Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
maggie W Apr 2015
It's not even romantic
But I'm going to write a poem of every boy I met.Not romantic,
It's not that I had met a lot of men.

On that morning
you played ukulele,
I sang along with the lyrics
Creep, Blur,anything

The morning light shined through your squinted eyes
I can still see the dust swirling, dancing in front of the sun-bathed face of yours.
Naive,friendly,happily
We were singing to each other
The other two are non-existence.

You are so warm, comfortable to be around with
A Belarusian boy ,aspiring to speak good Chinese.
You paint, you cooked and made desserts
Always at ease at hitchhiking
through Kazakhstan and China

I felt that you secretly want to try to escape from what you had
from Belarus to Czech, then to this mysterious Eastern world, a bit communist.
And then to Taiwan.

This is for you Ilya, a friend for only a day and night.
You're too delicate for me to handle as you have
skin like milk and heart of seven seas
Smile like a 5 year old in a swing.
judy smith Jan 2016
“Ever since I started this job and anyone asks how I’m doing, I always say, ‘I’m great!’ ” Maayan Zilberman excitedly explains. And why shouldn’t she? The former Lake & Stars lingerie designer, who has since founded confections lineSweet Saba, happens to have the sweetest career around. Concocting a literal visual feast out of her Park *****, Brooklyn, kitchen and Fort Gansevoort Meatpacking pop-up shop, the Israeli-born polymath uses her background in sculpture and a biting sense of humor to create her vibrant, indulgent delicacies. Think sugarfied tubes of lipstick, rap mixtapes, and Rolex watches—with their raw handiwork and dead-on wit, these in-demand pieces match Zilberman’s equally enticing wardrobe. Hardly barefoot in the kitchen, Zilberman teeters about in her workspace in vintage Betsey Johnson Mary Janes, while throwing on a customized Adam Selman pearl-laced apron to protect her Prada skirts andProenza Schouler knits. Here, the dazzling candymaker reveals how she has always been more En Vogue than grunge, why she never forgoes a perfect press-on manicure, and her plans on taking Sweet Saba herbal.

From Jerusalem to Vancouver

I was born on a kibbutz, where the first clothing I had was a mix of unisex hand-me-downs, so I was given a pretty blank slate. When I lived in Jerusalem we were surrounded by several sects of Orthodox communities, and the fabrics associated with each group were inspiring to me. During those years, designer brands were becoming popular, and the only place I was seeing this was in the shuk [market] where one could find imitation Calvin Klein and United Colors of Benetton next to tzitzit and shawls. I think it was in the early ’90s that I first understood how to mix my ethnicity with fashion and food.

Also, one of the most influential books of my childhood was Color Me Beautiful, which the women in my family took very seriously. I learned at the age of 6 that I was a “Winter” and haven’t veered off course since. I still have the book and love to pull it out at parties. Later in high school in Vancouver, grunge was the big trend and there wasn’t much room for my sensibilities in that environment—even when I wore my Revlon Blackberry lipstick and grunged out with irony. I was always far more En Vogue and Versace than the Pacific Northwest could handle.

Taking Cues From ’90s New York City Street Style

When I first got to New York, when I was 15, one of the first things I discovered was all the music I could get on Canal Street. I used to buy mix CDs from girls in monochrome outfits and big name-plate earrings. They pointed me to Fulton Mall in Brooklyn, and that’s where I finally got pants that fit right and jewelry that reflected my personality—a departure from the stuff I’d received for my bat mitzvah.

A shift in style for me meant a tougher, more confident look, where a short skirt is a reference to an era, not a call for attention. Music and lyrics played a big part in teaching me about how to dress and how to feel feminine. I had a Versace quilted skirt that I wore a lot—it made me feel like the supermodels in the ad campaigns: Cindy, Claudia, Stephanie, et cetera. I also had a Jean Paul Gaultierdouble-breasted pinstripe suit that I’d wear casually. In fact, I’m still wearing most of my clothes from those days: Betsey Johnson floral dresses, Donna Karanbodysuits, a metallic Byblos pouf skirt, and a grommeted Pelle Pelle jacket.

Lingerie Beginnings

I studied sculpture at the School of Visual Arts, and for a year at the San Francisco Art Institute my major was “new genres,” a very ’90s thing. Right after I graduated from SVA, I did an artist residency with Ilya Kabakov at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, where they also manufactured some of the world’s most beautiful silks. A tour of their factory opened my eyes to a potential dip into fashion, but it wasn’t until I met a pair of women in New York City that same year looking to start a lingerie brand that I took a chance on garment design. I bought a bunch of bras and took them apart and figured out how they were put back together. I cofounded The Lake & Stars in 2007 with the desire to make a brand that was in line with the story I wanted to tell as an artist. Lingerie was a tool, a structure that gave me rules so I could tell a sci-fi tale while inherently delivering romance and *** appeal.

read more:http://www.marieaustralia.com

www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses
Snow flake Jan 2016
Rocking chair
A comfortable seat
Turkish tea or strong coffee
Burning fireplace
Decorated wooden hut
Future wife
Snowy night
A rifle on the wall
Classic music
Wool blanket
Hello Poetry
Tolstoy's masterpieces
Ilya Repin's picture's
Wolf voices
Cold places
What a Freedom !
just imagine
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
how strange to read some of the last chances, or commiserations
without a death, the moment a woman or man begins to divide,
so many encouragements arise from nowhere, hence the theatre of
theoretical manoeuvring, way beyond the concept of narrator,
the death of narration is the birth of psychology,
they say, and it must be, treading into this forest of thought without
a compass will soon leave you disorientated, let alone keeping
a narrative continuum - once the narrator dies,
once the narrator dies in you, you either see a psychologist
or begin to write poetry, poetry, the entire cast of Chekov's
the seagull chipping in for the pauper, once famous for
chopping wood or digging for coal on the page
with such flamboyance as to reveal the true spectacle
of the Royal fireworks on the Thames provided
for by Charles II and accompanied by Handel's
composition - everyone is chipping in into
the narrator's porcelain cup - from irina nikolayevna,
through ilya afanasyevich and the personae quasi gratae
like the watchman, the cook... only Yakov having
acquired a name, the rest, mechanised extension
of the salon boors - where real existential debate takes
place due to the serious concerns of the universe
and our place in it. they like Yakov because he was hired,
and could clearly move on elsewhere, a traveller,
not the permanent occupant of the daily dealings of
the estate; but indeed it's not about that -
after they split up she started dreading having his
name tattooed on her, she felt a burning sensation to
burn the ink off her skin - to my surprise she tattooed
his name onto her skin rather than having tattooed
his entirety onto a piece of paper - a poem can be scrapped,
can be cherished or anything, 'write a poem prior to
the tattoo' someone should have said - but the tattoo
came first, and the poem came second - other allegiances
are passed down in ink, as i have never understood
the mentality of tears at a sporting event, notably football,
the tears of your forefathers, elsewhere reasoning gives
crowd like anonymity, soloist sports, cool headed -
no religious-like attachment - first the poem, then the tattoo.
poetry is just another word for juxtaposition -
but what are the two things necessary to contrast?
well... here's one half decent example, of all written text,
an E.U. cucumber,
                                     (a) is it reasonably shaped?
(b) is it practically straight?
                                                       ­ if it isn't coinciding with
points (a) and (b) being satisfactorily met, then this
cucumber is a culprit, being a non-compliant member
of the fruit & veg stand, according to the E.E.C.
1677 / 88
regulation, meaning it can't be a class 1 cucumber,
but a boomerang.                                       and you wonder,
with all those great movies concerning heroism,
the sacrifice to create democracy where tyranny strikes,
to overthrow absolute sovereign power,
all those wars, and all we get in the end, is a vote,
made quiet clearly ineffective because of the by-product
of democracy: bureaucracy - as every it can be said:
an over-simplified observation,
                                                        well, championing the idea
of democracy where the majority of people were
illiterate still, apparently, resonates in how people vote,
make your mark
                                                           ­      X               so you see,
a man made literate when once he would be illiterate
seems offensive to still pretend like i am illiterate -
but what a strange illiteracy this is, i still vote like the first
people voted, instead of ably signing my name,
i am told to write X... which is why, subconsciously,
people seem to be put off voting - it's such a symbolic
event in the mind - i vote by singing my approval with
an X... the little things matter in the end -
no one dying for an ideal could have envisioned
the bureaucratic escapade of counting where the wind
blows in what favourable choice of opinion at the time,
in post-Marxist terminology, we're no longer dealing
with the bourgeoisie types, we're dealing with the bureaucratic
type - there are so many laws on this earth, that few
are known and even fewer are kept -
i know the ten commandments are a joke, given the outdated
phrasing, but aren't the modern laws even more of a joke?
why, i can count to 10... counting to how many there
are is quiet staggering - you might have broken about
a thousand without knowing you had, like eating a
curved cucumber... but then, are picked cucumbers always
bent? i've never seen a straight pickle, i mean theoretically
that's breaking the law - the war of the sexes is what
gave us this ******* - this wasn't a war for Crimea,
not so much a war for independence, once those classical
wars ended, the war of the sexes began -
if Marx was alive, he'd be far from writing a critique of
the bourgeoisie class, after all, urbanity killed off
the etymological root of bourgeoisie - old french, walled
city - given that, or should i say, working from that,
no, if Marx were alive today, it would be the bureaucrat
who'd be attacked.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i generally feel constipated... that's probably
the best word to use... constipated...
   i was sitting in Warsaw's modlin
airport, and it felt, very much like
a scene from james tissot's painting:
  the ruins (inner voices).
i just kept admiring this guys
     beard,
  in western lingo he'd be classified
as hipter...
             **** me! so much ***** hair!
resurgence of my beard-envy...
  my my, if i only donned such a bush,
i'd be the first one on the dancefloor
peacocking a ******* of sweat and leather
grit...
    alas! not to be.
       a thought concerning a cottage
and a return to the countryside did shine
for a bit... how i remembered having
a russian girlfriend and how i couldn't
see a larionov, or a tatlin, or a goncharova...
  or a mashkov...
           a kuprin... a konchalovsky...
    shukhatev ****** grigoriev...
i also call that: predating the selfie,
  via ilya repin...
           see?! constipation...
      i'm literally bound to heave this tomb of
past lives, expected to recount some chess-prodigy
or some other, chess-komtur.
                     for the help of god i can't ease out
a **** into the toilet that's supposed to be
human history, for the love or antagonism of:
the abstract deity...
     back when it meant concrete things:
hades the shadow-******, zeus the lightning bolt
  and incarnate libido-starved swan,
poseidon and juiced up knicker-oysters
    of a woman's genitals... so they came:
with their floral pattern analogies!
                        my, and what a worldly invitation
that came to be... niqab bound, or by western standard:
  a little more than the pauper's veil...
     enough dough to cage the poor women
and keep them motivated to live, that dull
         caricature everyone else knows to be life...
    i should have stood up and gave my
investment into jealousy, right there and then...
it's unfair that you have more ***** hairs
on your neck, cheeks and chin than i!
             oi! give me the same fertility gimmick!
that's me, and there's people doing cossack
adventures into outer-space...
                       it's like i want to laugh...
but i can't, because i'm suffocating on paper mâché...
yes, i feel constipated,
     if i'm to be called a civilised person,
and not a barbarian...
     i somehow, have to, ingest,
this backlog of human art,
     i have to know certain names
i might recall for a baby-shower congregation...
   and aphrodite gave us aphorisms...
               ****'s sake: anecdotes!
  that's me being a civilised creature...
  but still that ****** constipation...
   there's never enough: because there's too much of it!
and if you cite this painter, outside of Poland:
  matejko...
                                 you'll probably have
a saint's'-feast day named after you...
i really feel bloated...
           i have too much human history to account for,
it's always a case of juggling some grieving
priority...
      as is the loss of experiencing the everyday
pH 7 body temp. 36.6°C...
             i am literally forced into taking up
the role of censor...
     to look cool and not admire the statue of david,
or make a pilgrimage to the Louvre to see Mona Lisa...
a peacock's tail on a flamingo strutting toward
a ****** drama of *******...
               once more, this constipation,
  and this fake, as if: i'm supposed to be thankful for
the ****** inheritance... i ain't!
     take those masterpieces to the grave,
                 while i try to re-apply myself to
creating a thing of beauty from playdough...
                most people never get the idea
of rust, let alone dust...
          thankfully the two words rhyme,
and thus the easier singalong congregation:
   of the ores... sunset hue man,
              extracted brown and burgundy from
polished grey metal...
                and himself laid rest:
              among the sneezing myopic worms
to never be clarified by moth or butter-winged;
so persistent is this cultural constipation
               that it's hard making a footprint
on uncharted land, worth the cool...
           and of those places where culture stomped
as a fascist brute...
                                so much for culture,
that there's this backlog of people expressing
culture, with so many people willing to forget it...
     without a genetic preordinance:
try telling your mechanic father, or plumber
that you're an artist...
                ah **** it... let's end this poem like
a scene from a gang-****...
                               ugly... ugly...
egalitarian... but nonetheless ugly....
                                    i have a museum's worth of
****... and that really is: the prognosis
                              for the next 100 years,
or what's called: undistrubed peace,
   or a piecing together of organising the next
propaganda umbrella, worthy of the noun: zeitgeist.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2018
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Time Travel

On a stack of giveaways, a paperback:
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – The Mad Scientist Affair
Napoleon with each sable hair in place
And Ilya in his groovy turtleneck

Poised for action on a four-color cover
With clever gadgets against wicked T.H.R.U.S.H.
Spies, guns, jet planes, secret lairs, beautiful girls
Mr. Waverly, and “Open Channel D”

Solo and Kuryakin, so cool, yeah, man -
Teachers and parents – they just didn’t understand!
Mateuš Conrad Aug 2017
i find the anglophone world
                                     to be disrespectable
of two things:
                                             a. books,
               and          b. food;
at school i overheard
   the english teacher saying:
'i know you treat books
  as door stops, or bricks' -
and in every lifestyle magazine
you only get to see
books about interior design...
**** me! hardly any art books
either!
     in my collection?
chagall - m-t. souverbie,
    the pre-raphaelites - t. hilton,
edvard mvnch - j. p. hodin
hopper - r. g. renner,
     moja ziemia (my earth) -
                      edward hartwig,
rembrandt - j. jacob... &
    from russia -
too many contributors to cite:
let's just say that the exhibition
   at the RA (royal academy of arts)
was pretty spectacular,
notably boris grigoriev's
    portrait of theatre director
   vsevolod meyerhold -
ilya mashkov (the russian cézanne) -
martiros saryan - date palm. egypt -
nathan altman -
     portrait of anna akhmatova -
again: chagall - the red jew -
d'uh, kandinsky -
        arch-master of cubism -
     the shards, i.e. the german war
  by pavel filonov,
  cf. picasso's violin & guitar to get
the picture...
   isaac levitan - summer evening,
ah! and lastly, but certainly not least!
philipp malyavin - peasant woman dancing;
would anyone really want to
be living without a necessary criticism?
i hate finicky eaters...
  and the english are just that...
not to mention the h'americans...
  i remember spending a month in russia
and eating whatever was given
to me: as long as it didn't move i'd
eat it...
       as i'd **** anything that moves,
finicky eaters: picky lovers -
     both descriptions go hand-in-hand...
ukranian beetroot borsch?
  can i have some more.
      oh right, forgot to mention -
i didn't see a single mcdonald's in
st. petersburg,
   god, i was thrilled with the fast-food
chain they have over there,
pancakes...
           and the cheaper orange caviar?
can i have some more?
       for all the "supposed" politeness
the english are famous for that
the h'americans can't get enough of?
    sit these ponces by a table and give
them food...
                  the so-called "politeness"?
goes straight out the window.
i probably hate fussy-eaters as much
               as i hate spelling mistakes;
my my, isn't that the zenith of decadence?
nope... the h'americans tipped the scale:
with food-fights...
      who the **** invented beer-pong?
no wonder alcohol has such a bad
reputation, and makes us, the serious
un-apologetic / un-repentant drinkers
look bad... real bad...
         lone-wolf drinkers have to scuttle
and avoid the general idiocy
                 of group drinking:
        learning the tongue of shadow.
We Lived Happily During the War
BY ILYA KAMINSKY



And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.

— The End —