doves drowning
in the storms wicked air
watch with empathy as they struggle in the
thrashing tides of the rainswept sky
watch as the fall from grace
in the warm tears of rain

bernie was waiting on
doomsdays last train
he kept his lunch in a sack
along with the face he gonna wear
when he comes up fore the good lord
but what worried him was if the other fella
had his ticket
he would toss his coin on
the hand he was dealt
a good man misunderstood
a simple man living a complex life

contortionist of the fable
she wrote her own storied life
on the back of a matchbook cover
after all its the flame of her heart
that set ablaze many a mans inner pervert
she is waiting on that last train too
with a devilish certainty of her destination
but she aint too worried
she knows hell is just like miami in july

doves nestled in the hands of time
make a soft sound that stirs the heart
sounds like a love affair
sounds like free flight on a summer breeze
feels like home

the hard face
sunburned remnants of a man
allways loudspeaker for his intent
announces to the empty room
of his arrival
his field of landmines eyes
wander the crowd in the empty chairs
looking for the face
that will conquer or capitulate
looking for the ever present weak link

most days you can find her
in some park feeding ducks
some real some not so much
dont really make much difference these days
most days you find a smile in her heart
all of em real but not always so quick
most days nothing changes
but sometimes everythings gotta go
and she got no fear putting it on the line

he walked the carpet hall
with the framed pictures of three piece suits
and the victories they had over the outside the line desperado's
sunburnt remnants of a man
he walks with his shadow upright hand in hand
he walks in the darkness of the bright sun
looking for a face in the crowed emptyness
looking for someone that will conquer or capitulate
hes looking for her
but shes looking for you
cause she loves you
and the kitten you carry on your shoulder

most nights shes on the hood of her plymouth
drawing pictures in the dust of the road
sketching echoes out of the nights song
most nights shes driving a backroad with rockabilly
smoking her speakers
most nights you can find her in your arms
but not tonight
not this rainswept night

where we goin
why should this kind of thing happen
why take from someone never done you wrong
why do such things
is it any wonder you never see my face no more
is it any wonder im far away
most of the time

The streets of Paris were clogged by rallies and demonstrations on the Sunday of fashion week. At the Trocadero, a pro-rally for embattled French conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, blocking the route between the Valentino and Akris shows; at Bastille, an anti-Fillon demonstration.

The French elections — and ever-increasing security — were providing a tense backdrop to the autumn-winter collections, much like Donald Trump, Brexit and Matteo Renzi did on the fashion circuit of New York, London and Milan this season. Politics and the changing of the guard, women’s rights and diversity may make fashion seem irrelevant until you add up the value of the industry to the world economy. In Britain it is £28 billion ($45bn) — and that is small fry next to France and Italy.

Perhaps politics and social change have influenced the French designers for there was much less street style this season and a lot more tailored, working clothes on the catwalk. They used mostly masculine fabrics but worked in such a graceful way. You need only look at Haider ­Ackermann, Chanel, Alexander McQueen, Christian Dior, Lanvin, Akris and Ellery to see this — lots of great wearable clothes.

Karl Lagerfeld wanted to fly us to other worlds (to abandon the mess here perhaps) in his Chanel space rocket. There were checks, cream, silvery white and grey tweeds, for suits and shorts and dark side of the moon print dresses that cleverly avoided the 60s’ ­futuristic cliches. Silver moon boots, space blanket stoles and rocket-shaped handbags were as space-age-y as it got. There was quiet, seductive tailoring at Haider Ackermann — tapered silhouettes in black wool and leather softened with a knit or the fluff of Mongolian lamb for a blouson or skirt. At McQueen the asymmetric lines of a black coat or pantsuit were ­inspired by the fluid lines of ­Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures, whereas David Koma reclaimed the soaring shoulderline of Mugler’s 80s silhouette for pantsuits and mini-dresses for the brand.

Christian Dior’s uniform-inspired daywear was produced in tones of navy blue with 50s-style navy belted skirts suits, long pleated skirts and some denim workwear. “I wanted my collection to express a woman’s personality, but with all the protection of a ­uniform,” explained Maria Grazia Chiuri before the show.

There was more suiting at ­Martin Grant with voluminous trousers, cummerbunds and men’s shirting. The cut was more mannish at Ellery and Celine with ­Ellery balancing her masculine oversized jacket looks with feminine bustier tops with giant puff sleeves. The mannish look at ­Celine was styled with sharp ­lapels, slim-cut trousers under crushed textured raincoats, whereas ­double-breasted jackets (a trend) and peacoats over loose-cut trousers appeared at John Galliano.

Checks jazzed up the tailoring at Akris where there were more sophisticated double-breasted jackets and swing coats, and at ­Giambattista Valli from among the flirty embroidered dresses a dogtooth coat emerged with a waspie belt and a suit with a peplum skirt.

Stella McCartney displayed her Savile Row skills in heritage checks for her equestrian-themed show. Of course, she is crazy about riding and her prints featured a famous painting by George Stubbs, Horse Frightened by a Lion. It turns out Stubbs was another Liverpudlian, like her dad Sir Paul.

Of course Hermes’s vocabulary started with the horse and there were leather-trimmed capes and coats that fitted an equestrian, or at least country theme worn with woollen beanies and big sweaters, offering a different way of tailoring, in an easier silhouette with a soft colour palette.

The highlight of the week for Natalie Kingham, buying director at MatchesFashion.com was ­Balenciaga. “Great accessories, great coats and great execution of ideas,” she says of Demna Gvasalia’s off-kilter buttoned coats, stocking boot and finale of nine spectacular Balenciaga couture gowns reinterpreted in a contemporary way. “It was wearable, modern and the must-see show of the week.” It was also, she pointed out “the must-have label off the runway with every other person on the front row decked out in the spring collection”.

Although tailoring worked its subtle charms on the catwalk, there were flashes of brightness, graceful beauty and singularity. Particularly bright were Miu Miu’s psychedelic prints, feathered and jewelled lingerie dresses and colourful fun fur coats with furry baker boy hats. Then there was the singular look evoked by Austrian-born Andreas Kronthaler in his homage to his roots, with alpine flowers, Klimt-style artist smocks and bourgeois chintz florals worked in asymmetric and padded silhouettes for Vivienne Westwood — some of it modelled by the Dame herself.

Pagan beauty, the wilds of Cornwall, ancient traditions such as the mystical “Cloutie” wishing tree led to Sarah Burton’s enchanting Alexander McQueen show, which was another of Kingham’s favourites with its unfinished embroideries inspired by old church kneelers and spiritual motifs. “I loved the artisanal threadwork and the spiritual message that was woven throughout,” she says. The artisanal and spiritual she considers an emerging trend around the shows. “It had a slight winter boho vibe but much more elevated.”

Chitose Abe shared that mood for undone beauty with her Sacai collection of hybrid combinations of tweed and nylon for an anorak, and deconstructed lace for a parka, and puffers with denim re-worked with floral lace for evening.

There was more seductiveness at Valentino and Issey Miyake. The latter’s collection shown in the magnificent interiors of Paris’s Hotel de Ville, shimmered with the colours of the aurora borealis and used extraordinary fabric technology to create rippling movement as the models walked.

Valentino was a high point. On a rainswept Sunday Pierpaolo Piccioli cheered us with high-neck Victoriana silhouettes and long swingy dresses in potentially (but not actually) clashing combinations of pink and red in jazzy patterns of mystical motifs and numerology inspired by the Memphis Group of Pop Art. The sheer loveliness of the collection was enough to drown out the world of politics only a few blocks away.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/blue-formal-dresses

Relatively senile
the memories in my mind
fade as new ones replace
the broken past

Watching the lovers
as they stroll along
the rainswept streets
of connected
bliss and dischord

Looking around
at the silence
tasting the futile attempts
like ashes on a cold day

Feeling
the chill down my spine,
my quickened pulse
as you enter the room

Eyes brighten
as they think of you
Ever so noticably
Slipping into a drugged
state in which coming back
isn't a desirable option

Poetry laced with
an intoxicating poison
slowly saturating my senses
blinding faults, impurities

Grasping at clarity
and finding none
only your arms
folding around me
pulling me deeper into
the abyss

the palace of the moment having sold out
of her usual tear soaked apparel
and her casual wear fascination needing a
quick fix lead her across the wastelands the shopping plaza
to this wind-soaked backlot and its hidden wonderland
the store has no sing
just a off green door with the words
only the accursed may leave
she shimmies through the door

he makes his way up endless sidewalk
doing a little dance step every few feet
because he knows that is what a madman
would do in his place
his rags are the best he could muster
but they will serve
to be mad is fashionable
and appearance and substance is everything
he mutter to himself
he walks the rainswept backlot and its blatant ****** factory
and finds a green door with the words
****** your own pretences
he slips inside to gaze with open awe

she keeps her politics in her pocket
the latest soapbox to preach the ******* line from
politics fashionista who dabble in whatever
the latest trend on facebook seems to lend
new age drivel or some bomb throwing **** with
a distrust of anything that might be another point of view
got a real open mind
long as it something she wants to hear
shes occupying the breeze block in the backlot
sitting by a green door with the words
believe in nothing and that's all you'll have
she whimpers at the thought
but she trots in to take a look

he washes the blood off his hands
but it never washes away
don't judge me you aint
seen enough
been enough
known enough
to judge much of anything
sleepwalk through your days
with your  diapers and handbills
inviting to the great change that'll never come
its all just a fashion statement
social tyrants protesting political tyrants
go find your green door
find out if its a lion or lamb

Looking heavenward, I see only the earth.
The stars align and the planets turn,
But what of the holy?

Archangels sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
And the collared cherubim bleed into the rainswept gutters
Like cut dogs in cardboard boxes by the highways of New York,
Or the roadsides of back-alley Brooklyn or Paterson,
Where the demonic masses lie naked in the streets,
Their souls bared raw to heaven
And their hair as messy as sidestreet dumpsters.

The misted rain fogs on the busted double glazing,
The bare limbed trees outside fallen victim to a long winter
And a late spring.
The air that blows through the streets of these mundane cul-de-sacs
Has passed through the lungs of cancerous dodgers
In those hell-indulgent cities,
Where children find their kicks by freerunning
Across buildings of bricks made from c-grades,
Or by standing atop high-rises in the grey wind,
And biting their tongues only to feel their own consciousness
Burrowing into them
Like parasites from the condemning schoolhouses or university halls.

You’re alone when your skies turn grey,
And the rain falls with all the purposeful intent of a neon god.
You’re alone when your smashed milk bottles and broken plates
Are like music on those drug-dampened dawns,
You’re alone when your cold, ash-stippled roof gardens
Are your only way to heaven,
You’re alone when your fingers are cut on your own writing
And you are dizzy from spinning yourself sick
Alone in your splintered art lofts.

Your stars are misaligned and your planets need engine grease to turn,
And you sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
But you still look heavenward.
You see your madness in the same silver moon
That compels the tide and transfixes wolves,
You recognise yourself in newspaper clippings proclaiming ******,
You acknowledge your expression in broken syringes
And powder remnants
On the glass-topped coffee tables of water-dripping apartments,
You feel your heartbeat in the gasolined engines
Of stuttering Cadillacs
And taste your own warm lifeblood in the burgers of roadside diners.

You see cosmological galaxies bursting like Van Goghs,
Horrible, bitter-cold starstorms underneath white skies,
Raindrop-dripping garden leaves in shrubberies and verges
And earthy rockeries,
You dream of enlightened, ***-smoking boys in beat-up trailers
And the cluttered box rooms of sky-high apartments,
Of screeching atop stone-cragged mountains of green in highlands,
Of bell-rung harbours in the white seaside towns of England,
Of the salt-chapped lips of fisherwives
And the bone-skinny children of sailors,
Of visionary angels in stained glass cathedrals,
Of the cobbled thoroughfares of lamplit cafes in a Parisian purgatory.

And yet you lie naked on floors,
You lie high on floors and let visions spill from your hands
Like the whiskey you drink.
You are under us now,
Under the earth like meat sacks.
But your vision lives on
In every piece of self-indulgent fuckery written for you,
In every copy of your collected works
Or your novels.

Seek,
Live,
****,
Die.
For you are immortal, in the end.

discomfort followed by pleasantry
a smile and a little light conversation
touch hands a strong connection
a vision takes me to places
as we dance under a rainswept sky with lightning
passionately ******* each other
soaked to the bone  as we kiss
snap back to present as you say goodbye
we part company unknowing
past or future potential

In the rainswept city lie
Wannabe beatnicks strung out
On fantasies of martyrdom

Awake and alive in a crowded room,
They suffer self-imposed secrecy.
They whisper mantras of Fitzgerald
While drowning in green label jack.
They frown upon the instagram
Girls bedecked in pencil skirts
Of centennial imagery. "It’s petty"
They cry from their lonely mountaintops.

Folk is a fanfare; flannel
a robe of imperial purple.
As an invisible emperor he reigns
Over his plebeians. He sneers
His verdicts, chin held high.
The unwitting peasantry pay
No head, but he does not mind
His ambiguity is his throne
And silence his scepter.

Jovial laughter, sweet serenity fills the happy hall.
But looking on, they turn their backs to the warmth
Preferring the company of raindrops.

One may wonder;
What is it like to die?
To crumble like Pompeii,
Fall like a dynasty,
Recede
Into the frost-windowed annuls of time,
Like some forgotten journal
With words written in blood
And bound with human skin.

I can feel my heart
Beating in my chest,
Beating in my breast.
Too many nights have drowned me in insomnia,
In waking dreams,
In visions of mountains
And rainswept forests,
In my memory of the curve
Of your chin
Or the subtle tint of rose in your lips.

I sleep now;
Sleep properly.
(most of the time).
When I am not plagued by my injuries
Or by the nebula,
Oh, by that nebula of stars
And words
And thoughts
That I have fallen victim to
Oh so many times.

On a day when I have my druthers,
as it is
commonly known, such druthers must be accounted for.

July 11, 2021 - word was sent that rain was in demand,
and nobody had any to spare,
except over there,
along the river Meuse,

I mused a minute, or more, on the similar
familiar feeling, as to why would I not believe,
I'd druther it rain in Pine Valley, Ca,
than on the drowning ancient vineyards in Lorraine.

If I had my druthers it would dry up a bit in Lorraine,
and the effort in the atmosphere that maketh rain,
that high or low twist in the winds,
pressure and osmosis and such,
this global ventilation system,
on the bubble we breathe in,
these should make it rain,
in the edge of the desert,
using Atlantic winds with Sahara dust,
agreeing globally with all the
seas and tides and winds and storms,
and the local dust devils dance,
adding to the distant
desert's given dust,
the bit of grip each drop needs,
to form, the signal
for your information, formed of molecules
that do, in fact, resemble Mickey Mouse.
- the Disney-if-ied mind app
tune to the druthers pulling, here, if I had m' druthers,
I'd druther it rained on my neighbors,
who are in desperate fear of flames…

so I can build a fire tonight and see Mars
through rainswept sky.

dark the day and clouded
there are tears on the windowpane
rain on the roses
bowed heads
umbrellas on the hillside
somber my trembled heartbeat
tragedy of youth crushed like burnt embers
beneath strident boots
marching past reason
toward shadowed profit
uncaring of human cost
make no mistake
the risk is known
the outcome stark and clear
yet those who profit
do not care
do not care
that she will never rise again
never cradle her little ones
never finish her education
never walk free of addiction
so the tragedy is thousandfold
it rings out across the rainswept hillside
in peals of accusation
handless armless tongueless tears
of frustration
lets awaken

Strong breezes alert senses.
Waves galloping tall
penetrate noses with salty air.
Clouds puffy and grey
carrying rainswept mist begins.
The forecast calls
for a rainy night.

Into late night thoughts, my mind so often drifts to place I once had been that is no sin. But my silence reveals so much more in the majority of the lying eyes. I once had crossed the border of true love summer was once a beautiful thing to see way before autumn and its leaves.
My eyes do look around the drawbridge of time when the moon came out too soon. oh, rain thoughts herald into my mind wishing I was back in that time when true love was on my side. Now all I can see is the pains of rainswept lands that are all around me where tears of ancient memories will never erase from the land of time when love was with me. I will always hold the visions of hope where the light shines through my eyes just to let me know I shell never let go, even when Dark Angel messes with my life.
Memories are sandless of true developments of understandings of ancient memories. I had freed myself every time I think of true love
but now I hold silence beyond intellectual dignity that weeps rainswept pains that reman over me.

- Judy Emery © 1984
The Queen Of Darken Dreams Poetic Lilly Emery