She spent half of her life
wearing the same pair of shoes.

When she first saw them, they were dazzling…
full of promise (and promises!)
Tightly laced and polished,
glistening like diamonds upon her feet.

They were immediately comfortable, and comforting.

At first, she walked through dark night forests
and midnight-winding streets; breaking them in,
smiling at the melody of new leather creaking
in harmony with the violin-sawing of cricket wings,
with the ruffling of the night owls feathers.

She dared to share her dreams, and danced in her new shoes
with abandon and trust and hope.

The shoes spoke to her of wondrous things to come…
making promises shoes should not make
but new love demands –

of forever cradling her feet against sharpened stones;
of warming her toes through winter’s storms;
of lifting her heals in rapturous dance…

She fell in love with these shoes,
flooded with dreams of where they might carry her.
Each morning, she slipped them on with tenderness and love;
each night, un-laced, she fell asleep clutching them to her breast…

…whispering sweet hallelujahs
for all the miles they had shared,
and would in all their ahead days walk,
promising – until death do us part!

She loved her shoes with complete abandon
and imagined they would always be as comfortable
as the day she first placed them upon her trusting feet-

each day praying these shoes would always love her in return;
with tenderness, truth, and above all else, never hurting her.

But the years went by, and those beautiful shoes began to wear.
With time, they lost their gloss, and the leather cracked and hardened.
She noticed, one morning, a tiny droplet of blood upon her sock;
Later, a small cut upon her heel, a new pain within her heart.

Yet still, devoted, she continued to wear them
though at night she began setting them beside her bed.

In the final year, she wept looking at these shoes;
they were now ugly shoes, painful shoes.

“These shoes,” she tearfully whispered,
“will never carry me to where I need to go.”

She could tell in others eyes that they
were glad these were her shoes and not theirs.
They never talked about her shoes.
They looked away in embarrassed empathy.
To learn how awful her shoes were might make them
… uncomfortable.

To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them.
But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.

She began, for the first time, to hate her shoes;
with guilt at first, then with an increasing passion
until one day an awareness swept through her thoughts:

“I deserve a better pair of shoes.”

She looked around, and for the first time understood
that she was not the only one who wore those shoes.

“There are many pairs in this world,” she thought.
I can either learn how to walk in them, timidly,
so they don’t hurt quite as much…

“Or I can throw them away.”

And she began to plan.

“No woman deserves to wear these shoes,” she cried.
So for the final few months, she gathered her courage
…..to throw them away.

Ironically, it was these shoes
that had made her a stronger woman.
These shoes had given her the strength to face anything.

They helped make her who she now was.

One day, she slipped them on a final time
feeling the worn leather against her savaged foot;
then, flooded with the intensity of love one can only feel
knowing love is forever lost…she kissed the shoe goodbye.

When the time was right, she took her shoes to a secluded ravine
kissed them, and tossed them…like an old pair of shoes,
into an abyss.

The shoes lay there broken, tattered, worn and useless.
The shoes could not speak of the love they held for the woman
For its tongue was torn.
Left to decay with nothing but the scent of the woman’s
tender hands scenting its laces, slowly fading.

As soon as the shoes were disposed of
she went barefoot into tomorrow, pain-free
and dancing and singing:

“I will forever walk the bare feet
of a woman who has lost her shoes!”

But in exactly one year, she slipped on another pair,
happy and in love again, dancing and laughing once more...

hoping against hope, forgetting old shoes,
willing with all her heart for this shiny new pair to carry her home.

If ever I thought I was
worthless
useless
an empty vessel to hold the blame of the world, I was ignorant.

In the shadow of others I did not realize I was outgrowing the limited social garden bed of my ‘friends’ and companions. Friends would be an overstatement and a title many of them have never and will never earn. As a Scorpio my trust is not easily gained, and one lost, it is gone forever. Something in me, though, always forgave, but kept the trespasses against my trust cataloged, loaded, waiting to fire across my synapses is self destruction.

If ever I took your interest as a sign of friendship, I was a fool.
If ever I opened my heart to you, if ever I extended an almost maternal hand to you I was an idiot.

My body has been run ragged with its attempts at pleasing all and apologizing for its darker nature. My narcissism has become a survival mechanism that I once thought needed you.
My soul is weary of your needy hands, your open-bird mouth that I keep feeding more and more of my soul. Compassion has an end with me. In this game of survival, I will always be the fittest and you’ve stopped entertaining the animal within me.

I am worth so much more than being drained of my entirety. I am manifest energy as you are, as the earth is. Like the Earth my resources have been tapped and I can give no longer. Like the Earth I shall strike with ground shattering vengeance.

If ever I thought friendship was giving you everything for nothing in return, I was blind, for I am a Goddess as you are. I am a Goddess as you are a God, and your meager offerings of passing interest and constant need are insufficient. My inner patriarch has fed of your male-centric patterns of thought, and the women of my past lives are too loud in protest for this to continue.

I deserve much more than “friends” like you.

& most of all

If ever I thought my thighs were a sufficient reason for me to hate myself, if ever I thought they were an excuse for you to disrespect me, then I was a *****.
Because you are an *******.
And my body is rad

The cemetery was my circus I found
After outgrowing fantasy and the playground.
Golden afternoons in the country after school,
My blood having no resemblance, no ancestors,
To all the Sutton's and Smotherman's and Suddeth's
Who here resided with Tennessee pride. Inside and outside.
The still silence of my childhood cemetery carried an eerie air. I wanted to be here.
The peaceful calm, it called me back,
The king cawing crow, attending in black.
As for any of the lost, perhaps content, Confederate souls,
Who have yet to cross over, lamenting or dozed.
I suspect now, that it was I who startled those ghosts.
My blood, my frequency, my scent of the coast,
Sent from a Union ancestry my vibration still boasts...
How unexpected was I to those Tennessee ghosts.

Never a stumbling block
But, a rising stepping stone
To leap, to outlive, to surpass on
A constant change, where I belong?
A constant move, to thrive along
Hence never will I stop, never will I fret
Leaping higher, jumping over
Me, myself

WHEN Kylie Minogue began the process of tracking down 25 years of costumes and memorabilia for an exhibition on her (literally) glittering stage career, she had one crucial call to make.

“There were a few items the parentals were minding,” laughs Minogue. “I, too, do the same thing as everyone else: ‘Mum, Dad, can you just hold onto a few things for me?’ It’s just lucky they weren’t turfed out from under their watchful eye.”

Kylie On Stage is the singer’s latest collaboration with her beloved hometown’s Arts Centre Melbourne. She’s previously donated a swarm of outfits to the venue, going all the way back to the overalls she wore as tomboy mechanic Charlene on Neighbours.

This new — and free — exhibition rounds up outfits starting from her first-ever live performances on 1989’s Disco in Dream tour. Still aged just 21 and dismissed by some as a soap star who fluked a singing career, Minogue found herself playing to 38,000 fans in Tokyo, where her early hits “I Should Be So Lucky”, “The Loco-motion”, “Got To Be Certain” and “Hand On Your Heart” had made her a superstar.

“From memory, I was overexcited and didn’t really know what I was doing. I just ran back and forth across the stage,” says Minogue of her debut tour.

Disco in Dream also premiered what would become a Kylie fashion staple: hotpants. “Those ones were more like micro shorts, not quite hotpants, but they started it,” she admits. “There were also quite a few bicycle pants being worn around that time, too, I’m afraid.”

That first tour stands out for one other reason: Minogue officially started dating INXS’s Michael Hutchence at some point during the Asian leg.

“I had met Michael previously in Australia, but he was living in Hong Kong [at the time] and I met him again there. The tour went on to Japan and he definitely came to visit me in Japan.”

Fast-forward from Minogue’s very first tour to her most recent, 2015’s Kiss Me Once, and the singer performed a cover of INXS’s “Need You Tonight”. She remembers first hearing the song as a teenager. “I don’t think I really knew what **** was back then,” notes Minogue. “But that’s a **** song.”

Before the Kiss Me Once tour kicked off, the Minogue/Hutchence romance had been documented in the hit TV mini-series Never Tear Us Apart: The Untold Story Of INXS. Minogue said then it felt like Michael was her “archangel” during the tour — “I feel like he’s with me.”

Her “Need You Tonight” costume was also deliberately chosen to reflect what Minogue used to wear when she was dating the rockstar. “It was a black PVC trench coat and hat,” she says. “I loved that. It just made so much sense for the connection to Michael. I literally used to wear that exact same kind of thing, except it was leather, not PVC.”

By 1990, Minogue’s confidence had grown, something she’s partially attributed to Hutchence’s influence. Before her first Australian solo tour, she performed a secret club show billed as The Singing Budgies — reclaiming the derisive nickname the media had bestowed on her. It would be the first time her success silenced those who saw her as an easy target. Next year marks her 30th anniversary in pop; longevity that hasn’t happened by accident.

Minogue’s career accelerated so quickly that by 1991 she was on her fourth album in as many years and outgrowing her producers, Stock Aitken Waterman, who wanted to freeze-frame her in a safe, clean-cut image.

On 1991’s Let’s Get To It tour of the UK, Minogue welcomed onboard her first major fashion designer — John Galliano. He dressed her in fishnets, G-strings and corsets; the British press said she was trying too hard and imitating Madonna at her most sexed-up.

“Of course those comparisons were made, and rightly so. Madonna was a big influence on me,” says Minogue. “She helped create the template of what a pop show is, or what we came to know it as, by dividing it up into segments. And if you’re going to have any costume changes, that’s inevitable.

“I was finding my way. I don’t think we got it right in some ways, but if I look back over my career, sometimes it’s the mistakes that make all the difference. They allow you to really look at where you’re going. I’m fond of all those things now. There was a time when I wasn’t.

“Now I look back at the pictures of the fishnets and G-strings I was wearing ... Maybe the audience members absolutely loved it, maybe they were going through the journey with me of growing up and discovering yourself and your sexuality and where you fit in the world.”

As the ’90s progressed, Minogue started experimenting with the outer limits of being a pop star, working with everyone from uber-cool dance producers to indie rocker Nick Cave.

Her 1998 Intimate And Live tour cemented her place as the one thing nobody had ever predicted: a regular, global touring act. Released the year prior, her Impossible Princess album had garnered a credibility she’d never before enjoyed. But more credibility equalled fewer record sales.

The tour was cautiously placed in theatres, rather than arenas. Yet word-of-mouth led to more dates being added — she wound up playing seven nights in both Melbourne and Sydney, and tacking on a UK leg. All received rave reviews.

The production was low-key and DIY: Minogue and longtime friend and stylist William Baker were hands-on backstage bedazzling the costumes themselves. The tour’s camp, Vegas-style showgirl — complete with corset and headdress — soon became a signature Kylie look, but it was also one they stumbled across.

“I remember the exact moment: the male dancers had pink, fringed chaps and wings — we’d really gone for it. I was singing [ABBA’s] “Dancing Queen”. I did a little prance across the stage and the audience went wild. I thought, ‘What is happening?’ That definitely started something.”

Then came the “Spinning Around” hotpants. Minogue couldn’t wear the same gold pair from the music video during her 2001 On A Night Like This tour — they were too fragile — but another pair offered solid back-up.

“That was peak hotpant period,” says Minogue. “Hotpants for days.”

After the robotic-themed Fever 2002 tour (featuring a “Kyborg” look by Dolce & Gabbana), 2005’s Showgirl tour was Minogue’s long-overdue greatest hits celebration.

Following a massive UK and European run, her planned Australian victory lap was derailed by her breast-cancer diagnosis that May. Remarkably, by November 2006, Minogue was back onstage in Sydney for the rebooted Showgirl: The Homecoming tour.

“I look at that now and I’m honestly taken aback,” she admits. “It was so fast — months and months of those 18 months were in treatment.”

Minogue now reveals her health issues meant she had to adjust some of the Showgirl outfits: “I was concerned about the weight of the corset and being able to support it. I was quite insecure about my body, which had changed. For a few years after that I really felt like I wasn’t in my own body — with the medication I was on, there was this other layer.

“We had to make a number of adjustments,” she adds. “I had different shoes to feel more sturdy ... It was pretty soon to be back onstage. But I think it was good for me.”

The singer’s gruelling performances involved dancing and singing in corsets, as well as ultra-high heels and headdresses that weighed several kilos.

“A proper corset, like the Showgirl tour one, is like a shoe,” she explains. “It’s very stiff when you first put it on. By the end of the tour it was way more comfortable. The fact it made it quite hard to breathe didn’t seem to bother anyone except for me. But it was absolutely worth it. I felt grand in it.

“It took a while to learn how to walk in the blue Showgirl dress,” she continues. “I had cuts on my arms from the stars that were sticking out on pieces of wire. You’re so limited in what you can do. You can’t bend your head to find your way down the stairs.

“Whether it was the Showgirl costume or the hotpants, or the big silver dress from the Aphrodite tour [in 2011] that was just ginormous, they all present their own challenges of how you’re going to move and how you’re going to do the choreography. There are times the costume can do that [figuring out] for me; other times I really have to wrestle with it to do what I need to do.

“But you’re not meant to know about that,” she adds, “that’s an internal struggle.”

Minogue has spent much of 2016 happily off the radar, enjoying the company of fiancé Joshua Sasse, 28. She gets “gooey” talking about her future husband, whom she met last year when she was cast opposite him in the TV musical-comedy series Galavant. He proposed to Minogue last Christmas.

Just like the “secret Greek wedding” that was rumoured but never happened, reports of summer nuptials in Melbourne are also off the mark.

“I hate to let everyone down, but no,” she says. “People’s enthusiasm is lovely, we appreciate that, but there are no wedding plans as yet. I’m just enjoying feeling girly and being engaged.”

Minogue will be in Queensland next month filming the movie Flammable Children. The comedy, set in 1975, features her former Neighbours co-star Guy Pearce and is written and directed by Stephan Elliott (The Adventures Of Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert ).

“It’s Aussie-tastic,” laughs Minogue. And she is also planning a sneaky visit to check out her own exhibition when she’s back in Melbourne.

“I’ll probably try to move things around the exhibition,” she says. “And they’ll probably tell me off: ‘Who’s that child playing with the costumes?’”Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-sydney | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2016

i sit on the edge
of your bed.
stroking your fine golden
hair,
as you murmur and mumble
in your sleep.

you had once again,
thrown off your covers
and lay with arms and
legs oustretched.

you are outgrowing
these pyjamas,
with the curious george
print.
you are out growing
this narrow bed,
made...
as your first,
big boy bunk

and sadly you are
outgrowing the toddler's
need,
to be within sight of
the mother.

i am glad you are defining
youself,
as independant.
i am glad you are going
through,
this season
of seperateness.

as it gives us,
comfort to know,
the examples we have set,
allow you to be,
a happy, carefree child
who can,
enjoy his own company
or,
can play within a group
quite happily.

but i do miss,
your squishy little hand
in mine...
i do miss,
those clinging cuddles
and the nestling
of your little body,
fitting, squirmily,
into the side of mine....

i must ask Da to design
a bigger bed for you....
perhaps now,
you can help him build it.

you have now  settled
back into deep sleep,
my golden boy
and yet,
i cannot  take
my leave of you....

i linger,stroking,
your sleeping head,
drinking in,
the last vestiges of my baby, my toddler...
my growing up, ever up,
faster than i thought...
little man..

Feelings,
those insidious little things.
They ******, make you squirm,
sneak in unawares,
make nebulous all that is firm.

Feelings,
those traitorous little things.
They lift you up, make you float
then change without a warning
and sink the **** boat.

Feelings,
those warm little darlings.
With you through harmony or strife,
your companions, they let you
revel in the drama called life.