Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
anastasiad Dec 2016
Software program designers ordinarily apply certain types of layer technological know-how to shield their software to avoid illegitimate apply. In addition need software layer software is permitted to obtain articles, to be able to boost product sales profit.

Software package encryption technology is split in accordance with whether or not the by using a devoted hardware-based encrypted sheild hardware as well as software-based security. Hardware-based layer, layer have to bind having a focused hardware unit, the particular electronics shield of encryption layer head of hair, typically referred to as the dongle. Software-based layer, encryption does not need focused electronics, typical executed digital camera permission while using the your fatal unit hardware and software data, also referred to as this electronic digital endorsement styles.

Simply consider drive-based electronics encryption stability when compared with software-based shield of encryption will not be suitable, as the more linked to program security, like encrypted sheild products and solutions, stability, encrypted sheild plan style, software, systems, , equipment, details marketing and sales communications, and the like, is really a detailed technological spots, not alone by a to discover whether protection.

Far away, the market industry promote of the digital permission along with security tresses are evenly coordinated. Behavior and also fantastic factors, the actual layer hair likewise enjoy a certain share of the market. File encryption hair, however, will be the network produced merchandise in the instances, can be a pure consumer technology, insufficient operations and also record capabilities, the inclusion of appliance manufacturing, strategic planning, driver installation annoyance, but not only the high cost, and might stop obtained multilevel submission and sales of your computer software, is definitely gradually diminish.

Enhancing the electronic acceptance that is certainly while in the ascendant. Electrical certificate protection approaches are getting to be progressively more included in the Internet technology, cloud computing and also SaaS thought is not just easier to make use of along with cope with computer software electric situation and be able to accomplish, but according to present day natural low-carbon improvement strategy, has got supplanted the encryption curly hair Outstanding software program encryption market trends. The more well-known businesses on the planet, Microsoft, Sun microsystems, Autodesk, SIEMENS, Adobe and various computer software are electronic consent safeguards function.

In the nation, using file encryption software package coders fasten greater premiums, along with international routines and also historic causes of the actual continuation with the next 2 reasons:

One particular every day producers typically regarded security encrypted sheild a lock electronic digital authorization.

There's not just about any readily available electronic digital licence products and solutions too big, the asking price of foreign electronic digital permission.

In reality, while using the rising betterment of your multi-level surroundings, your system triggering for the majority of home end users 's no trouble. And even brought up previously, which the point of view from the safety of layer head of hair electric permission on the sides completely wrong. From your reasonable mindset, this file encryption hair as a result of computer hardware copying much easier to crack, but accomplished piracy business sequence has been made. In its place, electronic digital endorsement because appliance is not replicated, but in addition should system arousal plus approval, in reality, have good safety outcome. Additionally, your every day has showed up in some accredited goods give electric 2-3 enterprise will have to improve while using growth of China's software package sector and grow up.

As a result, your layer computer software market styles hardware, web 2 ., and details technologies. Below, we speak about, in the application encryption approach specific to be able to detailed application encrypted sheild establishment plus progress craze of the marketplace.

Very first, the software encryption approach

As mentioned previously, it encrypted sheild technologies are divided into security hardware-based as well as software-based security.

Your hardware-based shield of encryption

Hardware-based encryption shield of encryption locks, many important info, like shield of encryption secrets to vulnerable information, consent paperwork, tailor made sets of rules, etcetera. can be stored in this dongle.

The layer fastener screen variety is split in to 2 kinds of synchronised slot and also Flash interface. This simultaneous port could be the very early technique type, because the propagation troublesome plus clash while using the printer's, and after this has less apply. A lot of builders employ tend to be USB slot dongle.

File encryption hair from the two kinds of CPU form, the microcontroller to get Pc and another with a clever minute card processor for the reason that Pc a microcontroller computer hardware by itself conveniently trouble area or content, therefore an increasing number of high-end file encryption a lock employing a intelligent credit card chips Central processing unit, to stop hardware break. Although a growing number of clever card dongle crack, initially, because processor might be more and even more leading-edge analytic techniques and devices; sensible card program to be written to the chips manufacturing unit to make during this time method may possibly trickle; encrypted sheild tresses of the identical manufacturer your Processor process is the same, merely various designers facts as well as major, in case most of these records are passed out there, you can easily clone.

Dongle features a specific level of security power, but you can also find a number of drawbacks:

One) apply at the regular one-time never ending license, can't assist in the achievements of your trial model along with on-demand invest in

3) the presence of electronics generation, logistics, assembly as well as upkeep charges

Three) is not achieved the issue with Internet-based electronic digital improvements, tracking along with control

Several) Once broke, may be burned huge, it is sometimes complicated to remedy

A pair of software-based encryption

Software-based encrypted sheild, digital acceptance, and certain in addition separated into home equity loans number plate along with licenses document:

In order to register code can be referred to as successive number or consent computer code, acquired using a alteration in the the program end user computer systems along with program facts, possible software and hardware facts, including: Cpu serial number, BIOS sequential amount, greeting card amount, harddisk sequential number, computer system brand, etc. . Completely transform formula made use of your customized protocol or maybe conventional shield of encryption algorithm formula. Customer as well as primary utilisation of the computer software installment practice, you might want to type in the enrollment value to confirm. Following verification, it can be employed typically. The particular strategy has got the good thing about this subscription computer code defense is easy to use, the downside is always that security is not really higher, not able to attain complicated endorsement demands.

Permission submit as well as the signing up code in order to situation the same computers plus software information, simply a registration signal period confines utilization of both software and hardware information, a permission record can use numerous hardware and software info. Also, the actual permission report can contain more info, to help you obtain the difficult agreement demands, and may perhaps retail outlet several customer facts. The average permission report way is to implement the private key in the asymmetric algorithm to hint your certificate data file, while the general public secret is embedded in the application value. Asymmetric shield of encryption plus understanding course of action, the private computer essential consent hosting server exists, it is hard to compromise from the investigation regarding endorsement paperwork.

Some great benefits of this electric endorsement safeguard doesn't require further electronics, and for that reason doesn't have to mount the motive force as well as buyer elements, electronic digital hardware issue. The disadvantage from the automated certificate safety mode just isn't networked buyers really need to hand remove your computer information, and then personally significance registration constraints or even permission, is not very easy to use. Additionally, the particular domestic electronic digital acceptance a few of the programmers from the product or service, that also limits your popularization and promotion connected with electric permit safeguard technology.

Subsequent, it encrypted sheild field advancement status

A single. File encryption curly hair

The main unusual dongle professional SafeNet, Corporation. in the usa in addition to Germany Wibu.

Security head of hair service deeply Supposrr que Luoke and also Feitian. The 2 main organizations due to the affordable prices, the first person to introduce the actual good minute card shield of encryption curly hair nearby perfectly so that you can enjoy some market place in the nation.

A pair of. Electric permission

Unfamiliar company certified merchandise to supply electronic digital Flexera Software and also SafeNet which will, Flexera Software program is focused entirely on the joy of digital permission, the actual device's ease of use along with features are doing superior, though the valuation on the item is additionally quite high.

This home-based electrical authorization goods enterprise a Beijing Biteansuo (BitAnswer), Shenzhen-use this (Euse) Safengine Organization.

There are only a few companies will acquire their very own electronic digital consent structure, even so the builders to cultivate their own plans commonly occur this inquiries:

One particular) the introduction of non-professionals, there are numerous loopholes while in the security

A pair of) is actually difficult to realize accommodating accreditation control, management and also precise functions simple or maybe simply no

Three) are often unveiled to be able to address the particular fast problem connected with short-term method, create far more than predicted in the foreseeable future as a result of protection, balance and also scalability challenges continued to get

Several) can not meet up with sector variations as a result of the modern demands on program certification model

Software program security marketplace movements

The software security field developments is closely connected with the increase development with the computer software marketplace. With the rise in popularity of cloud-computing plus Software, service with application products will be change in the direction of the multilevel plus system. Used in nearly all software programmers, Software items can not only spend less a great deal of hardware and software buy plus servicing charges, you can also get demand from customers, when decreasing the use of possibility, driving program vendors in order to consistently strengthen items plus improve services to be able to sustain consumers.

To the development of system and program improvement can also be a software package encrypted sheild technologies movements. The view around the present-day growth trend, the encryption locking mechanism technologies have designed really develop fully information mill approaching vividness, slower advancement. The actual everyday living and make use of on the equipment practice creates security head of hair are not able to conserve the speed regarding advancement of the Internet period, are going to be substituted with the particular automated certificate.

Automated authorization permission through earlier subscription program code type on the feature-rich records available as modifications to technologies are considering verification process out of offline yourself confirm the introduction of computerized system authorization. Permitted administration contemplating particularly, your electrical licence technological innovation collected from one of software licence qualifications growth just as one authorized official certifications, agreement management and exact information and facts, and also other objective of each, significantly improved this permitted volume of details regarding computer software coders.

May forecast not able to electronic products certified solutions ought to have these most important properties:

Enlightening approved administration system: supplied by third-party safety measures specialized software designers, in line with the Net's one-stop software package safety plus endorsement management system, without having to deploy and observe after, low priced, easy-to-use.

Only two Bendable Certificate: offer the acceptance of the purchaser software as well as the cloud computing product common software package licenses; authorized touch time, the volume of sensible adventures; sanctioned in order to bind your computer software and hardware information and facts, encryption tresses, or by way of a username plus password validation way of agreement.

Simple and easy friendly buyer: in accordance with the WEB, at any place obtain; Users might food acquire, trigger boost the software, you can buy their unique software package to keep abreast of details; software package designers can certainly understand software initial information and facts plus individual data is often synergies through the people in the firm to finish the design of application license, enactment, supervision as well as maintenance operate.

5. Fog up accreditation unit: This is a cloud computing type of software program licensing. Standard application is genuine customer setup, endorsement can also be a buyer. Although cloud-computing could be the craze, although the move difficult for classic software package would be a wonderful way for the particular a higher level cloud computing modification. This definite awareness associated with tips, a common application approved move on the purchaser for the fog up on the endorsement remote computer, to ensure that small adjustments towards the application, but you can certainly instantly experience the great things about cloud computing: higher safety energy require to obtain clouds hard drive .

http://www.passwordmanagers.net/ Password Manager
anastasiad Nov 2016
Program web developers typically apply style of security technologies to guard the application in order to avoid against the law work with. Also need computer software encrypted sheild software packages are authorized to obtain written content, in order to increase the income profit.

Software encrypted sheild technologies are divided according to perhaps the by using a dedicated hardware-based file encryption hardware as well as software-based layer. Hardware-based layer, encryption have to emergency having a specific computer hardware device, this computer hardware encrypted sheild encrypted sheild hair, often called the dongle. Software-based file encryption, file encryption doesn't involve devoted computer hardware, common joining digital camera license while using the actual airport terminal device software and hardware details, also referred to as your automated acceptance sorts.

Just imagine drive-based appliance security safety in comparison with software-based encrypted sheild isn't right, because the much more included in program safety, which include layer goods, safety measures, encrypted sheild insurance plan design and style, software, operating systems, , appliance, data marketing communications, etc, is a extensive complex areas, besides by way of to ascertain no matter if safety.

In other countries, industry promote of your automated authorization and encryption tresses are consistently coordinated. Patterns and also famous explanations, this encryption head of hair additionally occupy a clear market share. File encryption a lock, nevertheless, could be the multi-level developed products with the moments, can be a natural customer technological innovation, deficit of control in addition to exact features, a good appliance creation, scheduling details, drivers installing irritation, but not only the high cost, and may stop achieved system circulation and purchasers from the software, is usually slowly decline.

The development of a electronic authorization that is certainly in the ascendant. Digital license safeguards procedures are becoming an increasing number of built into the world wide web know-how, cloud-computing in addition to SaaS strategy it isn't just easier to work with along with cope with software package digital situation and also accomplish, but will also according to present day environment friendly low-carbon advancement notion, possesses changed the shield of encryption hair Distinctive the software program encrypted sheild industry developments. The greater well-known organizations in the world, 'microsoft', Sun microsystems, Autodesk, SIEMENS, Adobe as well as other software package will be digital consent safety method.

In the united states, the utilization of layer application builders shut greater fees, with foreign behavior and historical causes of your continuation with the pursuing a couple reasons:

1 every day companies commonly deemed security encrypted sheild hair electronic agreement.

There are no longer just about any accessible digital license goods exorbitant, the price tag on foreign automated acceptance.

The truth is, with the expanding improvement of your circle surroundings, a community initial for many of us domestic users is not an difficulty. And also mentioned prior, how the viewpoint of your basic safety connected with encrypted sheild head of hair electrical permission sided incorrect. Coming from a authentic perspective, the shield of encryption curly hair as a result of components burning better to fracture, but accomplished piracy marketplace company has become produced. Instead, electrical consent since the electronics should not be cloned, but additionally must multi-level service in addition to affirmation, in fact, currently have excellent safeguard outcome. Moreover, your residential in addition has showed up in many registered goods supply automated 2-3 organization ought to improve while using the advancement of China's software field and also be upwards.

Hence, this encryption software package marketplace developments electronics, marketing, and details engineering. Down below, most people look at, through the software file encryption system distinct for you to elaborate program encrypted sheild establishment and also progression trend of this marketplace.

Primary, the program shield of encryption technique

As mentioned earlier, it shield of encryption technologies are divided into encrypted sheild hardware-based plus software-based file encryption.

A hardware-based encryption

Hardware-based file encryption encryption locks, many material, including layer fundamentals for vulnerable data, acceptance paperwork, made to order methods, and so on. could be trapped in a dongle.

Your security fastener interface style is divided directly into 2 kinds of parallel dock plus Flash harbour. The particular concurrent harbour would be the early on technique variety, because propagation inconvenient plus struggle together with the laser printer, and already has got much less employ. Almost all coders use are generally Flash user interface dongle.

Encryption hair on the two kinds of Computer kind, a microcontroller to get Cpu and another using a clever unit card processor for the reason that Pc the microcontroller appliance per se very easily trouble area or perhaps duplicate, so a lot more high-end security a lock utilizing a wise card processor Pc, to forestall computer hardware fracture. But a growing number of intelligent greeting card dongle split, primary, because processor chip is a bit more and a lot more sophisticated investigative methods along with resources; sensible greeting card method being composed to your chip manufacturing area to make within this program application could problem; file encryption hair of the exact same brand name the particular Cpu method is the identical, merely diverse builders facts along with critical, in the event that these types of data files are passed out and about, you can easily replicate.

Dongle carries a certain a higher level safety toughness, nonetheless in addition there are many drawbacks:

One) apply at the standard one-time constant permit, are unable to aid your results on the tryout release along with on-demand buy

A pair of) the use of hardware creation, scheduling details, installment in addition to routine maintenance charges

Three or more) is not realized the issue regarding Internet-based electronic enhancements, pursuing in addition to administration

Some) As soon as chipped, is usually ripped large quantities, it is hard to treat

A couple software-based shield of encryption

Software-based shield of encryption, electric endorsement, and certain as well separated into two types of registration plate along with permission file:

Enrollment rule is additionally referred to as the sequential range or perhaps permission rule, received by way of modification in the the software customer computer systems plus software program information and facts, the available hardware and software information, like: Computer successive number, BIOS serialized quantity, cards amount, disk drive sequential variety, computer title, and many others. . Completely transform algorithm employed your custom algorithm criteria or even normal layer algorithm formula. Customer and also first utilisation of the software package installing course of action, you might want to type in the enrollment value to make sure. Immediately after certification, software program may be used usually. The actual technique contains the advantage of your in order to register signal defense isn't hard to implement, the downside is usually that stability will not be large, struggle to achieve complicated consent needs.

Licence report and the subscription value for you to bind a similar computer hardware as well as software information, a subscription value time-span limits by using each hardware and software facts, a permission data file will use various hardware and software details. Additionally, the actual certificate file can contain details, so you're able to get the difficult authorization requirements, and might also retailer a number of end user information and facts. The typical certificate submit method to utilize the non-public major on the asymmetric protocol to help signal the permission record, as you move the general public key's baked into software program code. Uneven layer as well as decryption course of action, in which you crucial agreement hosting server is out there, it is not easy to break into throughout the study associated with acceptance docs.

What's so great about the particular digital agreement security does not require supplemental hardware, and as a consequence does not need to deploy the driver plus buyer components, electrical hardware issue. The disadvantage on the electric licenses safeguards method is just not networked people really need to manually remove your computer details, after which manually transfer subscription codes or even licenses, may not be convenient to use. On top of that, the actual domestic automated endorsement several of the designers with the products, which also limits a popularization and also campaign with electronic permission safeguard technological know-how.

Minute, it layer sector growth standing

A person. Security a lock

The main unusual dongle professional SafeNet, Inc. in the country as well as Australia Wibu.

Security tresses provider deep Supposrr que Luoke as well as Feitian. Both businesses due to the discount prices, the first one to create your intelligent minute card encryption tresses nearby well to be able to undertake a clear market place in the nation.

Only two. Digital acceptance

International business certified products and solutions to give electronic Flexera Application and also SafeNet which often, Flexera Applications are devoted to the realm of electronic digital agreement, this product's simplicity of use plus usefulness are accomplishing far better, though the expense of the item can also be very good.

A residential electric permission merchandise firm this China Biteansuo (BitAnswer), Shenzhen-use the actual (Euse) Safengine Corporation.

There are few companies will acquire his or her electrical consent plan, although the developers to cultivate their own programs normally are present the subsequent inquiries:

One) enhancing non-professionals, there are several loopholes inside stability

Two) is tough to obtain variable accreditation manage, management and mathematical functions very simple or virtually no

Several) could be introduced as a way to address the fast issue of short-term method, create far more than predicted in the future as a consequence of protection, stability along with scalability difficulties ongoing to pay

Four) are unable to fulfill market variations brought about by the revolutionary demands about software accreditation product

Application file encryption market developments

The program shield of encryption field developments is actually carefully involving the increase tendency with the software program business. Together with the interest in cloud computing and also Software, service of software package products and solutions will be alter in the way of the circle along with foundation. Used by the vast majority of software package builders, SaaS solutions will not solely save a great deal of hardware and software pay for and also servicing charges, you can also get requirement, although reducing the using chance, driving foundation providers to help continually develop solutions in addition to boost services for you to sustain shoppers.

For the roll-out of community in addition to system advancement can be another application shield of encryption technology fads. The scene about the present-day growth pattern, the actual shield of encryption secure technologies have created very experienced publication rack drawing near vividness, slowly growth. The lifetime and make use of in the hardware practice helps make shield of encryption curly hair are not able to take care of the velocity of development of online years, will be replaced by a electrical permit.

Electric agreement licence from very early sign up computer code sort to your feature-rich documents as modifications in technologies are considering authentication strategy coming from off-line yourself validate the growth of programmed community validation. Accepted control considering particularly, the electric licenses know-how from a single software package licence qualification development just as one authorized certification, consent management plus stats facts, along with other aim of equally, considerably elevated this sanctioned degree of details pertaining to program web developers.

Might forecast not able to consumer electronics accredited merchandise should have the subsequent principal features:

Good authorized managing podium: made available from third-party protection skilled software package programmers, in accordance with the Web's one-stop software package security and also permission operations foundation, without the need to install and sustain, affordable, easy-to-use.

Two Adaptable Licence: support the agreement of the purchaser software program as well as the cloud-computing model standard software package permission; approved press occasion, how many sensible web template modules; accepted so that you can hole the computer hardware and software data, encrypted sheild hair, and also using a user name and also private data verification way for consent.

Easy and warm and friendly buyer experience: in line with the World wide web, everywhere entry; Users could self serve buffet pay for, stimulate rrmprove the application, you can purchase their own software program to keep up-to-date with info; software program builders might discover more about application account activation details in addition to individual facts is usually synergies because of the individuals this company in order to complete the design of software licenses, implementation, supervision in addition to upkeep operate.

Five. Clouds licensing type: This is the cloud computing model of software program certification. Traditional software is natural purchaser rendering, permission can also be a purchaser. Whilst cloud computing could be the movement, though the transition difficult for common application will be a wonderful way for the certain amount of cloud-computing transformation. This definite realization regarding strategies, a common software program sanctioned shift in the buyer towards the cloud on the acceptance server, to make sure that small adjustments towards the software package, nevertheless, you can easily instantaneously have fun with the benefits associated with cloud-computing: higher security energy requirement to order foriegn safe-keeping .


http://www.passwordmanagers.net/products/Windows-Password-Recovery-Software-1.html Windows Password Recovery Software
Roshni  Mar 2014
Caveat Emptor
Roshni Mar 2014
Caveat emptor, buyer beware
Not everything is the way it seems-
You stole an assumption from me

Caveat emptor, buyer beware
My Innocence had gotten the best of me-
Countless imaginations about you, countless dreams

Caveat emptor, buyer beware
I felt betrayed even without commitment
I don’t know why but I thought you’d be an exception

Caveat emptor, buyer beware
A kiss on my cheek and venom on your lips
Vulnerability at its finest

Caveat emptor, buyer beware
I thought you had committed a sin,
But it was me who had wronged for I hadn’t realized-
Caveat emptor*, buyer beware
Logan Robertson Jul 2018
Behind the eight ball
she sits.
Resigned.
From her ****'s
leash,
she's lead.
Deadweight, she feels
his ways and ills,
like cattle, that's branded.
Best she hustles,
or be backhanded.
Once molded,
she learns to light up
Big Daddy's cigar
and bring him his pie loaded.
More cabbage to fill his gold baggage.
Sometimes he spares a small leaf for her.
Though times she short, his fist takes sport.
And every night
she plays for the band
of her john's,
singing their song,
while a thousand ****** of light
inches along all wrong.
The nameless, faceless and most relentless
getting their fill.
A flower in her wails loves not fear.
However, Big Daddy's eyes are always near.
She knows better than to run
past the pasture gates
onto verdant fields,
free as a bird,
without a home, money or vocation
and ever so fearful of Big Daddy's gun.
A flower in her wails loves not fears.
As she remembers those first tears.
A Big Daddy's indoctrination.
It started off on social media,
a whim
a fantasy went wrong.
Three nights her body violated,
Big Daddy's cavalry,
descending on her picnic,
wax and whips,
a thousand ****** of might,
and the scream of the night.
Coldcocked.
Say hello to the new ******* the block.
A flower in her wails loves not fears.
Her youth robbed as the days morph into years.
Like a blur.
The guise, the lure, the drugs, the fear.
The trap.
Eighteen young became twenty-four old.
A lost puppy to her folks back home.
And every lost night
she struts her Prada dress a little higher
Big Daddy has a buyer.

Logan Robertson

7/27/2018
To Desiree sixx  phoenix I read your poem, 304, regarding pimps. What strikes me are the 8.9k views and not one acknowledgment. How odd is that? I see shortly after, you quit writing here. I don't blame you.
I.

One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.

So I asked who she was.

‘A professional,’

That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten

there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and

oh, by the way, they worked.

Once I became aware,

I saw these women everywhere.

And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex



II.

She had a printer engrave a calling card

that featured a bird of paradise

borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern

and,
under it,

Alex’s Aviary,

Beautiful and Exotic birds.



A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:

pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes

and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.

Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled

the quintessential California girl

That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.





III.

The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,

as these things always are.

One of her girls took up with a rotter,

the couple had a fight,

he went to the police,

the police had an undercover detective visit

(who just happened to be an attractive woman)

and ask to work for her,

she all but embraced her

—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence

to charge her with two counts of pandering

and one of pimping.

For Alex, who is fifty-six

and has a heart condition and diabetes,

the stakes may be high.

A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.

For the forces of law and order,

the stakes may be higher.

Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena

every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.

And the revelations this might produce

—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen

by making girls available to them,

—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information

in exchange for their blind eye to her activities

—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.

For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,

for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends

and for a handful of movie and television executives

who have no idea they are dating or

married to former Alex girls,

the stakes are highest of all.



IV.

Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.

In her head are the ****** secrets

of many of the city’s most important men,

to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.

If she decides to warble,

either at her trial or in a book,

her song will shatter more than glass.





V.

A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,

There were supposed to have been ten people there,

but only four came.

One of them was a short woman

who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.

When I arrived, the table was set for two.

I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,

but she knew the important facts of my situation:

I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man

and doing the legal work myself

to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.


Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,

slender, flat-chested woman

—and I don’t have any.

It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.

There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,

sometimes in Europe.

The men will be elegant,

you’ll have your own room

—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.

And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.





VI.

The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette

didn’t think it was right for her.

Alex handed her a business card

and suggested that she think about it.

To her surprise, she did

—for an entire week.

This was 1978, and $20,000 then

was like $40,000 now,

I knew it was hooking,

but Alex had never mentioned ***.



Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.



VII.

I was born in Manila

to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,

and when I was twelve

a Japanese soldier came into our house

with his bayonet pointed at us,

ready to do us in.

He locked us in and set the house on fire.

I haven’t been scared by much since that.



My mother always struck me as goofy,

so I jumped on a bus and ran away,

I got off in Oakland,

saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,

and went in.

I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.

I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.

But I didn’t care.

It felt safe.

And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts

—in linen, in crystal.



A new priest arrived.

He was unpleasant,

so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,

still a teenager,

married a scientist.

We separated eight years later,

he took our two sons to another state

threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.

Keep them I said and hung up.

It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct

—though I don’t,

I just hate to be manipulated.



My second husband,

an alcoholic,

had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly

—I never knew for sure—

had a big career in the underworld

as a contract killer.

Years before we got serious,

he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,

She and her friends were so elegant

that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.

They were so fancy,

so smart

—and they knew incredible people,

like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day

just writing $5,000 checks to girls.



VIII.

I was a florist.

We got to talking.

She was a madam from England

who wanted to sell her book and go home.

I bought it for $5,000.

My husband thought it was cute.

Now you’re getting your feet wet.

Three months later,

he died.

After eleven years of marriage,

just like that.

And of the names in the book

it turned out

that half of the men were also dead.

When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.



IX.

It was like a lunch party you or I would give,

Great food Alex had cooked herself.

Major giggles with old pals.

And then,

instead of chocolate After Eight,

she served three women After Three



This man has seen a bit of life

beyond Los Angeles,

so I asked him how Alex’s stable

compared with that of Madam Claude,

the legendary Parisian procuress.

Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,

A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual

—you could take her to the opera

and she’d understand it.





He told me that when she was 40

she looked at herself in the mirror

and said

Disgusting.

People over 40

should not have ***.

But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It

even when she was young.

Besides, she saw all the street business

go to the tall,

beautiful girls.

She thought that she never had a chance

competing against them.

Instead,

she would take their money by managing them.





X.

Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.

It was before the pill;

Girls weren’t giving it away.

Claude specialized in

failed models and actresses,

ones who just missed the cut.

But just because they failed

in those impossible professions

didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,

fabulous.



Like Avis

in those days,

those girls tried harder.

Her place was off the Champs,

just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.

Once I met her,

I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.





XI.

We took the lift

and Claude greeted us at the door.

My impression was that of the director

of an haute couture house,

very subdued,

beige and gray, very little makeup.

She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,

Whiskey,

Cognac.

There was no maid.

We made small talk for 15 minutes.

How was the weekend?

What’s the weather like in Deauville?

Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’

She always used ‘jeunes filles.’

This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.

She left and soon returned

with two very tall

jeunes filles,

One was blonde.

This is Eva from Austria.

She’s here studying painting.

And a brunette,

very different,

but also very fine.

This is Claudia from Germany.

She’s a dancer.

She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.

I gave my English guest first choice.

He picked the blonde.

And wasn’t disappointed.

Each bedroom had its own bidet.

There was some nice

polite conversation, and then



It was slightly formal,

but it was high-quality.

He paid Claude

200 francs,

not to the girls

In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.

Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis

could be had for 40 francs

so you can see the premium.

Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.

You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.





XII.

A lot of them

were models at

Christian Dior

or other couture houses.

She liked Scandinavians.

That was the look then

—cold, tall, perfect.

It was cheap for the quality.

They all used her.

The best people wanted

the best women.

Elementary supply and demand.



XIII.

She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.

She showed it to me and Rubi.

She was proud she had survived.

We talked about the camp for hours.

It was even more fascinating than the girls.



She was Jewish

I’m certain of that.

She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators

at the camp who herded

their fellow Jews

into the gas chambers.

That was the greatest betrayal in her life.



XIV.

She was this sad,

lonely little woman.

Later, Patrick told me who she was.

I was bowled over.

It was like meeting Al Capone.

I met two of the girls

who worked for her.

One was what you would expect

Tall

Blonde

Model.

But the other looked like a Rat

Then one night

she came out

all dressed up,

I didn’t even recognize her.

She was even better than the first girl.

Claude liked to transform women like that.

That was her art.

It was very odd,

my cousin told me.

There was not much furniture

and an awful lot of telephones.

“Allô oui,”



XV.

I had so many lunches

with Claude at Ma Maison

She was vicious.

One day,

Margaux Hemingway,

at the height of her beauty, walked by.

Une bonne

—the French for maid

was how Claude cut her dead.

She reduced

the entire world

to rich men wanting *** and

poor women wanting money.

She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone

and say,

When I met her

she was called

Marlene

and she had a hideous nose

and now she’s a princess.

Or she’d see someone and say

Let’s see if she kisses me or not.

It was like

I made her,

and I can destroy her.

She was obsessed

with “fixing” people

—with Saint Laurent clothes,

with Cartier watches,

with Winston jewels,

with Vuitton luggage,

with plastic surgeons.



XVI.

Her prison number was

888

which was good luck in China

but not in California.

‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat

Even in jail, she was always working,

always recruiting stunning women.

She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate

and gave her Robert Evans’s number

as the first person she should call

when she was released.



XVII.

Never have *** on the first date.



XVIII.

There will always be prostitution,

The prostitution of misery.

And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.

They will both go on forever.



“Allô oui,”



It was so exciting to hear a millionaire

or a head of state ask,

in a little boy’s voice,

for the one thing

that only you could provide

It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate

--it's mostly dialogue.



She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.

The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!



XIX.

She was like a slave driver in the American South

Once she took a *******,

the makeover put the girl in debt,

because Claude paid all the bills to

Dior,

Vuitton,

to the hairdressers,

to the doctors,

and the girls had to work to pay them off.

It was ****** indentured servitude.



My Swans.



It reached the point

where if you walked into a room

in London

or Rome

as much as Paris

because the girls were transportable,

and saw a girl who was

better-dressed,

better-looking,

and more distinguished than the others

you presumed

it was a girl from Claude.

It was, without doubt,

the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.



**.

The girl had to be

exactly what was needed

so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.

I played a little the role of Pygmalion.

There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.

It consisted

at the start

of the physical aspect

“surgical intervention”

to give this way of being

that was different from other girls.

Often they had to be transformed

into dream creatures

because at the start

they were not at all



Often I had to teach them how to dress.

Often they needed help

to repair

what nature had given them

which was not so beautiful.

At first they had to be tall,

with pretty gestures,

good manners.

I had lots of noses done,

chins,

teeth,

*******.

There was a lot to do.



Eight times out of ten

I had to teach them how to behave in society.

There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,

and they needed to have conversation.

I insisted they learn to speak English,

read

certain books.

I interrogated them on what they read.

It wasn’t easy.

Each time something wasn’t working,

I was obliged to say so.



You were very demanding?

I was ferocious.



It’s difficult

to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s

without looking

ill at ease

when they’ve never been there,

to go into an airport,

to go to the Ritz,

or the Crillon

or the Dorchester.

To find yourself

in front of a king,

three princes,

four ministers,

and five ambassadors at an official dinner.

There were the wives of those people!

Day after day

one had to explain,

explain again,

start again.

It took about two years.

There would always be a man

who would then say of her,

‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”





XXI.

A New York publisher who visited

the Palace Hotel

in Saint Moritz

in the early seventies told me,

I met a whole bunch of them there.

They were lovely.

The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.

I remember it being said

Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.

You asked them where they came from and they all said

Neuilly.

Claude liked girls from good families.

More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.



I have known,

because of what I did,

some exceptional and fascinating men.

I’ve known some exceptional women too,

but that was less interesting

because I made them myself.



Ah, this question of the handbag.

You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.

Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.





XXII.

She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.



That was a difficult moment

When they arrived they were very shy,

a bit frightened.

At the beginning when I take a look,

it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette

and the gestures are pretty.

Then there was a disagreeable moment.

I said,

I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,

but I have to ask you to get undressed,

because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.

Believe me, I was embarrassed,

just as they were,

but it had to be done,

not out of voyeurism, not at all

—I don’t like les dames horizontales.



It was very funny

because there were always two reactions.

A young girl,

very sure of herself,

very beautiful,

très bien,

would say

Yes,

Get up, and get undressed.

There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.



There were those who

would start timidly

to take off their dress

and I would say

I knew already.

The rest is not sadism, but nearly.

I knew what I was going to find.

I would say,

Maybe you should take off your bra,

and I knew it wasn’t going to be

beautiful.

Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.

No problem.

There were damages that could be mended.

There were some ******* that could be redone,

some not

Sometimes it can be deceptive,

you know,

you see a pretty girl,

a pretty face,

all elegant and slim,

well dressed,

and when you see her naked

it is a catastrophe.



I could judge their physical qualities,

I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,

but I didn’t know how she was in bed.

So I had some boys,

good friends,

who told me exactly.

I would ring them up and say,

There’s a new one.

And afterwards they’d ring back and say,

Not bad,

Could be better, or

Nulle.



Or,

on the contrary,

She’s perfect.

And I would sometimes have to tell the girls

what they didn’t know.

A pleasant assignment?

No.

They paid.



XXIII.

Often at the beginning

they had an ami de coeur

in other words,

oh,

a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,

someone in the cinema,

an actor, not very well known.

As time went by

It became difficult

because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.

The fact of physically changing,

becoming prettier,

changing mentally to live with millionaires,

produced a certain imbalance

between them

and the little boyfriend

who had not evolved

and had stayed in his milieu.

At the end of a certain time

she would say,

I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?

And they would break up by themselves.



Remember,

this was instant elevation.

For most of them it was a dream existence,

provided they liked the ***,

and those that didn’t never lasted long.

A lot of the clients were young,

and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.

They would buy you presents,

take you on trips.



XXIV.

For me, *** was something very accessoire

I think after a certain age

there are certain spectacles one should not give to others

Now I have a penchant for solitude.

Love, it’s a complete destroyer,

It’s impossible,

a horror,

l’angoisse.

It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.

I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.

He was jealous too.

We broke plates over each other’s heads;

we became jealous about each other’s pasts.

I said one day

It’s finished.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:

Break my legs,

give me scarlet fever,

an attack of TB, but never that.

Not that.



XXV.

I called her into my office

Let us not exaggerate,

I sent her away.

She came back looking for employment,

but was fired again, this time for drugs.

She made menacing phone calls.

Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.

She shot three bullets

I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment

He did very padded things.

I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.

The bullet

—merci, Monsieur Courrèges

—stuck in the padding.

I was thrown forward onto the telephone.

I had one thought which went through my head:

I will die like Kennedy.

I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.

The second bullet went through my hand.

I have two dead fingers.

It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.

In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet

because she was very tall

and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.



XXVI.

There were men

who could decapitate,

****, and bomb their rivals

who would be frightened of me.

I would ask them how was the girl,

and they’d say

Not bad

and then

But I’m not complaining.

I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.

Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.

But I’ve known them all.

I had them all

here.



She will take many state secrets with her.



XXVI.

I don’t like ugly people

probably because when I was young

I wasn’t beautiful at all.

I was ugly and I suffered for it,

although not to the point of obsession.

Now that I’m an old woman,

I’m not so bad.

And that’s why

I’ve always been surrounded by people

Who

were

beautiful.

And the best way to have beautiful people around me

was to make them.

I made them very pretty.





XXVII.

I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you

‘advice,’

She spares you Nothing.

She makes a list of what she wants done,

and she really gets into it

I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.

She gives you names of people who do good facials.

She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.

She’s put off by anything flashy,

and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,

in front of an audience,

You look like a cheap *****!

I used to wear what I wanted when I went out

then change in the car into a frumpy sweater

when I went to give her the money she’d always go,

Oh, you look beautiful!



Marry your boyfriend,

It’s better than going to prison.

When you go out with her,

she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.

And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.

It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month

and say they need rent money.

She wants to see you do well.





We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,

what he liked,

the names of the girls he’d seen,

and how long he’d been with them.

And I only hired girls who had another career

—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous

and beautiful-and-interesting,

they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.

These men wanted to talk.

If they spent two hours with a girl,

they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.



I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.



XXVIII.

That was my big idea

Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing

but to make sure that nobody

mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.

And I kept my roster fresh.

This was not a business where you peddle your ***,

get exploited,

and then are cast off.

I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.

I let the men know:

no violence,

no costumes,

no fudge-packing.

And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:

Two and a half years and you’re burned out.

Save your money.

This is like a hangar

—you come in, refuel, and take off.

It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.

This buys the singing lessons,

the dancing lessons,

the glossies.

This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.

It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.



XXIX.

To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.



Une femme terrible.

She despised men and women alike.

Men were wallets. Women were holes.



By the 80s,

if you were a brunette,

the sky was the limit.

The Saudis

They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,

ignore them all evening while they

chatted,

ate,

and played cards,

and then, around midnight,

take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.



They’d order women up like pizza.



Since my second husband died,

I only met one man who was right for me,

He was a sheikh.

I visited him in Europe

twenty-eight times

in the five years I knew him

and I never slept with him.

He’d say

I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,

but he introduced me

by phone

to all his powerful friends.

When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.

That’s why I never went out

he would have been disappointed.



***.

Listen to me

This is a woman’s business.

When a woman does it, it’s fun

there’s a giggle in it

when a man’s involved,

he’s ******,

he’s a ****.

He may know how to keep girls in line,

and he may make money,

but he doesn’t know what I do.

I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.

She’s young,

She’s pleasant,

She can do things

she can certainly make love.

She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.



The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.

An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.

Pina Colapinto

A petite call girl,

who once slid between the sheets of royalty,

a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.

They really dolled her up

She looks great.

Never!

What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’





XXXI.

Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.

Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,

where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery

We all held her hand when they took her off the life support

This was the passing of a legend.

Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.

She was one of the richest women on earth.

The world came to her.

She never had to leave the house.

She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.


It's like losing a friend

In all the years we played cat and mouse,

she never once tried to corrupt me.

We had a lot of fun.


To those who knew her

she was as constant

as she was colorful

always ready with a good tidbit of gossip

and a gourmet lunch for two.

She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,

from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,

surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,

which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.



XXXII.

She stole my business,

my books,

my girls,

my guys.

I had a good run.

My creatures.

Make Mommy happy

Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.



She was, how can I say it,

classy.

When she first hired me

she thought I was too young to take her case.

I was 43.

I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.

She was right.





XXXIII.

I was fond of Heidi

But she has a streak that is so vindictive.



If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.





XXXIV.

I was born and raised in L.A.

My dad was a famous pediatrician.

When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.



I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings

pretty early,

and I think that she met some people

who sort of took all her potential

and gave it a sharp turn



She knew nothing.

She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.



Alex and I had a very intense relationship;

I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,

so she was abusive and loving at the same time.



Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did

but it's like this:

What took her years to build,

I built in one.

The high end is the high end,

and no one has a higher end than me.

In this business, no one steals clients.

There's just better service.



XXXV.

You were not allowed to have long hair

You were not allowed to be too pretty

You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous

Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.

And then she loses the business



XXXVI.

I was pursued because

come on

in our lifetime,

we will never see another girl of my age

who lived the way I did,

who did what I did so quickly,

I made so many enemies.

Some people had been in this line of business

for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,

and I came in and cornered the market.

Men don't like that.

Women don't like that.

No one liked it.



I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.

I was doing this 500-hour drug class

and one day the teacher showed us this video,

called something like Make It Happen.

Usually in class I would bring a notebook

and write a letter to my brother or my journal,

but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention

and I understood everything she said.

It hit me and it changed me a lot.

It made me feel,

Accept yourself for who you are.

I saw a deeper meaning in it

but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!



XXXVII.

Hello, Gina!

You movie star!

Yes you are!

Gina G!

Hello my friend,

Hello my friend,

Hello my movie star,

Ruby! Ruby Boobie!

Braaawk!

Except so many women say,

Come on, Heidi

you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.

It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,

and I'll make it really nice,

like the Beverly Hills Hotel

It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.

The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.

Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.



I said, Joe! What are you doing?

You gotta get, like,

a garter belt and encase it in something

and write,

This belonged to Suzette Whatever,

who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.

Get, like, some weird tools and write,

These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,

you know what I mean?

Just make some **** up!

So I came out here to do some research

And then I realized,

What am I doing?

I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.

I can do this.

When I was doing my research, in three months

I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre

to 50 thousand an acre,

and then it was going for 70K!

It's urban sprawl

—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.

Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,

prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.





XXXVIII.

The truth is

deep down inside,

I just can't do business with him

He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents

and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.

It's not my style at all.

Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?

It was different at my age when I

at least...come on, I lived really well.

I was 22,

25 at the time?

It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want

to deal with all that *******

—the girls and blah blah blah.

But the money was really good.



I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind

if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.

It's hard-core; how I live;

It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me

It's hard to get anything done because

It’s so time-consuming.

I feel like they're good luck though....

I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,

I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life

and nothing I do will ever work again.



Guys kind of are a hindrance to me

Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.

But a man is not a priority in my life.

I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.



XXXIX.

I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9

And soon all the parents in the neighborhood

wanted me to watch over their children.

Even then I had an innate business sense.

I started farming out my friends

to meet the demand.

My mother showered me with love and my father,

a pediatrician,

would ask me at the dinner table,

What did you learn today?

I ran my neighborhood.

I just pick up a hustle really easily,

I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.



Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina

in a transparent muu muu.

We hit it off.

I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.

It's in and out,

over and out.

Do you think some big-time producer

or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?



Columbia Pictures executive says:

I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.

Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.

I hope I'm on it.

If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough

for people to gossip about me.



That's right ladies and gentlemen.

I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!

If you live out here,

you've got to hate people.

You've got to be pretty antisocial

How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?

That's Fred.

He's digging to China.

You look good.

Yeah, you too.

It's coming along here.

Yeah, it is.

I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?

That's mine, man! That's all me.

Really?

I thought there was a lot between us.

No. We're neighbors.



He's a cute guy

He's entertaining.

See, I kind of did do something shady to him.

I thought my property went all the way back

and butted up against his.

But there was one lot between us right there.

He said he was buying it,

but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,

So I went and called the broker and said,

I'm an all-cash buyer.

So I really bought it out from under him.

But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.

Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice

All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out

and it'll be a nice area.

They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.

Like this guy here,

someone needs to **** him.

I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world

He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.

It's just, people are destroying it.

I’m looking into green building options

I don't want anything polluting,

I want a huge auditorium,

but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!

Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.

There were over 300 birds in there!

That lady,

She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,

which is a huge job.

She called me once at 3:30 in the morning

Come over here and help me feed this baby!

Some baby parrot.

And I ran over there in my pajamas

—I knew there was something else wrong

and she was like

Get me my oxygen!

Get me this, get me that.

I called my dad; he was like,

I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.

They ended up getting a helicopter.

And they were taking her away

in the wind with her IV and blood and everything

and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.

And she dies the next day.

She was just a super-duper person.



XL.

I relate to the lifestyle she had before,

Now, I'm just a citizen.

I'm clean,

I'm sober,

I'm married,

I work at Wal-Mart.

I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes

and we relate.





I got out in 2000,

so I've been sending her money for seven years

She was…whatever.

Girlfriend?

Yeah, maybe.

But ***, I tried like two times,

and I'm just not gay.

She gets out in about eight or nine months

and I told her I would get her a house.

But nowhere near me.

I didn't touch her,

but I'd be, like...

a funny story:

I told her,

Don't you ever ******* think

about contacting me in the real world.

I'm not a lesbian.

Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,

or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'

So I Googled her name,

and she has this huge company.

Huge!

She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.

So I called her and I go,

Not bad.

She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'

I go, '****, I should've called you more names

you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.



XLI.

No person shall be employed by the licensee

who has ever been convicted of

a felony involving moral turpitude

But I qualify,

I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.

Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.

You've got to be hustling.

Nighttime is really enchanting here

It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is

I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.

Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said

people can adjust to anything.

I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,

and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.



We had done those drug addiction shows together

Dr. Drew.

Afterward we were friendly

and he'd call me every now and then.

He'd act like he had his stuff together.

But it was all a lie.

Everything is a lie.

I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.

He was just such a mess.

So out of it.

He stole money from my purse.

He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.

He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.

This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,

He told me that’s his favorite actress.

Better than Meryl Streep.



XLII.

The cops could see

why these women were taking over trade.

Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.

The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.

One thing they are not is lazy.

In the USSR

they grew up with no religion, no morality.

Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.

In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.

That’s why it’s exploding here.

What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.

These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.

They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.

The madam who organized this raid

was making $4 million a year,

laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City

These are brutal people.

They are all backstabbers.

They’re entrepreneurs.

They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.

For them, that’s the American dream.



XLIII.

If you’re not into something,

don’t be into it

But,

if you want to take some whipped cream,

put it between your toes,

have your dog licking it up and,

at the same time,

have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,

then that’s fine.

That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.



She was my best friend then

and I consider her one of my best friends now,

because when I was going through Riker’s

and everyone abandoned me,

including my boyfriend,

I was hysterical,

crying,

and she was the one that was there.

And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,

that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of

loyalty, respect, and love for her.

And if she’s going to prison for eight years

—that’s what she’s sentenced for

—I’ll go there,

and I’ll go there every week,

for eight years.

That’s the type of person I am.
Photography,
Photo journalistic,
Everyday, realistic.

Commercial, architecture, landscape, artistic,
Industrial, fashion, ethnographic, pornographic.

Big Brother, fallace, stealer of souls, vouyer.
News seller, instant gratifier, man pleaser, woman abuser.

Barthes, Sontag, Cindy Sherman,
Virginia Woolf, Warhol. Weegie, Francesca Woodman,
Leibovitz, Adams, Arbus, Tina Modotti,
Nan, Evans, Hoffer and even the Paparazzi.

Cheap *****, digital manipulator, image poser,
Center fold, coupons, Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe.
Where did they go:

Lifeless paper product, painter's picture mess,
C-type, digital archival,
Sepia, black and white, hard drive retrival.

Image addict,
Image taker,
Image maker,
image seller,
image buyer.

Newspaper, magazine, graphics and ads,
TV, dreams, even the trash.

Billboards, subways, phones and buses:

Utopia:
Surreal, crop, stretched and air brushes.

Modern ideal.
Surface manipulator.
Brain conditioner.
Consent manufacturer.

Oh Photography,
I got you in my eye.
A few thousand dollars,
A BFA, A critical scholar.

Or maybe a nerd,
Just boys with toys.
Telephoto genitals, with motor drive action.
Studio lights, umbrella traction.

Oh Photography,
You proprietor of obscene.
Detailed, de-sensitized.
Court ordered, jury analyzed.

Click, image, copy, edit, paste, print or post.
Myfacespace, twitter, flicker,
An internet media overdose.

Pry, spy, your friend's friend's acquaintances.
Parties, picnics, reunions and shows.
Visits, vacation, style, shoes and clothes.


Pics, photos, images, jpegs and giffs.
Snap shot, portrait, panoramic, Kodak kiss.

Exacerbate:
Divorce, break-ups, jealousy, envy, love and fears.
Devour and captivate society for years.

Slaves to Western and Capitalist desires,
Destruction of Earth with psychological, monetary empires.
judy smith Apr 2017
It’s the tail end of fashion week in Paris, the busiest week of the year for fashion buyers.

When I meet Clodagh Shorten, owner of Samui, the game-changing boutique that put Cork on the fashion map, she’s already been here four days and is on her tenth buying appointment — there’ll be at least another five before she leaves in a couple of days time.

These appointments, private bookings with designers, allow her to get up close and personal with the clothes that have just been showcased on catwalks.

She’s deciding which pieces will best suit her customers.

Today, we meet at Schumacher, the stunning German label known for its easy chic look.

A beautiful white space, with lush cream velvet sofas, bare walls and white rails (nothing here to distract from the main event — the clothes), this room, prime space in Paris, is rented by the designer year-round just so they have the right venue to sell at Fashion Week.

It gives some indication of the power Fashion Week wields.

Clodagh is here with her right-hand woman, Samui manager Mary-Claire O’Sullivan.

There are two rails — the keepers and the ‘ones that got away’.

They’ve already seen this collection in London.

Today they are here to fine-tune.

This is unusual, Mary-Claire explains — at most appointments, they are seeing the clothes for the very first time.

“This is a big spend,” they tell me, and they’ll stay as long as they need “to get it right”.

Piecing together a collection is something akin to a jigsaw puzzle.

All the items are photographed — later they will be analysed back in the apartment they rent during Fashion Week.

The mix has to be right.

So the coats, a sleeveless waistcoat, are moved to the rail on the right.

They won’t make it to Cork.

Coats were already picked up this morning at another appointment.

Like I said, a jigsaw puzzle.

Two models are on hand to try on clothes when requested — I hear ‘can I just see this on one more time’ a lot.

There’s no haggling over prices in these sales negotiations — it’s all too civilised.

The price is set, as is the instore mark-up. These lauded designs must cost the same the world over.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire share a language and a wavelength. They can finish each other’s sentences and, while I don’t so much as sniff a hint of tension, they tell me they can disagree on buys.

“Clodagh doesn’t want a yes woman,” Mary-Claire says simply.

From Schumacher, Clodagh leads the way through the Parisian cobbled streets, phone held aloft, Google Maps to direct her.

Her wheelie bag is constantly behind her — inside there’s the laptop for orders and a camera for instant access to photographs of collections.

Her calculator is another permanent fixture in the showroom.

Today, Clodagh is dressed in an Australian label coming soon to Samui, Ellery. The lush black fabric sways and moves with her body; an outfit like that makes you really appreciate her eye for fashion. It’s sensational.

For this 5.30pm appointment we are heading to see another new label for Samui — Paskal (Clodagh will wear a piece from this line tomorrow).

The Ukrainian designer is looked after by an agency so in this showroom there are pieces by a handful of brands.

Again, the setup is the same — private appointments, models on hand.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire have to be more careful here — this is a new label and it’s more fashion forward so black is prioritised.

Not every client at Samui will wear this line. Every purchase, I realise, is a gamble.

“We’ve made mistakes, of course we have,” says Mary-Claire though you get the feeling that could be a rare event.

Pieces bought by these two women rarely end up in Samui’s sales rack.

They know their customer, plain and simple.

There is so much trust there, some clients are simply sent collections each season, allowing Clodagh to make the call for them.

So much of their day is spent discussing various clients (never by name in my presence) — what they might like, the best size.

It is effectively the ultimate personal shopping experience.

The number of items and sizes are limited, so customers know they are truly getting one-off pieces.

As we leave, kisses over, the agency head tells them, “you’re our favourites” and you just know it’s not empty fashion talk.

People genuinely love Clodagh and Mary-Claire. And they respect what they do.

Samui is open 16 years now. Clodagh mastered her trade at Monica John before stepping out on her own. Mary-Claire joined her eight years ago.

It has been one of the few boutiques in Cork to not just survive the downturn but to positively thrive.

As the economy spluttered around her, Clodagh very masterfully decided to go high end.

First came Moncler — the top people here had to come and view Samui to see if it was the right match for their esteemed label.

It was — and, increasingly, doors began to open.

Carven, Marni, Rick Owens — people really began to sit up and take notice of Samui.

Now labels are often vying for space on the shop floor. Still though, it takes work to secure the big new names.

Clodagh spends a lot of time on planes, networking, meeting the key players. And it’s not as simple as a visit to Fashion Week twice a year either.

These days pre-collections are key too: these pieces will be on the shop floor for longer.

So Clodagh and Mary-Claire travel in January to Paris for pre- collections, Milan in February for Moncler, Paris in March. The same cycle begins again in June for A/W pre-collections, with S/S Fashion Week in September.

Clodagh is always pushing, always striving for new.

She was devastated to say farewell to Transit, the brand with her from the very beginning. It was simply time for a change she tells me.

They love seeking out new labels, nurturing them, sharing them with their customers.

The next morning we meet at 9am for Dries van Noten.

Clodagh stocks around 50 different labels, most exclusive to Cork. This Belgian designer is one of them.

Here again is a very fashion forward line.

There’s a minimum €20,000 spend here, and that’s the amount Clodagh and Mary-Claire can play with.

This is a much busier showroom, a slick operation. Buyers are everywhere, the models weaving between them.

They are assigned a seller and a table, laptop at the ready to secure the sale.

Sophie, today’s seller, walks them through the long rails and talks to them about the collection, the fabrics, the colour, the catwalk, the vision.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire repeat the process a second time alone, a third time again with Sophie.

There are little standing breaks for coffee — refreshments and lunch are provided by the designer.

Clodagh and Mary-Claire know to carry snacks everywhere. The buying process can be a long one; Dries could be an all-day event.

The price point is much higher here so, again, each piece has to be carefully thought out. Checked and checked again.

These A/W deliveries will land in store in July.

Watching them make their Samui edit on that March morning, I just know the Dries selection will be a show-stopper this Autumn.

I leave them to sign on the dotted line, wishing them success for the rest of their gruelling schedule as I head for Charles de Gaulle.

“People don’t realise what goes into this,” says Clodagh. And she’s right.

None of us can possibly grasp what it must have taken for one woman to put Cork on the fashion radar.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses
Michael R Burch Sep 2020
Urdu Poetry: English Translations



You will never comprehend me:
I pour out my feelings; you only read the words!
―original poet unknown, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Tears are colorless―thank God!―
otherwise my pillow might betray my heart.
―original poet unknown, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Near Sainthood
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

On the subject of mystic philosophy, Ghalib,
your words might have struck us as deeply profound ...
Hell, we might have pronounced you a saint,
if only we hadn't found
you drunk
as a skunk!

There are more English translations of poems by Mirza Ghalib later on this page.



Every Once in a While
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every once in a while,
immersed in these muggy nights
when all earth’s voices seem to have fallen
into the bruised-purple silence of half-sleep,
I awaken from a wonderful dream
to see through the veil that drifts between us
that you too are companionless and wide awake.



First Rendezvous
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This story of the earth
is as old as the universe,
as old as the birth
of the first day and night.

This story of the sky
is included in the words we casually uttered,
you and I,
and yet it remains incomplete, till the end of sight.

This earth and all the scenes it contains
remain witnesses to the moment
when you first held my hand
as we watched the world unfolding, together.

This world
became the focus
for the first rendezvous
between us.



Impossible and Improbable Visions
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eyes interpret visions,
rainbow auras waver;
similar scenes appear
different to individual eyes,
as innumerable oases
coexist in one desert
or a single thought acquires
countless shapes.



I Have to Find My Lost Star
by Amjad Islam Amjad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Searching the emptiest of skies
overflowing with innumerable stars,
I have to find the one
that belongs
to me.

...

Gazing at galaxies beyond galaxies,
all glorious with evolving wonder,
I ponder her name,
finding no sign to remember.

...

Lost things, they say,
are sometimes found
in the same accumulations of dust
where they once vanished.

I have to find the lost star
that belongs to me.



Last Night
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your memory stole into my heart―
as spring sweeps uninvited into barren gardens,
as morning breezes reinvigorate dormant deserts,
as a patient suddenly feels better, for no apparent reason ...

There are more English translations of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz later on this page.



Intimacy
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I held the Sun, Stars and Moon at a distance
till the time your hands touched mine.
Now I am not a feather to be easily detached:
instruct the hurricanes and tornados to observe their limits!

There are more English translations of poems by Rahat Indori later on this page.



Strange Currents
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

O Khusrow, the river of love
creates strange currents—
the one who would surface invariably drowns,
while the one who submerges, survives.

There are more English translations of poems by Amir Khusrow later on this page.



The Eager Traveler
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Even in the torture chamber, I was the lucky one;
when each lottery was over, unaccountably I had won.

And even the mightiest rivers found accessible refuge in me;
though I was called an arid desert, I turned out to be the sea.

And how sweetly I remember you—oh, my wild, delectable love!—
as the purest white blossoms bloom, on talented branches above.

And while I’m half-convinced that folks adore me in this town,
still, all the hands I kissed held knives and tried to shake me down.

You lost the battle, my coward friend, my craven enemy,
when, to victimize my lonely soul, you sent a despoiling army.

Lost in the wastelands of vast love, I was an eager traveler,
like a breeze in search of your fragrance, a vagabond explorer.

There are more English translations of poems by Ahmad Faraz later on this page.



The Condition of My Heart
by Munir Niazi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is not necessary for anyone else to get excited:
The condition of my heart is not the condition of hers.
But were we to receive any sort of good news, Munir,
How spectacular compared to earth's mundane sunsets!

There are more English translations of poems by Munir Niazi later on this page.



Failures
by Nida Fazli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I was unable to relate
the state
of my heart to her,
while she failed to infer
the nuances
of my silences.



Apni Marzi se
by Nida Fazli Shayari
translated by Mandakini Bhattacherya and Michael R. Burch

This journey was not of my making;
As the winds blow, I’m blown along ...
Time and dust are my ancient companions;
Who knows where I’m bound or belong?

There are more English translations of poems by Nida Fazli later on this page.



My Apologies, Sona
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My apologies, Sona,
if traversing my verse's terrain
in these torrential rains
inconvenienced you.

The monsoons are unseasonal here.

My poems' pitfalls are sometimes sodden.
Water often overflows these ditches.
If you stumble and fall here, you run the risk
of spraining an ankle.

My apologies, however,
if you were inconvenienced
because my dismal verse lacks light,
or because my threshold's stones
interfered as you passed.

I have often cracked toenails against them!

As for the streetlamp at the intersection,
it remains unlit ... endlessly indecisive.

If you were inconvenienced,
you have my heartfelt apologies!

There are more English translations of poems by Gulzar later on this page.



Come As You Are
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come as you are, forget appearances!
Is your hair untamable, your part uneven, your bodice unfastened? Never mind.
Come as you are, forget appearances!

Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.
If your feet glisten with dew, if your anklets slip, if your beaded necklace slides off? Never mind.
Skip with quicksilver steps across the grass.

Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?
Flocks of cranes erupt from the riverbank, fitful gusts ruffle the fields, anxious cattle tremble in their stalls.
Do you see the clouds enveloping the sky?

You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.
Who will care that your eyelids have not been painted with lamp-black, when your pupils are darker than thunderstorms?
You loiter in vain over your toilet lamp; it flickers and dies in the wind.

Come as you are, forget appearances!
If the wreath lies unwoven, who cares? If the bracelet is unfastened, let it fall. The sky grows dark; it is late.
Come as you are, forget appearances!



Unfit Gifts
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

At sunrise, I cast my nets into the sea,
dredging up the strangest and most beautiful objects from the depths ...
some radiant like smiles, some glittering like tears, others flushed like brides’ cheeks.
When I returned, staggering under their weight, my love was relaxing in her garden, idly tearing leaves from flowers.
Hesitant, I placed all I had produced at her feet, silently awaiting her verdict.
She glanced down disdainfully, then pouted: "What are these bizarre things? I have no use for them!"
I bowed my head, humiliated, and thought:
"Truly, I did not contend for them; I did not purchase them in the marketplace; they are unfit gifts for her!"
That night I flung them, one by one, into the street, like refuse.
The next morning travelers came, picked them up and carted them off to exotic countries.



The Seashore Gathering
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On the seashores of endless worlds, earth's children converge.
The infinite sky is motionless, the restless waters boisterous.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children gather to dance with joyous cries and pirouettes.
They build sand castles and play with hollow shells.
They weave boats out of withered leaves and laughingly float them out over the vast deep.
Earth's children play gaily on the seashores of endless worlds.
They do not know, yet, how to cast nets or swim.
Divers fish for pearls and merchants sail their ships, while earth's children skip, gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They are unaware of hidden treasures, nor do they know how to cast nets, yet.
The sea surges with laughter, smiling palely on the seashore.
Death-dealing waves sing the children meaningless songs, like a mother lullabying her baby's cradle.
The sea plays with the children, smiling palely on the seashore.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children meet.
Tempests roam pathless skies, ships lie wrecked in uncharted waters, death wanders abroad, and still the children play.
On the seashores of endless worlds there is a great gathering of earth's children.



This Dog
by Rabindranath Tagore
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each morning this dog,
who has become quite attached to me,
sits silently at my feet
until, gently caressing his head,
I acknowledge his company.

This simple recognition gives my companion such joy
he shudders with sheer delight.

Among all languageless creatures
he alone has seen through man entire—
has seen beyond what is good or bad in him
to such a depth he can lay down his life
for the sake of love alone.

Now it is he who shows me the way
through this unfathomable world throbbing with life.

When I see his deep devotion,
his offer of his whole being,
I fail to comprehend ...

How, through sheer instinct,
has he discovered whatever it is that he knows?

With his anxious piteous looks
he cannot communicate his understanding
and yet somehow has succeeded in conveying to me
out of the entire creation
the true loveworthiness of man.



Being
by Momin Khan Momin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You are so close to me
that no one else ever can be.

NOTE: There is a legend that the great Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib offered all his diwan (poetry collections) in exchange for this one sher (couplet) by Momin Khan Momin. Does the couplet mean "be as close" or "be, at all"? Does it mean "You are with me in a way that no one else can ever be?" Or does it mean that no one else can ever exist as truly as one's true love? Or does this sher contain an infinite number of elusive meanings, like love itself?



Being (II)
by Momin Khan Momin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You alone are with me when I am alone.
You are beside me when I am beside myself.
You are as close to me as everyone else is afar.
You are so close to me that no one else ever can be.



Perhaps
by Momin Khan Momin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The cohesiveness between us, you may remember or perhaps not.
Our solemn oaths of faithfulness, you may remember, or perhaps forgot.
If something happened that was not to your liking,
the shrinking away that produces silence, you may remember, or perhaps not.
Listen, the sagas of so many years, the promises you made amid time's onslaught,
which you now fail to mention, you may remember or perhaps not.
These new resentments, those often rehashed complaints,
these lighthearted and displeasing stories, you may remember, or perhaps forgot.
Some seasons ago we shared love and desire, we shared joy ...
That we once were dear friends, you may have perhaps forgot.
Now if we come together, by fate or by chance, to express old loyalties ...
Our every shared breath, all our sighs and regrets, you may remember, or perhaps not.



What Happened to Them?
by Nasir Kazmi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Those who came ashore, what happened to them?
Those who sailed away, what happened to them?

Those who were coming at dawn, when dawn never arrived ...
Those caravans en route, what happened to them?

Those I awaited each night on moonless paths,
Who were meant to light beacons, what happened to them?

Who are these strangers surrounding me now?
All my lost friends and allies, what happened to them?

Those who built these blazing buildings, what happened to them?
Those who were meant to uplift us, what happened to them?

NOTE: This poignant poem was written about the 1947 partition of India into two nations: India and Pakistan. I take the following poem to be about the aftermath of the division.



Climate Change
by Nasir Kazmi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The songs of our silenced lips are different.
The expressions of our regretful hearts are different.

In milder climes our grief was more tolerable,
But the burdens we bear now are different.

O, walkers of awareness's road, keep your watch!
The obstacles strewn on this stony path are different.

We neither fear separation, nor desire union;
The anxieties of my rebellious heart are different.

In the first leaf-fall only flowers fluttered from twigs;
This year the omens of autumn are different.

This world lacks the depth to understand my heartache;
Please endow me with melodies, for my cry is different!

One disconcerting glance bared my being;
Now in barren fields my visions are different.

No more troops, nor flags. Neither money, nor fame.
The marks of the monarchs on this land are different.

Men are not martyred for their beloveds these days.
The youths of my youth were so very different!



Nasir Kazmi Couplets

When I was a child learning to write
my first scribblings were your name.
―Nasir Kazmi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When my feet lost the path
where was your hand?
―Nasir Kazmi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everything I found is yours;
everything I lost is also yours.
―Nasir Kazmi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Memory
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, as performed by Iqbal Bano
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In the wastelands of solitude, my love,
the echoes of your voice quiver,
the mirages of your lips waver.

In the deserts of alienation,
out of the expanses of distance and isolation's debris
the fragrant jasmines and roses of your presence delicately blossom.

Now from somewhere nearby,
the warmth of your breath rises,
smoldering forth an exotic perfume―gently, languorously.

Now far-off, across the distant horizon,
drop by shimmering drop,
fall the glistening dews of your beguiling glances.

With such tenderness and affection—oh my love!—
your memory has touched my heart's cheek so that it now seems
the sun of separation has set; the night of blessed union has arrived.



Speak!
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Speak, if your lips are free.
Speak, if your tongue is still your own.
While your body is still upright,
Speak if your life is still your own.



Tonight
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not strike the melancholy chord tonight! Days smoldering
with pain in the end produce only listless ashes ...
and who the hell knows what the future may bring?
Last night’s long lost, tomorrow's horizon’s a wavering mirage.
And how can we know if we’ll see another dawn?
Life is nothing, unless together we make it ring!
Tonight we are love gods! Sing!

Do not strike the melancholy chord tonight!
Don’t harp constantly on human suffering!
Stop complaining; let Fate conduct her song!
Give no thought to the future, seize now, this precious thing!
Shed no more tears for temperate seasons departed!
All sighs of the brokenhearted soon weakly dissipate ... stop dithering!
Oh, do not strike the same flat chord again! Sing!



When Autumn Came
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So it was that autumn came to flay the trees,
to strip them ****,
to rudely abase their slender dark bodies.

Fall fell in vengeance on the dying leaves,
flung them down to the floor of the forest
where anyone could trample them to mush
undeterred by their sighs of protest.

The birds that herald spring
were exiled from their songs—
the notes ripped from their sweet throats,
they plummeted to the earth below, undone
even before the hunter strung his bow.

Please, gods of May, have mercy!
Bless these disintegrating corpses
with the passion of your resurrection;
allow their veins to pulse with blood again.

Let at least one tree remain green.
Let one bird sing.



Last Night (II)
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Last night, your lost memory returned ...
as spring steals silently into barren gardens,
as cool breezes stir desert sands,
as an ailing man suddenly feels better, for no apparent reason ...

There are more English translations of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz later on this page.



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Not the blossomings of songs nor the adornments of music:
I am the voice of my own heart breaking.

You toy with your long, dark curls
while I remain captive to my dark, pensive thoughts.

We congratulate ourselves that we two are different
but this weakness has burdened us both with inchoate grief.

Now you are here, and I find myself bowing—
as if sadness is a blessing, and longing a sacrament.

I am a fragment of sound rebounding;
you are the walls impounding my echoes.



The Mistake
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All your life, O Ghalib,
You kept repeating the same mistake:
Your face was *****
But you were obsessed with cleaning the mirror!



Inquiry
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The miracle of your absence
is that I found myself endlessly searching for you.



It's Only My Heart!
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s only my heart, not unfeeling stone,
so why be dismayed when it throbs with pain?
It was made to suffer ten thousand darts;
why let one more torment impede us?

There are more English translations of poems by Mirza Ghalib later on this page.



Couplets
by Jaun Elia
loose translations by Michael R. Burch

I am strange—so strange
that I self-destructed and don't regret it.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The wound is deep—companions, friends—embrace me!
What, did you not even bother to stay?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My nature is so strange
that today I felt relieved when you didn't arrive.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Night and day I awaited myself;
now you return me to myself.
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Greeting me this cordially,
have you so easily erased my memory?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your lips have provided thousands of answers;
so what is the point of complaining now?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Perhaps I haven't fallen in love with anyone,
but at least I convinced them!
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The city of mystics has become bizarre:
everyone is wary of majesty, have you heard?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Did you just say "Love is eternal"?
Is this the end of us?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You are drawing very close to me!
Have you decided to leave?
―Jaun Elia, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Intimacy
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I held the Sun, Stars and Moon at a distance
till the time your hands touched mine.
Now I am not a feather to be easily detached:
instruct the hurricanes and tornados to observe their limits!



The Mad Moon
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Stars have a habit of showing off,
but the mad moon sojourns in darkness.



Body Language
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your body’s figures are written in cursive!
How will I read you? Hand me the book!



Insatiable
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This mighty ocean, so deep and vast!
If it sates my thirst, how long can it last?



Honor
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Achievements may fade but the name remains strong;
walls may buckle but the roof stays on.
On a pile of corpses a child stands alone
and declares that his family still lives on!



Dust in the Wind
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This is how I introduce myself to questioners:
Pick up a handful of dust, then blow ...



Dissembler
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In your eyes this, in your heart that, on your lips something else?
If this is how you are, impress someone else!



Rumor (M)ill
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I heard rumors my health was bad; still
it was prying people who made me ill.



The Vortex
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am the river whose rapids form a vortex;
You were wise to avoid my banks.



Homebound
by Rahat Indori
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If people fear what they meet at every turn,
why do they ever leave the house?



Becoming One
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I have become you, as you have become me;
I am your body, you my Essence.
Now no one can ever say
that you are someone else,
or that I am anything less than your Presence!



I Am a Pagan
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I am a pagan disciple of love: I need no creeds.
My every vein has become taut, like a tuned wire.
I do not need the Brahman's girdle.
Leave my bedside, ignorant physician!
The only cure for love is the sight of the patient's beloved:
there is no other medicine he needs!
If our boat lacks a pilot, let there be none:
we have god in our midst: we do not fear the sea!
The people say Khusrow worships idols:
True! True! But he does not need other people's approval;
he does not need the world's.

(My translation above was informed by a translation of Dr. Hadi Hasan.)



Amir Khusrow’s elegy for his mother
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Wherever you shook the dust from your feet
is my relic of paradise!



Paradise
by Amir Khusrow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If there is an earthly paradise,
It's here! It's here! It's here!



Mystery
by Munir Niazi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

She was a mystery:
Her lips were parched ...
but her eyes were two unfathomable oceans.



I continued delaying ...
by Munir Niazi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I continued delaying ...
the words I should speak
the promises I should keep
the one I should dial
despite her cruel denial

I continued delaying ...
the shoulder I must offer
the hand I must proffer
the untraveled lanes
we may not see again

I continued delaying ...
long strolls through the seasons
for my own selfish reasons
the remembrances of lovers
to erase thoughts of others

I continued delaying ...
to save someone dear
from eternities unclear
to make her aware
of our reality here

I continued delaying ...



Couplets
by Mir Taqi Mir
loose translations by Michael R. Burch

Sharpen the barbs of every thorn, O lunatic desert!
Perhaps another hobbler, limping by on blistered feet, follows me!
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My life is a bubble,
this world an illusion.
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Selflessness has gotten me nowhere:
I neglected myself far too long.
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I know now that I know nothing,
and it only took me a lifetime to learn!
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love's just beginning, so why do you whine?
Why not wait and watch how things unwind!
―Mir Taqi Mir, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Come!
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, let us construct night
over the monumental edifice of silence.
Come, let us clothe ourselves in the winding sheets of darkness,
where we'll ignite our bodies' incandescent wax.
As the midnight dew dances its delicate ballet,
let us not disclose the slightest whispers of our breath!
Lost in night's mists,
let us lie immersed in love's fragrance,
absorbing our bodies' musky aromas!
Let us rise like rustling spirits ...



Old Habits Die Hard
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The habit of breathing
is an odd tradition.
Why struggle so to keep on living?
The body shudders,
the eyes veil,
yet the feet somehow keep moving.
Why this journey, this restless, relentless flowing?
For how many weeks, months, years, centuries
shall we struggle to keep on living, keep on living?
Habits are such strange things, such hard things to break!



Inconclusive
by Gulzar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A body lies on a white bed—
dead, abandoned,
a forsaken corpse they forgot to bury.
They concluded its death was not their concern.
I hope they return and recognize me,
then bury me so I can breathe.



Wasted
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You have noticed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips ...
In whose imagination I have lost everything.



Countless
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I recounted the world's countless griefs
by recounting your image countless times.



Do Not Ask
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not ask, my love, for the love that we shared before:
You existed, I told myself, so existence shone.
For a moment the only light that I knew, alone,
was yours; worldly griefs remained dark, distant, afar.

Spring shone, as revealed in your face, but what did I know?
Beyond your bright eyes, what delights could the sad world hold?
Had I won you, cruel Fate would have ceded, no longer bold.
Yet all this was not to be, though I wished it so.

The world knows sorrows beyond love’s brief dreams betrayed,
and pleasures beyond all sweet, idle ideals of romance:
the dread dark spell of countless centuries and chance
is woven with silk and satin and gold brocade.

Bodies are sold everywhere for a pittance—it’s true!
Besmeared with dirt and bathed in bright oceans of blood,
Crawling from infested ovens, a gory cud.
My gaze returns to you: what else can I do?

Your beauty haunts me still, and will to the last.
But the world is burdened by sorrows beyond those of love,
By pleasures beyond romance.
So please do not demand a love that is over, and past.



O God!
by Qateel Shifai
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Torture my heart, O God!
If you so desire, leave me a madman, O God!

Have I asked for the moon and stars?
Enlighten my heart and give my eyes sight, O God!

We have all seen this disk called the sun,
Now give us a real dawn, O God!

Either relieve our pains here on this earth
Or make my heart granite, O God!



Hereafter
by Qateel Shifai
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since we met and parted, how can we sleep hereafter?
Lost in each others' remembrance, must we not weep hereafter?

Deluges of our tears will keep us awake all night:
Our eyelashes strung with strands of pearls, hereafter!

Thoughts of our separation will sear our grieving hearts
Unless we immerse them in the cooling moonlight, hereafter!

If the storm also deceives us, crying Qateel!,
We will scuttle our boats near forsaken shores, hereafter.



Picnic
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My friends laugh elsewhere on the beach
while I sit here, alone, counting the waves,
writing and rewriting your name in the sand ...



Confession
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Your image overwhelmed my vision.
As the long nights passed, I became obsessed with your visage.
Then came the moment when I quietly placed my lips to your picture ...



Rain
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why shiver alone in the rain, maiden?
Embrace the one in whose warming love your body and mind would be drenched!
There are no rains higher than the rains of Love,
after which the bright rainbows of separation will glow with the mysteries of hues.



My Body's Moods
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I long for the day when you'll be obsessed with me,
when, forgetting the world, you'll miss me with a passion
and stop complaining about my reticence!
Then I may forget all other transactions and liabilities
to realize my world in your arms,
letting my body's moods guide me.
In that moment beyond boundaries and limitations
as we defy the conventions of veil and turban,
let's try our luck and steal a taste of the forbidden fruit!



Moon
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

All of us passengers,
we share the same fate.
And yet I'm alone here on earth,
and she alone there in the sky!



Vanity
by Parveen Shakir
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His world is so simple, so very different from mine.
So distinct—his dreams and desires.
He speaks rarely.
This morning he wrote: "I saw some lovely flowers and thought of you."
Ha! I know my aging face is no orchid ...
but how I wish I could believe whatever he says, however momentarily!



Come
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, even with anguish, even to torture my heart;
Come, even if only to abandon me to torment again.

Come, if not for our past commerce,
Then to faithfully fulfill the ancient barbaric rituals.

Who else can recite the reasons for our separation?
Come, despite your reluctance, to continue the litanies, the ceremony.

Respect, even if only a little, the depth of my love for you;
Come, someday, to offer me consolation as well.

Too long you have deprived me of the pathos of longing;
Come again, my love, if only to make me weep.

Till now, my heart still suffers some slight expectation;
So come, ***** out even the last flickering torch of hope!



I Cannot Remember
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I once was a poet too (you gave life to my words), but now I cannot remember
Since I have forgotten you (my love!), my art too I cannot remember

Yesterday consulting my heart, I learned
that your hair, lips, mouth, I cannot remember

In the city of the intellect insanity is silence
But now your sweet, spontaneous voice, its fluidity, I cannot remember

Once I was unfamiliar with wrecking ***** and ruins
But now the cultivation of gardens, I cannot remember

Now everyone shops at the store selling arrows and quivers
But neglects his own body, the client he cannot remember

Since time has brought me to a desert of such arid forgetfulness
Even your name may perish; I cannot remember

In this narrow state of being, lacking a country,
even the abandonment of my fellow countrymen, I cannot remember



The Infidel
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ten thousand desires: each one worth dying for ...
So many fulfilled, and yet still I yearn for more!

Being in love, for me there was no difference between living and dying ...
and so I lived each dying breath watching you, my lovely Infidel, sighing                       afar.



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Life becomes even more complicated
when a man can’t think like a man ...

What irrationality makes me so dependent on her
that I rush off an hour early, then get annoyed when she's "late"?

My lover is so striking! She demands to be seen.
The mirror reflects only her image, yet still dazzles and confounds my eyes.

Love’s stings have left me the deep scar of happiness
while she hovers above me, illuminated.

She promised not to torment me, but only after I was mortally wounded.
How easily she “repents,” my lovely slayer!



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s time for the world to hear Ghalib again!
May these words and their shadows like doors remain open.

Tonight the watery mirror of stars appears
while night-blooming flowers gather where beauty rests.

She who knows my desire is speaking,
or at least her lips have recently moved me.

Why is grief the fundamental element of night
when blindness falls as the distant stars rise?

Tell me, how can I be happy, vast oceans from home
when mail from my beloved lies here, so recently opened?



Abstinence?
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let me get drunk in the mosque,
Or show me the place where God abstains!



Step Carefully!
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Step carefully Ghalib―this world is merciless!
Here people will "adore" you to win your respect ... or your downfall.



Bleedings
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Love requires patience but lust is relentless;
what colors must my heart bleed before it expires?

There are more English translations of poems by Mirza Ghalib later on this page.



No Explanation! (I)
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Please don't ask me how deeply it hurt!
Her sun shone so bright, even the shadows were burning!



No Explanation! (II)
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Please don't ask me how it happened!
She didn't bind me, nor did I free myself.



Alone
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Why are you sad that she goes on alone, Faraz?
After all, you said yourself that she was unique!



Separation
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Faraz, if it were easy to be apart,
would Angels have to separate body from soul?



Time
by Ahmad Faraz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What if my face has more wrinkles than yours?
I am merely well-worn by Time!



Miraji Epigrams

I'm obsessed with this thought:
does God possess mercy?
―Miraji, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Come, see this dance, the immaculate dance of the devadasi!
―Miraji, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Excerpts from “Going, Going ...”
by Miraji
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each unfolding vista,
each companion’s kindnesses,
every woman’s subtle sorceries,
everything that transiently lies within our power
quickly dissolves
and we are left with only a cupped flame, flickering ...
Should we call that “passion”?

The moon scrapes the horizon
and who can measure a star’s breadth?

The time allotted a life, if we calculate it,
is really only a fleeting breath ...



1.
Echoes of an ancient prophecy:
after my life has come and gone,
perhaps someone
hearing my voice drifting
on the breeze of some future spring
will chase after my songs
like dandelions.
—Miraji, translation by Michael R. Burch

2.
Echoes of an ancient prophecy:
after my life has come and gone,
perhaps someone
hearing my voice drifting
through some distant future spring
will pluck my songs
like dandelions.
—Miraji, translation by Michael R. Burch

3.
Echoes of an ancient prophecy:
when my life has come and gone,
and when I’m dead and done,
perhaps someone
hearing me sing
in a distant spring
will echo my songs
the whole world over.
—Miraji, translation by Michael R. Burch

If I understand things correctly, Miraji wrote the lines above after translating a verse by Sappho in which she said that her poems would be remembered in the future. I suspect both poets and both prophecies were correct!




Every Day and in Every Direction
by Nida Fazli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everywhere and in every direction we see innumerable people:
each man a victim of his own loneliness, reticence and silences.
From dawn to dusk men carry enormous burdens:
all preparing graves for their soon-to-be corpses.
Each day a man lives, the same day he dies.
Each new day requires the same old patience.
In every direction there are roads for him to roam,
but in every direction, men victimize men.
Every day a man dies many deaths only to resurrect from his ashes.
Each new day presents new challenges.
Life's destiny is not fixed, but a series of journeys:
thus, till his last breath, a man remains restless.



Couplets
by Nida Fazli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It was my fate to entangle and sink myself
because I am a boat and my ocean lies within.
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You were impossible to forget once you were gone:
hell, I remembered you most when I tried to forget you!
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't squander these pearls:
such baubles may ornament sleepless nights!
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The world is like a deck of cards on a gambling table:
some of us are bound to loose while others cash in.
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

There is a proper protocol for everything in this world:
when visiting gardens never force butterflies to vacate their flowers!
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I lack the courage to commit suicide,
I have elected to bother people with my life a bit longer.
―Nida Fazli, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Changing Seasons
by Noshi Gillani
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Each changing season
reveals something
concealed by her fears:
an escape route from this island
illuminated by her tears.



Dust
by Bahadur Shah Zafar or Muztar Khairabadi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unable to light anyone's eye
or to comfort anyone's heart ...
I am nothing but a handful of dust.



Piercings
by Firaq Gorakhpuri
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No one ever belonged to anyone else for a lifetime.
We cannot own another's soul.
The beauty we see and the love we feel are only illusions.
All my life I tried to save myself from the piercings of your eyes ...
But I failed and the daggers ripped right through me.



Salvation
Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Anxious and fatigued, I consider the salvation of death ...
But if there is no peace in the grave,
where can I go to be saved?



Child of the Century
by Abdellatif Laâbi (a Moroccan poet)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I’m a child of this dreary century, a child who never grew up.
Doubts that ignited my tongue singed my wings.
I learned to walk, then I unlearned progress.
I grew weary of oases and camels infatuated with ruins.
My head inclined East only to occupy the middle of the road
as I awaited the insane caravans.



Nostalgia
by Abdulla Pashew (a Kurdish poet)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How I desire the heavens!
Each solitary star lights the way to a tryst.

How I desire the sky!
Standing alone, remote, the sky is as vast as any ocean.

How I desire love's heavenly scent!
When each enticing blossom releases its essence.



Oblivion
by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi (an African poet who writes in Arabic)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Discard your pen
before you start reading;
consider the ink,
how it encompasses bleeding.

Learn from the horizon
through eyes' narrowed slits
the limitations of vision
and hands' treacherous writs.

Do not blame me,
nor indeed anyone,
if you expire before
your reading is done.



In Medias Res
by Shaad Azimabadi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When I heard the story of my life recounted,
I caught only the middle of the tale.
I remain unaware of the beginning or end.



Debt Relief
by Piyush Mishra
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We save Sundays for our loved ones ...
all other days we slave to repay debts.



Reoccurrence
by Amrita Bharati (a Hindi poet)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It was a woman's heart speaking,
that had been speaking for eons ...

It was a woman's heart silenced,
that had been silenced for centuries ...

And between them loomed a mountain
that a man or a rat gnawed at, even in times of amity ...
gnawing at the screaming voice,
at the silent tongue,
from the primeval day.



Don't Approach Me
by Arif Farhad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't approach me here by the river of time
where I flop like a fish in a net!



Intoxicants
by Amrut Ghayal (a Gujarati poet)
translation by Kanu V. Prajapati and Michael R. Burch

O, my contrary mind!
You're such a fool, afraid to drink the fruit of the vine!
But show me anything universe-designed
that doesn't intoxicate, like wine.



I’m like a commodity being priced in the market-place:
every eye ogles me like a buyer’s.
—Majrooh Sultanpuri, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

If you insist, I’ll continue playing my songs,
forever piping the flute of my heart.
—Majrooh Sultanpuri, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon has risen once again, yet you are not here.
My heart is a blazing pyre; what do I do?
—Majrooh Sultanpuri, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Drunk on Love
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Drunk on love, I made her my God.
She quickly informed me that God belongs to no man!

Exiles
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Often we have heard of Adam's banishment from Eden,
but with far greater humiliation, I abandon your garden.

To Whom Shall I Complain?
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

To whom shall I complain when I am denied Good Fortune in acceptable measure?
Dementedly, I demanded Death, but was denied even that dubious pleasure!



Ghazal
by Mirza Ghalib
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You should have stayed a little longer;
you left all alone, so why not linger?

We’ll meet again, you said, some day similar to this one,
as if such days can ever recur, not vanish!

You left our house as the moon abandons night's skies,
as the evening light abandons its earlier surmise.

You hated me: a wife abnormally distant, unknown;
you left me before your children were grown.

Only fools ask why old Ghalib still clings to breath
when his fate is to live desiring death.



How strange has life become:
Our evenings drag out, yet our years keep flashing by!
―original poet unknown, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Longing
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Lord, I’ve grown tired of human assemblies!
I long to avoid conflict! My heart craves peace!
I desperately desire the silence of a small mountainside hut!



Life Advice
by Allama Iqbāl
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

This passive nature will not allow you to survive;
If you want to live, raise a storm!



Destiny
by Allama Iqbal
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Isn't it futile to complain about God's will,
When you are your own destiny?

Keywords/Tags: Urdu, translation, love poetry, desire, passion, longing, romance, romantic, God, heaven, mrburdu
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2020
someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!
judy smith May 2016
For the fifth year in a row, Kering and Parsons School of Fashion rolled out the ‘Empowering Imagination’ design initiative. The competition engaged twelve 2016 graduates of the Parsons BFA Fashion Design program, who "were selected for their excellence in vision, acute awareness in design identity, and mastery of technical competencies." The winners, Ya Jun Lin and Tiffany Huang, will be awarded a 2-week trip to Kering facilities in Italy in June 2016 and will have their thesis collections featured in Saks Fifth Avenue New York’s windows.

The Kering and Parsons competition, which is currently in its fifth year, is one of a growing number of design competitions, including but not limited to the LVMH Prize, the ANDAM Awards, the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund, and its British counterpart, the Woolmark Prize, the Ecco Domani fashion award, and the Hyères Festival. among others.

In the generations prior, designers were certainly nominated for awards, but it seems that there was not nearly as intense of a focus on design competitions as a means for designers to get their footing, for design houses to scout talent, or for these competitions to select the best of the best in a especially large pool of young talent. Fern Mallis, the former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and an industry consultant, told the New York Times: “Take the Calvin [Kleins] and the Donna [Karans] and the Ralph [Laurens] of the world. Some of these people had money from a friend or a partner who worked with them, but they weren’t out spending their time doing competitions and winning awards to get their business going.” She sheds light on an essential element: The relatively drastic difference between the state of fashion then and fashion now. Fashion then was slower, less global, and (a lot) less dominated by the internet, and so, it made for quite different circumstances for the building of a fashion brand.

Nowadays, young designers are more or less going full speed ahead right off the bat. They show comprehensive collections, many of which consist of garments and an array of accessories. They are expected to be active on social media. They are expected to establish a strong industry presence (think: Go to events and parties). They are expected to cope with the fashion business that has become large-scale and international. They are expected to collaborate to expand their reach, and while it does, at times, feel excessive, this is the reality because the industry is moving at such a quick pace, one that some argue is unsustainably rapid. The result is designers and design houses consistently building their brands and very rarely starting small. Case in point: Young brands showing pre-collections within a few years of setting up shop (for a total of four collections per year, not counting any collaboration or capsule collections), and established brands showing roughly four womenswear collections, four menswear collections, two couture collections, and quite often, a few diffusion collections each year.

The current climate of 'more is more' (more collections, more collaborations, more social media, more international know-how, etc.) in fashion is what sets currently emerging brands apart from older brands, many of which started small. This reality also sheds light on the increasing frequency with which designers rely on competitions as a means of gaining funds, as well as a means of establishing their names and not uncommonly, gaining outside funding.

The Ralphs, Tommys, Calvins and Perrys started off a bit differently. Ralph Lauren, for instance, started a niche business. The empire builder, now 74, got his start working at a department store then worked for a private label tie manufacturer (which made ties for Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart). He eventually convinced them to let him make ties under the Polo label and work out of a drawer in their showroom. After gaining credibility thanks to the impeccable quality of his ties, he expanded into other things. Tommy Hilfiger similarly started with one key garment: Jeans. After making a name for himself by buying jeans, altering them into bellbottoms and reselling them at Brown’s in Manhattan, he opened a store catering to those that wanted a “rock star” aesthetic when he was 18-years old with $150. While the store went bankrupt by the time he was 25, it allowed him to get his foot in the door. He was offered design positions at Calvin Klein (who also got his start by focusing on a single garment: Coats. With $2,000 of his own money and $10,000 lent to him by a friend, he set up shop; in 1973, he got his big break when a major department store buyer accidentally walked into his showroom and placed an order for $50,000). Hilfiger was also offered a design position with Perry Ellis but turned them down to start his eponymous with help from the Murjani Group. Speaking of Perry Ellis, the NYU grad went to work at an upscale retail store in Virginia, where he was promoted to a buying/merchandising position in NYC, where he was eventually offered a chance to start his own label, a small operation. After several years of success, he spun it off as its own entity. Marc Jacobs, who falls into a bit of a younger generation, started out focusing on sweaters.

These few individuals, some of the biggest names in American fashion, obviously share a common technique. They intentionally started very small. They built slowly from there, and they had the luxury of being able to do so. Others, such as Hubert de Givenchy, Alexander McQueen and his successor Sarah Burton, Nicolas Ghesquière, Julien Macdonald, John Galliano and his successor Bill Gaytten, and others, spent time as apprentices, working up to design directors or creative directors, and maybe maintaining a small eponymous label on the side. As I mentioned, attempting to compare these great brand builders or notable creative directors to the young designers of today is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, as the nature of the market now is vastly different from what it looked like 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40 years ago.

With this in mind, fashion competitions have begun to play an important role in helping designers to cope with the increasing need to establish a brand early on. It seems to me that winning (or nearly winning) a prestigious fashion competition results in several key rewards.

Primarily, it puts a designer's name and brand on the map. This is likely the least noteworthy of the rewards, as chances are, if you are selected to participate in a design competition, your name and brand are already out there to some extent as one of the most promising young designers of the moment.

Second are the actual prizes, which commonly include mentoring from industry insiders and monetary grants. We know that participation in competitions, such as the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, the Woolmark Prize, the Swarovski, Ecco Domani, the LVMH Prize, etc., gives emerging designers face time with and mentoring from some of the most successful names in the industry. Chris Peters, half of the label Creatures of the Wind (pictured above), whose brand has been nominated for half of the aforementioned awards says of such participation: “It feels like we’ve talked to possibly everyone in fashion that we can possibly talk to." The grants, which range anywhere from $25,o00 to $400,000 and beyond, are obviously important, as many emerging designers take this money and stage a runway show or launch pre-collections, which often affect the business' bottom line in a major and positive way.

The third benefit is, in my opinion, the most significant. It seems that competitions also provide brands with some reputability in terms of finding funding. At the moment, the sea of young brands which is terribly vast. Like law school graduates, there are a lot of design school graduates. With this in mind, these competitions are, for the most part, serving as a selection mechanism. Sure, the inevitable industry politics and alternate agendas exist (without which the finalists lists may look a bit different), but great talent is being scouted, nonetheless. Not only is it important to showcase the most promising young talent and provide them with mentoring and grant money, as a way of maintaining an industry, but these competitions also do a monumental service to young brands in terms of securing additional funding. One of the most challenging aspects of the business for young/emerging brands is producing and growing absent outside investors' funds, and often, the only way for brands' to have access to such funds is by showing a proven sales track record, something that is difficult to establish when you've already put all of your money into your business and it is just not enough. This is a frustrating cycle for young designers.

However, this is where design competitions are a saving grace. If we look to recent Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund winners and runners-up, for instance, it is not uncommon to see funding (distinct from the grants associated with winning) come on the heels of successful participation. Chrome Hearts, the cult L.A.-based accessories label, acquired a minority stake in The Elder Statesman, the brand established by Greg Chait, the 2012 winner, this past March. A minority stake in 2011 winner Joseph Altuzarra's eponymous label was purchased by luxury conglomerate Kering in September 2013. Creatures of the Wind, the NYC-based brand founded by Shane Gabier and Chris Peters, which took home a runner-up prize in the 2011 competition, welcomed an investment from The Dock Group, a Los Angeles-based fashion investment firm, last year, as well.

Across the pond, the British Fashion Council/Vogue Fashion Fund has awarded prizes to a handful of designers who have gone on to land noteworthy investments. In January 2013, Christopher Kane (pictured below), the 2011 winner, sold a majority stake in his brand to Kering. Footwear designer Nicholas Kirkwood was named the winner 2013 in May and by September, a majority stake in his company had been acquired by LVMH.

Thus, while the exposure that fashion design competition participants gain, and the mentoring and monetary grants that the winners enjoy, are certainly not to be discounted, the takeaway is much larger than that. These competitions are becoming the new way for investors and luxury conglomerates to source new talent, and for young brands to land the outside investments that they so desperately need to produce their collections, expand their studio space, build upon their existing collections, and even open brick and mortar stores.

While no one has scooped up inaugural LVMH winner Thomas Tait’s brand yet or fellow winner, Marques'Almeida, it is likely just be a matter of time.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-sydney
preservationman Oct 2015
The pavement having a merchandise name
Merchandising sales being the aim
Markdowns throughout any retail store
The array of assortments a consumer just can’t ignore
Yet watch how the consumer spends their money
The consumer will be broke, but certainly not the only
Plastic credit cards that could get you into trouble
This could cause your interest rates to double
But I one should only buy what they actually need
However unnecessary things with no need to proceed
Retail prices coming from a Buyer’s advice
Watch the price and shopping being wise
Fashion designers with a eye for your appeal and style
All through the theory the consumer is thinking during while
Well retail stores have much they want the consumer to explore
But with prices slashed here and over there, the consumer becomes not being sure
Perhaps having will power is something no one should ignore
Money saved with nothing being spent
No question needing to be asked as to where your money went.

— The End —