. Yet in Milan, Gucci channelled a dreamlike vibe with Victoriana, denim, athletic apparel and oversized accessories, thrown together in delightful chaos, making it difficult to predict the direction Michele is taking Gucci in.

Currently he seems to be in a holding pattern, hovering at once over 1940s Hollywood glamour, 1970s flared pantsuits, and ruffled party dresses from the 1980s, in a cacophony of ­colours and fabrics.

The feeling of joyous madness continued at Dolce & Gabbana, where street dancers emerged from the audience to start the party in the designers’ tropical-themed show. The clothes used some of their familiar tropes, such as military jackets, corseted black-lace dresses miniskirts. New, however, were the baggy tapering trousers redolent of jodhpurs, and the lavish and detailed embellishment the designers used to sell their story.

Wanderlust dominated the moodboards at Roberto Cavalli – rich patterns, embroidery and patchworks inspired by Native Americans – and Etro with its ­tribal themes on kaftans, duster coats and Berber-style capes.

Giorgio Armani, Agnona Tod’s, Bottega Veneta and Salvatore Ferragamo – with its stylish twisted leather dresses and crisp athletic sportswear designed by newcomer Fulvio Rigoni – all answered the call of women who want stylish but undemanding clothes.

Marni would appeal to the art world for its graceful, pioneering ideas. The label’s finely pleated dresses displayed a life of their own, and its micro-printed dresses were gathered, folded and distorted to walk the line between stylish and quirky.

In contrast, the sportswear at MaxMara and Donatella Versace targeted the dynamic generation of athletic women, with sleek leggings, belted jackets, power suits and anoraks. Versace has made it clear that she thinks this is the only way forward. She may be right, but there’s always room for the myriad styles displayed at Milan Fashion Week in all our wardrobes.

It was feathers with everything at Prada. Silk pyjamas, boldly coloured and mixed checks, cardigans and wrap skirts with Velcro fasteners show Miuccia Prada reinventing the classics. Most glamorous was the series of evening dresses and pyjamas with jewelled embroidery and feathers, worn with kitten heels that married sporty straps with heaps of crystals. Prada’s must-have bag of the season is a bold clutch with a long strap fastener, that comes in a multitude of geometric and daisy patterns.

Versace

Over the past three seasons, Donatella Versace has been carving out a new image for her brand – a shift from the luxe glam of red carpets and superyachts, although the inhabitants of that world will be sure to buy into the new Versace vibe. Donatella’s girls are both glamorous and empowered. The sporty look is tough, urban and energetic, judging by the billowing ultra-thin high-tech nylon parkas and blousons, stirrup trousers and dresses (the shapes of which are manipulated by drawstrings). Dresses, skirts and tops are spliced at angles and studded together. Swishy pleated dresses and silky slit skirts gave energy when in movement, and were as soft as the look got.

Bottega Veneta

Model Gigi Hadid and veteran actress Lauren Hutton walked arm in arm down the Bottega Veneta runway, illustrating the breadth of the Italian maison in Tomas Maier’s hands. This was a double celebration of the Bottega’s 50th ­anniversary and Maier’s 15th as its creative director. Menswear and womenswear were combined, and the focus was on easy, elegant clothes in luxurious materials, such as ostrich, crocodile and lamb skin for coats; easy knits and cotton dresses worn with antique-style silver jewellery; and wedge heels. Fifteen handbag styles debuted along with 15 from the archive.

Fendi

Silvia Venturini’s new Kan handbag was a star turn at Milan. The stud-lock bag dotted with candy-coloured studs, rosette embroidery and floral ribbons couldn’t help but charm every woman in the audience. It was the perfect joyful accessory for Karl Lagerfeld’s feminine vintage romp through the wardrobe of Marie Antoinette, with sugary colours, bows, big apron skirts and crisp white embroidery juxtaposed with sporty footballer-stripe tops – effectively updating a historical look.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

One day
Woke up feeling randy
No one else was handy
What's to do?
Get dressed
Satisfy the horn
With badly acted ****
On pay per view
Hopes sink
Cable's on the blink
But twitter lends a helping hand
Bang, bang, come and have a *******
Gain entrance on demand

Have a *******
Come and have a *******
It's a *******
Come and have a *******

Went out
Followed the directions
Battling erections
All the while
Red cheeks
Granny at the bus stop
Let her vision drop
Then cracked a smile
Half four
Knocking at the door
It opens and a voice proclaims
"Bang, bang, come and have a *******
We've far too many dames"

The host was a sight to see
Not far over seventy
And wrapped in a silk dressing gown
I thought I would walk away
But saw that the sky was grey
And it star-
-ted *******
It down

Stepped in
Blinded by a deep gloom
Ushered to a dark room
Curtains shut
Deep breath
Air is old and musty
Carpet feeling crusty
Underfoot
Sprawled there
Women lying bare
And fellas with their organs free
Bang, bang, cover up your ****, ****
Regain your decency

Pretty *******
Pretty ****** *******
****** *******
Pretty ****** *******

Look round
Writhing on the ground
With squishy little sounds
But something's odd
Fat lass
Itching at her *** crack
Isn't that a *******?
Oh my god!
Jaw drops
Granny from the bus stop
Wearing nothing but a grin
Bang, bang, pretty ****** *******
What ******* let her in?

She's nothing but skin and bone
With ribs like a xylophone
At least several decades too old
To use the vernacular
It's like bumming Dracula
She's wiry
She's wizened
She's cold

Oh (pretty) no (******)
Rasping on my ****
With fingers like a sock
Filled up with ice
No (scary) chance (hairy)
Giving her the slip
My todger's in a grip
Just like a vice
It (saggy) seems (baggy)
Like she's in a dream
While scraping with her ancient hand
Bang, bang, ****** ****** *******
My sore and swollen gland

Granny bang bang
Granny granny *******
Granny *******
Granny ***** *******

Knock, knock
Coppers at the door
Go crawling on the floor
And off at speed
What fun
Looking at the punters
Myriad of munters
As they flee'd
Cold, wet
Drowning in regret
With trousers round my knees I stand
Bang bang ****** ****** *******
Next time I'll use my hand
Bang bang ****** ****** *******
Next time I'll use my haaaaaaaaaaaaaaand!

I stuck chickens in my baggy tie dye shirt
nuzzled on the couch, coffee in hand.
I enjoyed a deep conversation with a willow tree
and asked how it felt about the other species.
I slid cookies in the back pocket of my tattered jeans
before biking through the morning air.
I smiled at old Ted in the nursing home
with a wink, he smiled back.
I dribbled the basketball with the strong scent
of campfire coming from my backyard.
I danced in the shower
the warm droplets falling on my skin.
I smoked in the sparkling cove
with strangers that became my friends.
I flew off the high rocks
and submerged into cold crystal waters.
I looked into those faded blue eyes,
and chuckled cause' we do that.
I balanced on the fallen limb
and hopped up onto the beautiful stump.
I giggled with my sisters
cause' we made some really mean jokes.
I ate spaghetti with my friends,
and laughed so hard we choked.
I tumbled over tree roots
got back up and kept on trailin'.
I thanked God for this life
and he said you're welcome.

The rush
The grace
The feeling I get when I dance
My heart beating faster and faster and faster
Until everything falls silent

Its me
And the music
Just Me
And the rhythm

My heart is beating, my feet are moving
My head is spinning, I hit it
A switch turns on inside of me
I’m in it to win it now
I want that platinum, I want to make you proud of me
I want to be the dancer you want me to be
But ballet, thats not it.

You ruined this, you told me I wasn’t good enough
Point your toes,
lift your chin,
hold your leg higher
Do this, do that. Who cares?
Do I look like a prima ballerina to you?
I am not tall, I am not lanky
I am not skinny, I am not light
And I’m sorry but I have *****.

You can push me,
Stretch me, pull me in all different directions
To do what?
Make me more flexible, more graceful, more
you

You have beaten me down with your words,
so much that the one thing I loved most in the world
has slowly been slipping away from me
Dance doesn’t define who I am,
It is who I am.
Dance is me
I am dance

I’m big *****, I have strong muscles
I’m not graceful, when you tell me to hit it hard,
I hit it with intensity, with power
Don’t ask me to prance around in a pink tutu.
I won’t.
Put me in harem pants, and a baggy sweatshirt
Throw some beats down
And I’ll groove it
Pop it, slide it, lock it
Sharp sharp smooooooth
So many different moves,
Some don’t even have names
No Fouetté, or jeté
No relevé, or adagio
What do these even mean?
Do I look french to you?

I’d rather body roll
Chest pop
And just let my body do the talking
I don’t dance to impress you
I don’t dance to please your needs
I don’t dance for high scores
I dance to express the words I cannot speak

when you first look at me
and i mean more than a furtive passing glance
what do you see?
and i only ask because i have read
that employers have this thing where
they will analyze a hopeful-hire
in 30 seconds
and then they go off of that
mere 30, 29, 28
and so on
all the way down to 0
of whether or not they will get the job

now i am not asking you for a job
because i do not want to work for you
and you are not offering me a position
as caretaker, worker, cleaner, lover
and even if you were
it would not be accurate
because i am so much more than
30 seconds

because in such a short amount of time
that only allows a quick once-over
all that you will come away with
is a mix of stereotypes and an impression
based off of what gender you think i am

30, 29, 28
purple haired freak, clown, butch
27, 26, 25
girl, must be a lesbian, what a ****
24, 23, 22
must have been a cutter at some point
maybe still is, but who can really say?
because the world we live in is getting colder
and hotter and colder and layers upon layers
is the only way to go
21, 20, 19
is she a girl or a boy? who does she think she is?
what should i call her?
18, 17, 16
she she she
15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
0, 0, 0,
girl girl girl

(now let me tell you what
i gleaned from the 30 seconds that
you looked me up and down
like i was nothing more than a slab
of meat and you wanted to
dig a knife into my and cut me into little chunks

what i saw in your eyes
it was not nice
and i saw the moment when you
labeled me as a female
because of my *******
soft and supple and right ******* there
and the societally stereotyped feminine pear shape of my hips
all the way down to where there is no bulge
because how can she be a ******
when she hasn’t got any bottom dysphoria, huh?

and sure that’s a great question
it’s so clever and original
why can’t you just be a tomboy?
why can’t you just be a lesbian?
why not try being bisexual?
but really the question
the million dollar question
is why can’t you just be a girl?

well because i’m not a girl
and i have known this
since i was 7 years old
and that was ******* terrifying
because i knew for a fact that
i was something else than the doctor
had labeled me as after glancing at
my new born baby self
and thinking: yup, ******=female

and i tried being a tomboy
wearing ripped jeans and converse
and keeping my hair short
wearing baggy sweatshirts to hide
my *******
but it wasn’t enough

and i tried being a lesbian
actually since i did not know what
transgender meant
let alone that there was a word to describe
what i had felt like inside for
9 long **** years
i rationalized that i must have been a lesbian
because that was a quick-fix-easy-answer
to the cuts on my wrist and the misery
i felt whenever someone called me a girl

and i tried being bisexual
which came after a lesbian
and before transgender
and yeah sure i guess it worked
but not for long
and then it happened and i knew what
transgender meant and that
i wasn’t a tomboy
a lesbian
or even bisexual

and i tried being a girl
but it very nearly killed me
and then it happened
and i knew who and what i was

i am a transgender male
my sexuality is pansexual
and no i do not have *** with pans
though that’s really original and not something
i’ve heard so many times already

but i know that i am not a woman
and your 30 second analysis of me
does not help you at all
because you see me through a lens
of female, butch, lesbian, she, she, she
and that is not who i am at all)

that night, i wore a polo shirt.
i thought hey, i'm going to a friend's
dorm, no need to dress up, right?
so i wore a polo shirt, a yellow and blue and pink
thing. i'd bought it from a charity shop
only weeks earlier, when i was still exploring
a new university town
and finding not-so-hidden gems;
and sure, it was three sizes too big
but it was comfortable, and made me feel safe.

turns out, you didn't care about polo shirts
or tank tops. you cared about what was underneath
and i was drunk enough to let you - or,
well, not really let you, but i didn't need to dress up
so i wore baggy clothes and a smile
so i had half a bottle of jack daniels
and i had a nineteen year old point to prove
and i had a pill that you gave me
and i had - sorry, have - a therapist's bill.

but this isn't about you. i don't write about you.
i make a point of not writing about you,
actually. which is to say that i write about you
in a way that doesn't let you hurt me anymore.
i write about what i was wearing
(did i deserve it? in my 1970s male t-shirt?)
or what i was drinking
(it was university)
or how i tried to throw myself into a river
in the aftermath
(but i didn't, because i got thirsty, and i didn't
want to die thirsty, so i went home).
no, i'm writing about the polo shirt i was wearing.

cotton, i think. polyester, probably.
the amazing technicolour haze of am i sober enough for this?
who knows how many iterations
of the same lancaster charity shop
it circled through, old men with families
and wives and kids -
it probably saw birthdays and christmases
and, safely tucked in the back of a closet,
shielded itself from the almost-crisis of cuban missiles.

and then, me. a nineteen year old
branching out into the world for the first time;
a lover of poetry, maker of music, naïve and beautiful.
then, it was just a polo shirt, and i wore it
as long as it was laundered, for a month or so,
until december. not that i stopped wearing it
because it was cold. it just reminded me of hands
and hands and hands and
****, how many hands can a man have?
how long will i have to feel them?

i didn't shower the day after, just slept.
a hangover, right? just a hangover.
and then, when the hot water in my dorm
daily ticked on, i washed every inch of myself
to get rid of you, and your foam banana shower gel
that your mother probably told you to buy.

so, what compensation do you owe me?
what price should i put on things?
you touch it, so you pay for it.
one charity shop shirt, three pounds please.

Admiration is a word that comes to mind when I think about her work.
The seamstress only has to imagine and she can create a masterpiece of herself.
With every thread, button, and hem she tells a story.
She represents herself with every outfit. Her work molds to her every curve and bump.
She can move effortlessly and not worry about a tair
or loose string.
She can create herself into exactly who she wants to be.

And then there is me.
Who has to fight every zipper,
glare at every neckline,
and gripe at worn out areas that have rubbed and tugged to try and fit
my untamed figure.
The clothes that disguise me only entangle me
in a world of self hate and disappointment.
The number or letter on the tag become scars tattooed in my brain of three words:
not
skinny
enough.

I remember when a boy in line during the 4th grade called me fat ***.
I remember when I was taken by my mother to a store that "might have things that fit better."
I remember looking at pictures of myself next to my friends and instantly comparing every inch of myself to theirs.
I remember when I looked at myself and thought, "maybe if you lost 20lbs. you would be attractive."
When the Seamstress looks in the mirror she sees a canvas.
A challenge.
A body that will fit herself.

When I look in the mirror I see a girl fighting to fit in her body.
I see those memories of hiding behind baggy sweaters.
I see countless dressing room breakdowns.
The seamstress must have harsh eyes.
She must have her own burden.
Her clothes may be her own, but is it all a disguise to hide herself too?

Fashion show finales follow a familiar rhythm: after the models march along the catwalk for a last hurrah, the designer comes out to take a bow. Their demeanour is often telling, an indicator of their attitude to the collection they've shown – are they a bag of nerves, or grinning from ear to ear?

Also noteworthy is the look they choose to take their bow in. Are they even wearing their own work? One of the most celebrated designers of our time never wears his own designs. Karl Lagerfeld may create the occasional menswear look at Chanel and he designs a whole men's collection for his eponymous label but he has long been a customer elsewhere: Dior Homme.

Lagerfeld started wearing Dior Homme when he was in his late 60s, shedding 41 kilograms to fit into the skinny styles of the label's then designer, Hedi Slimane. Lagerfeld has stayed loyal to the brand ever since, even after Slimane, now creative director of Saint Laurent, quit in 2006. And although the label is known for its emphasis on youth, Lagerfeld, now in his 80s, remains one of Dior Homme's most visible clients.

Raf Simons, meanwhile, Dior's creative director of womenswear, is partial to Prada: his presence in the documentary film Dior & I (2014) is most clearly announced via his distinctive studded Prada sneakers and he often takes his catwalk bow in a head-to-toe Prada look. For his first Christian Dior ready-to-wear show he wore a vintage denim jacket with red stripes by Austrian designer Helmut Lang.

And yet many designers do wear their own work, especially if the brand carries their surname. Editors scan the wardrobe of Miuccia Prada for clues to her latest collection: is she feeling utilitarian, elegant or purposefully off-kilter? When Donatella Versace takes her bow, she often wears a look from the collection she's just shown – for autumn/winter 2015, it was a pinstriped, flared pantsuit. And even Simons has worn pieces from his own label collaboration with Sterling Ruby.

So if the name is on the label, does it mean the clothes will always be on the designer's back? Not necessarily. "I've never been into wearing clothing with my own brand name inside," says Jonathan Anderson, designer behind JW Anderson and now creative director of Loewe. "I find it odd and arrogant."

UNIFORM DRESSING

Anderson's own wardrobe is a familiar uniform: crewneck sweater, faded blue jeans, Nike sneakers. It's entirely opposite to the menswear looks he creates for his own label's catwalk presentations, which have included bandeau tops and frilled shorts. He seems to favour a clean-palette approach: keeping himself neutral so as to not deflect from his experimentation elsewhere.

This kind of wardrobe is common among fashion designers. Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler appear to have no desire to create menswear for themselves or others, dressing instead in a similar style to Anderson: crewnecks, polo shirts or button-downs, usually with jeans and sneakers.

Mary Katrantzou, meanwhile, recent winner of the 2015 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, may have built her business on print and embellishment but she is usually found in a black knit dress by Azzedine Alaïa. Alaïa himself has perhaps the ultimate clean-palette wardrobe: for decades he has worn black cotton Chinese pyjamas, fastened by simple floral buttoning.

Each of these designers has a successful business with its own clear signature. So maybe it doesn't matter if they don't wear their own clothes. And yet when designers do, it can be so seductive. Men buy Tom Ford because they want to be like Tom Ford. Women buy Céline because they want to look like Phoebe Philo. Stefano Pilati, creative director of Ermenegildo Zegna Couture, is often said to be his own best model; Rick Owens, in his long draped vests and baggy shorts, is the perfect ambassador for his own alternate universe of otherness.

The style of Roksanda Ilincic is synonymous with her own brand. "I create pieces that embrace the female form," she says of her bold colour palette and silhouette. "Being a woman means I'm able to feel and test those things on a personal level … I tend to favour long hemlines and nipped-in waists, with interesting shades and textures, pared down with simple basics and outerwear." Does she ever wear anyone else? "Of course! Black polo necks from Wolford are an absolute staple and in winter I am rarely without my favourite black cashmere coat by Prada, which is on permanent loan from my husband."

It seems like an industry divided between designers who wear their own work and those who don't. But sometimes things change. Backstage at Loewe earlier this season, Anderson said: "With Loewe, I have a detachment. I wear a lot of it. Now I'm more, 'Does this work?' I've got a bit of a love back for fashion."

Two months on, his interest in wearing his own designs has grown still further. He is the cover star of the new issue of menswear biannual magazine Fantastic Man, posing in a slash-fronted sweater and leather tie trousers. The pieces are both his work from current season Loewe. Womenswear. In for a penny, in for a pound.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2015 | www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses

he spit the little baggy from his mouth to his hand
I took the prize and dropped it right into my own mouth...
turning to leave the filth of the lower Burnside Bridge,
as I walked away I developed a plan;
I would take my little baggy a few blocks down south,
spit the prize back into my hand, and start to cook...
place the little baggy delicately into a syringe

spit drooled from my mouth as my prize took

Messy hair,
Baggy clothes.
My appearance may be bizarre,
But my thinking glows.

Smudged mascara,
Faded lipstick.
Trying to keep up my tiara,
But I’m a little pessimistic.

Five-inch heels,
Bright red dress.
My attitude is my appeal,
My knowledge is what’ll get you possessed.

Not saying that I’m perfect,
Not saying that I’m the best.
But just be careful,
My success has gotten you oppressed.

Over the last few days
I have constructed a new basic description of myself:
I am the seventeen year old
poet with a white beard and baggy, bruised-looking eyes
who only ever uses his left hand when playing badminton.

Justin Bieber is no big deal
I’m not even sure he is real.
He started out as pretty decent
Have you seen anything recent?
He looks like a kid who is trying
To join the gang but is only crying;
Sitting on the sidelines sniffling.
Dressed up in gang stuff and everything.

Poor baby Justin, as rich as a king
Isn’t quite satisfied owning everything
Has to cover up his body with tattoos
Like all the real-life gang members do.
Wears a hat too big for him all sideways
Plays in the sandbox where big kids play.
Wants to look all gangster and rough
But looking like a lesbian makes it tough.

Poor Baby Biebs with his millions of fans
Three pairs of underwear and baggy pants
Grinning like he’s bashful, we know he’s not.
Far too often he has proved himself a snot.
Some of us were worried when he was a kid.
We worried nobody was careful of what he did.
So Baby Justin Bieber is a bit of a wreck
Sort of like the words crawling up his neck.

Justin Bieber makes the young girls scream.
They don’t care he’s not the angel he seems.
If only he would misbehave with them, they think.
They’d let him act the fool, smoke and stink.
Because, after all, when you’re a teen-aged star
It doesn’t really matter just how fake you are.
The thing is be to be fashionable the youthful way
And let them get a glimpse of you every day.

(man enters a tavern)
I'd like a room and a bath please

(tavern keeper)
a room I can do, but, a bath, totally out of the question

(man)
your sign says "rooms with baths", and I would like a room with a bath, as advertised

(tk)
you aren't from around here are you?

(man)
no, why?



(tk)
I thought not, so, I will say this slow...A room I can do, but a bath is totally out of the question

(man)
there is no need to take that tone with me. I made a perfectly legitimate request, as per your signage, and you take umbrage with me.

(tk)
I did not, and besides, I can't take it, if I don't know what it is. Hold on one minute....(walks outside, grabs a shovel on the way out...knocks sign down).

(tk)
(upon re-entry)....now, about that sign you said you saw. I believe you were mistaken.

(man)
this is the "three rivers tavern" as per the sign, which I assume is no longer hanging out front.

(tk)
It is, and your assumption is correct...it isn't

(man)
so, being the "three rivers tavern" would there not be three rivers in the proximity of this establishment from which you would be able to draw water for me, a bypasser, to get a bath

(tk)
yes...and no

(man)
what kind of an answer is that?

(tk)
Yes, it is the "three rivers tavern" and no, there are not three rivers in close proximity of this establishment from which I, a humble tavern keeper, and former owner of a sign, advertising, falesly, I might add...the presence of a bath in this establishment.

(man)
you are called "three rivers tavern" yet, there are no rivers nearby.? what kind of advertising is that?

(tk)
firstly, the sign was already made up, so, it was cheap. Secondly, who are you to question the name of my establishment, which I might add, is quite famous  in the region for many things, other than it's name, which, we may now be changing due to the sudden loss of our sign.

(man)
I sir, am Robin Hood of Sherwood.

(tk)
your'e not

(man)
I am. I am Robin Hood, Sir Robin of Loxley, if you please.

(tk)
I repeat...you're not. Not in those tights.

(man)
And what is wrong with my tights?

(tk)
Seriously? Do I really have to tell you that?

(man)
Yes, what is wrong with these tights?

(tk)
First off, Robin Hood, The REAL Robin Hood wouldn't be caught dead in those. Baggy, Saggy, there's leaves on them, holes...Robin Hood would have nice tight tights that were in good kip and accentuated his....

(man)
*******!

(tk)
exactly

(man)
No, I mean, how would you know what Robin Hood would wear? I mean, what I would wear? The condition of these tights helps me keep incognito in local archery competitions. If I went around showing ...

(tk)
*******!!! INCOGNITO? You are no more than a wayward traveller trying to get a free room on the reputation of someone else, namely...Robin Hood

(man)
My good sir, these are old, tights, ripped from swinging through the trees over time.

(tk)
If you are Robin Hood, tights or not...prove it to me. I'll give you the room, and go for the water myself.

(man)
How should I prove it, with no arrows, bow, and apparently no weaponry in sight. How do I go about showing I am Robin Hood?

(tk)
Use mine. Yep...use my bow, and I dare you to...to...shoot an apple off of his head over there. Oy....wake up. Catch (tosses an apple to man in the corner)
Put that on your head...he's gonna shoot it off.

(man in corner)
He's gonna what? off my...no he's not.

(man)
No, I will not. You obviously have me confused with William Tell. He's Swiss, they do things differently over there.

(tk)
You will, or you won't get your room

(man)
And if I should miss, what then?

(tk)
Not a problem. I've got lots of arrows and apples. We can just keep trying.

(man)
I mean HIM, what if I hit HIM.?

(tk)
You won't if you are who you say you are, and besides, I said I've got lots.

(man in corner)
But I'm your brother in law

(tk)
I've lots of those too. Now, here (hands arrow and bow to Robin)
Step back 10 paces, I'll open the door, and you....put that apple up.
One shot...hit the apple,....room and a bath....miss, and it's off with you

(man)
I really don't think...

(tk)
shoot or leave. Or...I can call the sherrif. If you are Robin Hood, he'll certainly want to see you.

(man)
Fine, give me those. (walks back 10 paces as the tavern owner opens the door).
(He fires, splitting the arrow in two, as the man in the corner slides to the floor)

(tk)
ROBIN!!!! Why didn't you say so? I knew it was you all the time. What can I do for you?

(Robin)
First, pick him up. Next that room. Then I have some requirements, that I need not be tested on. A bow, arrows, clothing, footwear. I need to look the part at the tournament coming up, when I do the big reveal, and I need the proper equipment. You, will help me with that, and seeing as how I have little to no money, as I said, I will need to put this on account which I will pay after the tournament.

(tk)
credit? You want credit?

(Robin)
Yes, as you can see, I am good for it.

(tk)
I saw you shoot an apple off a mans head from ten paces, not...win an archery competition with archers from all over Europe. CREDIT?

(Robin)
Here, hold this apple.

(tk)
Right, First things first...bow and arrows!!

(Robin)
I shall need to see the fletcher.

(tk)
that would be baker

(Robin)
No, I need a bow and arrows. I need a fletcher

(tk)
Exactly, Baker

(Robin)
I am at a loss. I need to see a fletcher and yet you keep saying Baker

(tk)
Right, The Fletcher is Baker. That's the man's name. You need to see Baker, the fletcher.

(Robin)
I see....I think. So I see the baker.

(tk)
You see the fletcher

(Robin)
Baker

(tk)
exactly

(Robin)
that's what I said.

(tk)
No,you said the baker

(Robin)
That's what you told me.

(tk)
No, I did not. I said The Fletcher was Baker. That's the mans name

(Robin)
Baker

(tk)
Now,you have it

(Robin)
Assuming I get what I need from the fletcher. I need a tailor.

(tk)
pastor

(Robin)
No, I do not need to see a pastor, I need a tailor

(tk)
That's the man's name. Pastor is the tailor

(Robin)
So, the pastor is the tailor

(tk)
No, Cooper is the pastor, pastor is the tailor.

(Robin)
I don't need a cooper, I need the tailor

(tk)
exactly. pastor

(Robin)
So, let me see...I go to see the pastor and the fletcher

(tk)
No, you see the tailor, pastor and then the fletcher

(Robin)
The Baker.

(tk)
Listen closely, or you'll never get your room. You see Baker the Fletcher and Pastor, the tailor. Not, the baker and the pastor. You keep getting mixed up

(Robin)
I'll need to write this down
Ok, for footwear, Cobbler

(tk)
Butcher

(Robin)
The butcher makes shoes too.?

(tk)
No. Butcher is the cobbler

(Robin)
That's what I said

(tk)
Look, it's dead easy, you go to see Baker, Pastor and Butcher and you'll be set

(Robin)
I'll end up with bread , a bible and meat. How does this help me in an archery competition?

(tk)
No...you see baker the fletcher, pastor the tailor and butcher the cobbler. It couldn't get any simpler

(Robin)
Maybe I don't need that room after all.

(tk)
follow...fletcher baker pastor tailor butcher cobbler. then back here.

(Robin)
No...I think maybe....is there another village close by.

(tk)
Yes, on the other side of the three bridges

(Robin)
Which, as we know, do not exist

(tk)
And...they speak Welsh!!! your choice

fade out

Page 1 The first time I met Duke, I was tripping on shrooms. In fact, it was the first time I dabbled in psychedelics as well-- just don’t underestimate me in the marijuana department. The moment I can recall vividly comprised of the walk from the music hall which brought us to underneath the Moody Towers residential buildings, where there is wind and benches. A square of dirt rests behind the two benches facing one another; the distance apart from the benches being just far away enough to notice the gap of distance when conversing with someone on the other side. There was a main square of dirt, consisting of hundreds of butts twirled within the earth, scraggly weeds, and one relatively low sitting, yet ominous tree. This tree often glowed during the segments of the day in which the sun found itself to gazing down on the towers and its delinquent inhabitants. On many occasion during these occurrences you could find me, or perhaps Duke, basking in the serenity of the simplicity of the slivers of light breaking free through the emerald green mass of the tree. On this particular night I’m recalling, it was nighttime, causing the yellow of porch lights to dim the other color palettes. Except the sky was royal purple, and the grass in the distant hillside was writhing and crawling and breathing-- according to the mushrooms. Half of the bodies there that night were standing, half sitting, and there couldn’t have been more than a dozen of us. Here is this person in my indirect line of sight, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint the gender, but cute regardless. My guess of girl pursuing boyhood turned out to be correct. Small, almost delicate frame like mine, only he attempted to conceal his when I had long ago grown out of that. With a plaid button down and the collar poking outside of his oversized dark casual suit blazer. It was tied off with baggy khaki pants and clunky black sneakers similar to the ones the chefs in the cafeteria wear with a sense of longevity.
Page 2 His hair took inspiration from the typical pubescent teenage boy, straight and shaggy, and nearly covering the ears and eyes with a combination of strips of platinum blonde, ***** blonde, and light brown wisps. His almond shaped almond colored eyes were framed with black, square and thick glasses, but they seemed to help compensate for size with the natural petiteness of his face. Pink snakebites resided beneath his bottom lip, emphasizing the common nature of his lips that often formed a tight line, even when speaking. I only saw him from a distance that night. We didn’t introduce ourselves to each other until the next day, at that same location. There were less people now, and I was no longer in an altered state of mind. Well, to be honest, I still most likely was, but it certainly wasn’t shrooms. I don’t remember who began the introduction first, but I know his was accompanied with an abundance of compliments on my outfit and level of cuteness. As masculine as his mind was, he could still have an appreciation for the arts, for unique style, as any natural born writer would be so inclined. So there, underneath moody, I met him, within a social circle so new to me yet so familiar within the ebb and flow in the air of cigarette smoke, sometimes so pungently thick and keen against the tide of stimulating conversation. I felt a sense of belonging new to me.
Page 3 And there again and again, I saw him. The central station of our friends. There I slowly got to know him. I learned he lived about an hour away from Houston, he was a creative writing major, he was a freshman just like me and lived in the same building as me. We were both INFP’s on that Meyers-Briggs personality test. I had never met another INFP. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more his general profile seemed familiar to me. And then I remembered. RoomSync, an app the university had us use to select a random roommate. I remember considering someone’s profile that possessed all the qualities of Duke, before my current roommate reached out to me, unfortunately. Duke might have been my roommate in another reality-- remember the Multiverse Theory. I wonder if that would have even changed anything. But that thought process is futile. Once, in the initial stages, Duke had been rambling about modern horror and the author of the fight club, and where the two converge with the product of a gruesome short story. Not many accepted Duke’s invitation to read the short story, but I volunteered. But that is when I remember the beginning of Duke’s admiration for fight club. The concept of it. In fact, one of the first nights, I remember vividly as the Fight Club Night. Where Duke insisted on starting up our own Smircle fight club sometime, what what better time to do so, he thought, then right at that moment with his buddy Otis while drunk on ****** life and four lokos and *****? They were both at least eight shots deep in their sorrows when they ended up disappearing for what seemed to the rest of us like mere seconds. When we found them, we had ventured that way due to the need and ability to smoke a bowl behind the dumpster a few steps nearby. And when we found them, only one was standing. In the recounting later, Duke had apparently taken a nasty blow to the stomach after slamming a few hits in himself.
Page 4 As he lay there, sprawled face-down on the pavement, disoriented and disheveled, for a solid eight minutes at least until he determined he wasn’t going to puke. The remainder of the night was spent accompanying the rest of the group with Otis, forever refusing to let go of the moral dilemma that had just been established by this pseudo-fight club on which it is incorrect on all accounts to punch a drunk person in the stomach, because they are, in fact, drunk. This might appear annoying after a while, but the radical and lively energy that would radiate from the banter of Duke and Otis made this situation anything but.

Page 5   And so were my first stories of Duke, and so it was for many stories to come. Our stay at this place began to feel more permanent as our bodies would steadily adjust to the ranging, sporadic temperatures outside and as our eyes took in absorbing the physical evidence of the seasons. As it was, at any time throughout the day, my route would take me down to our spot underneath Moody, where Duke might or might not be there himself, shmoozing around with cigarettes and doodles on pen and paper noteworthy of Tim Burton. I got to know Duke. He seemed to have mastered the skill in which I prided myself most in, and that is the warmth near him that urges someone near him to just open your heart and reveal your thoughts and secrets-- that blind trust. Duke had a way of getting to exactly what was on my mind. And in exchange of me sharing, out came the stories of Duke’s life, the sad, ****** up, abusive stories. I heard those the most, for they were also the most compelling, and most exciting, and ******* sometimes Duke could even make them funny.

These days, Moody feels empty. Just because of minus one.