I'm gonna wear
my weathered cardigans
and be swallowed by the pack
of Seattle commutes
with my vinyl records in one hand,
a guitar in the other,
and a backpack full of
J. Kerouac and C. Bukowski
and R. Adams and L. Cohen.

I gonna live
off of the San Francisco Bay saltwater
and the bummed cigarettes outside
of bars that play nicotine music
to my ears.

I'm gonna sleep
on the ground in front of cookie-cutter houses
with their fence posts painted white.
I'll feel my psyche strum its last chord
and soon I'll be gone
without a sound.

I'm gonna die
in a new town where nobody knows my name.
I'll be a Chicago artist
full of New York poetry,
a Great Britain romantic
full of Alameda Victorian architecture,
or a Nebraska idiot
full of Midwest ambition.

You just can't
compete with
**** Me
boots.

The leather-clad calves
that
whisper "come to bed...
I promise so
many touches"

Cardigans merely dictate
"shoulders maybe...
You  so much as peek
at my
collarbones, and you're
done for,
Mister."

Spoken -
Maybe I would
tease...

"Try only,
to kiss
my cheek
because I'm
on the
boring bus"
(and especially
in your Chamber)

Or so you
would suppose.

But inside this
sweater, I'm
a *Butterfly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Versace

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

Bottega Veneta

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

Fendi

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

Truth is,
I suppose I really would like to be one of those girls
who frollicks in the sun in white dresses
and ballet slipper pink cardigans.

But I can't.
Something inside me fears it,
I don't feel... safe in those colors.
They don't fit me.
I'd like to look like Kalel from Wonderland Wardrobe,
but she's like every other girl,
tiny and naturally cute.
I'm too big to wear those clothes.
I have a big head and big arms
and a long torso
and strong horse legs.

I'd like to be a lady,
cute and sweet,
but I was born unfeminite.
I was born ugly.
A goblin amongst humans.

I'd like to wear my hair like that
and flaunt just like all of them,
but I could never do that,
for I was not made like that.
I wasn't made
for lace and ribbons
I was made for leather and chains
even better, a box,
a cardboard box suits me best
as it'd hide all my features
and keep my hidden from the world.

Phantom of the opera,
I do love the opera,
covering my pig face in a mask
and stumpy body in a black shroud.
I'm doomed to be like this.

I wanted to be like the other girls so bad
but I couldn't
and I started to hate it,
hate those colors
and stupid flowers
and ribbons
and makeup-
because they didn't look good on me,
made me look like a fool.

And now I'm trapped in
black, black,
black,
black
and more black
only ever black
black and bulky
because my body isn't like theirs
and my head is big
and like that of a pig,
so I'm stuck hiding
knowing I'll never be able to wear
white dresses
or those Ballet Slipper Pink cardigans.

Hair burned into beautiful submission
Face acrylically defined and chemically composed
Adornments meticulously chosen
Scent tested and approved
Smile practiced and performed
I am a porcelain doll
Sipping tea, at 6 am in the quiet of a sleepy-city apartment
Porcelain doll dainty wrists
Washing dishes, feeding cats
Folding linens, singing hymnals
Praying for peace and safety
Porcelain doll knitting sweaters
And folding paper cranes
Reading poems, setting tables
Wearing cardigans and pearls
Porcelain doll decorating cupcakes
Lighting scented candles
Watering potted plants and humming childhood lullabies
With my porcelain painted lipstick mouth


But lipstick can be dark
Eyes lined black as city alley ways
There is anger at injustice
The world outside the confines of a pastel doll house
It’s messy
It’s hard
It’s iron and concrete and coal
And I am too
Biking through the brick metropolis
Sunglasses and headphones
And anarchist literature
Evenings spent sprinting through the smog
Heartbeats synchronized to the crude drumming of the city
So hard to impress
I’m on the metro
Eyebrows structured and defined
And adorned with a calculated air of apathy
See me social justice march
Down highways with fervently entitled youths
See me armed against misogyny
Until my peers learn to better conceal it
See me smoking cigarillos
Drinking black coffee
Breathing the tainted air of the city that birthed me
And chanting manifestoes.

But my manifesto can be love
And love can conquer anger and fear
And hatred
Love can reconcile, it can erase timidity
And it can abolish resentment
Let it wash my face and take the need for vengeance from my spirit
Let it replace the thirst for power with thirst for truth.
I burn incense
And wear long skirts
Naked face and braless lazy days
Reading pacifism in the park
I walk far to find pure air to breathe
I sit and deconstruct my dichotomy
Under a wise and ancient tree
I trace myself backwards and forwards
I meditate on the paths I have traveled
I cry for the things I have seen
And for the things I have done
I contemplate transcendence
I drink wine and listen to folk music
On the terrace of my home
I bike barefoot to buy Indian takeout
And eat it in silence on the floor of an empty room

I think only of death
And resurrection
Of betrayal and redemption
Of opposites and compliments
And how to progress in knowing how divergent pieces of myself can learn to harmonize
I think about minimalism and materialism
Sentimentalism
And swords and pens
And how this race I run was rigged from the start
I think about blackberries
And the complexity of their literary and symbolic significance
I think about the number seven as I see it reoccurring in every possible sequence and equation
I think about God,
And TS Eliot
And If I dare disturb the universe
I think about porcelain dolls and ****** activists and ***** hippies
I think about war and peace and politics
About corruption and poverty and imperialism
About western ideals and conspiracy theories
And communism
I think about being radical,
And how both sides of this ideological war are defined by fear
And I think about love, as radical but defined by the absence of fear
The absolution of fear
And how I am fairly certain it is the answer
I think about the inevitability of art and war
how they create each other
how they destroy each other
inspire each other and annihilate each other
and how there is nothing that is innocent.
I think about pain and privilege
And stacked decks of cards
I think about dreams and nightmares
And prophesy.
I think about the darkness within me
Tendencies to lie and manipulate and steal
The darkness that I know could make me very great
But alone in the ashes of the world
I think of the curse of wealth and power
And I try to evaluate my motives
And the driving force of my ambition
But I don’t know.
I think about grace and all the things I don’t understand
And toil and fate and destiny
The shape of these things, their origins and culminations
And what this black box of secrets contains.
I think about so many things,
Until everything I was on the outside is gone.
My body is gone
My painted face and sculpted hair
My varnished nails and pierced ears
All my clothes and appendages and freckles are gone
My blood evaporated
My brain an invisible energy in the wind.
My home and street
And city
Are gone.
And even in such complete concentration
When it is only my essence and nothing else
And I transcend throughout my past and future
When I am spread thin
And stretched into the corners
When I fill the cracks and crevices
And melt into the pores of everything
And my spirit is awaked to a dimensionless reality
Even then,
Scio Nihil

I know nothing. .

Department store leg warmers
sharing the stage with thrift store achievements
candle wax and I can't recognize futuristic defeat.
Here in my corner
red lights, behind plenty of ears and tattoos
cardigans, cardigans galore.
I've seen them all before,
these cardboard cutouts.

Lamp, desk, repeat
lamp, desk, repeat.
I love the view when everything
dissipates into jean and jean and
t-shirt

I was reading when you're pineapple hair scooped
up my conscious mind
behind books and bags,
books and bags and cups.

You would know the inviting poison just from looking across the shining street,  
Its true my red lips and eyes long for so much, and everyone whispers
“Its all in the red lipstick”
Coffee mugs, rolled papers, lollipops, and whiskey bottles
Stained with the pleasure
Kiss my mouth and I will leave my stain.

Ruffled bed sheets and expressive faces, loved forever and full of  our bodies stain
Look for my friends with cardigans and hats, they escort me giggling on the street
Our floating and intoxicated theatre talk, full of pleasure
I will go home at night after talking myself into a frenzy just to hope you come to give me your whispers
Say things you shouldn’t: “I can see it. Images of cribs and baby bottles.”
Wrapped in a currently unreachable fantasy, but all we can say is its in the lipstick

So Paint my face and I will wear my pearls for you, my mouth gleaming with lipstick
And I know we will both be poor but we cannot run from the stain
That our alcoholic bottles
Will never fill. But I know you,  you will walk through the street
You make me want so much and I will give you all my vulnerable whispers
And though its true I may be a handful, I love to see your sly smile of pleasure

For when you hold my face in your hands, oh what pleasure
And my lips will be smeared with red lipstick
But no, it won’t matter because I still hear those whiskey whispers
Please leave a good stain
Because my heart, its true it resides on the street
It could be stomped on like empty beer bottles

But this love potion concocted of glass bottles
Through my dancing, cooking, and flirting—I just want to see you feel pleasure
And this city, its true it will eat up our liver, with ***** Broad Street
So I will laugh my loudest laugh when I see your lips covered with my lipstick
And I will be glad to leave you with my colossal stain
For in the morning and in the night I still hear my past’s Southern whispers

But running only towards your whispers
Reinventing myself with poisonous bottles
Look at the rose colored stain
I know you see into this moon of pleasure
Within me my soul is covered with Marilyn Monroe’s lipstick
Longing, such longing, but we reside to our auditioning on this city’s street

Filling our lungs up with dramatic pleasure
I will cover the theatrical current like my lipstick
To only walk forward in the beautiful polluted street.

have you ever made a spider a Palestinian? i have, today, refreshing the paint-job on the back of my house, a whole family strutting away from fresh paint being applied (poets cure boredom, they simply don't know it), the cardigans erase & rewind, my uncle would be perfect with his age to work out the demographics - my age circuit, 30 and listening to the palette of those in full-throttle of the 1990s - anyway, refreshing the paint on the back of my house, not for dough, but for the sweat of my brow - learning i succumb to acrophobia on the ladder - but i did it anyway... i love phobias, they're not the fear, they're like a box of chocolates... you never know what will make you startle... it's not permanent, phobias shouldn't be considered permanent, they're too reflexive... and we all know that nibbling them in the reflective realm immediately suggests irrationality, not to a reaction, but to a continuum of a reaction: a ladder, a giant spider to boot. but i never watched a spider eat fresh paint... watched the ******* do the nibble on paint... ***** - a getty cardinal spider shooting paint pollutants with its leg, eating the Chernobyl cocktail, the rainbow melt in a puddle of oil spill... junkies everywhere; so that done, a beer and a quick look at the Olympics...

if table tennis was as relevant as table tennis -
i prefer table tennis,
judo is too cool too - classic Greek wrestling
with feet to match the hands -
i think in terms of the Olympics we're in
the Gobi desert - so many sports are shown only
once every 4 years, the once that don't make the dough...
i'd prefer the Olympics without the pop culture
exponents that keep us hungry for spectacles
during the 4 years apart -
hand-ball, Romania thrashed by Angola -
ladies first, of course,
and weight-lifting, weighs in at 48kg and lifts
80+kg... well Jihad John versus G.I. Jane...
a pretty match up... look, i came from a certain background
i won't be making politically correct statements,
if it weren't for my personal initiative i'd be scooping
grub from an industrial flat surface roof like my father...
i don't mind getting paid... i just love the fact that i will
and if ending up homeless, i have enough heart already
to start a religion, or something.
of course i'll miss my personal library of books and albums,
who wouldn't? i'll join the divorcee crew and it'll be
like it always was supposed to be.
but am i really that ridiculous? think about it,
i use ridiculous words in my vocabulary, after all i went
to a catholic school, it was bound to happen -
not true secular cool, sorry -
but is my usage of certain words completely penniless
more ridiculous in the form of an oligarch buying
a pearl entombed in a custard pie? of a yacht for a month
at Monte Carlo? seriously? if i utilise the words
Paraclete or Antichrist after just skimmed rereading of
a psychiatrist's religious venture in Jung's *answer to Job
am i as ridiculous as those barons?
i don't think so... i read that book like Flaubert instructed
concerning all books: read in order to live it -
a book is a transplant, some leave a heart, come a ****,
some a brain, some a pint of blood with a book...
i hope to leave the worm of hell licking your ear for a sloppy
Jim - read Jung... almost atypical German Christian
intelligentsia byproduct, neutral Swiss just after the second
world war... Freud read Nietzsche and so did Mussolini...
****** was very much Jung... it's a strange book...
we all know that the Greeks hijacked Judaism...
the Romans were like: whatever that meant...
shoved it into a cauldron of the prefix omni-
and attributed to the prefix geographies and geometries
all inclusive (herr deutsche came along though) -
but the Greeks hijacked the oddity of Judea at that
special time because they had scientific inclinations
rather than aesthetic inclinations of the Romans,
and they wanted answers... got **** all...
it's not the Jews that thought the Greek involvement
ridiculous, it was the Romans... hence the omni-
and -presence, -potency, etc. - the Greeks just had
those mythical names for ****... Logos, Sophia...
that's the funny thing with mythology and history -
the book of Revelation by the looks of it simply looks
like a redemption of Oedipus... mythology is a logic
of history where either none was recorded on papyrus
since no one required hush-hush intrigue talk and people
spoke to each other face to face rather than to a profile -
mugs and mustard seeds -
you can always buy the book, C. G. Jung answer to Job,
it's peppered with too much Greek, and very little
Roman care... the theological addition of a globalised world
(under monotheism, failed and thriving, whichever)
is bound to play the montage of omni- and simply add -
God = omnivocab - i have my limitations of words -
i had to censor or rather select a vocabulary in order
to process the interchanges to reach a conclusive churning
without an ultimate goal other than to preserve a continuum,
like Balzac boring everybody with the 19th instalment of
the human comedy. so after reading this book on religious
matters by a psychiatrists i'm sorta bothered...
i'm tripping... obviously not seeing any hyper-geometry
of your choice... i just think the Greeks did the most horrid
hoarding and looting know to man... which reflected
the looting of Byzantium and never reaching the Holy Land...
the barbarians never cared to be honest, they only
started caring when they started to castrate the boys
for the "holy" choir rather than circumcise them...
then they went Berserk... the book of revelation can only
mean the quantum mechanics of history, bound to
mythology - Oedipus was very real... the blackened
heart of Greeks even though Aristotle, Socrates, Plato...
that intellectual import and expression didn't help...
after all Eddie Gein gave birth to the latter part of the 20th
century pop culture... Texas Chainsaw... Haemorrhoid Hannibal,
House of a 1000 Corpses.. history and journalism
dismisses mythology, i dismiss journalism as simply
a hyper-sensitivity that keeps dialectics out of the picture,
a monologue of opinions... mythology just doesn't seem
that insensible given our perspective into history with Darwin
and millions of years ago with the sea-turtles... you know
how gossip works... it sooth the reality of it had happened...
because we prefer oysters and chicken thighs to digest than
the tales of Eddie, oh yeah... Fe Maiden... d'uh!
the Greeks looted the Hebrews to purge themselves of
Oedipus... the weakness came by keeping estranged with
Narcissus and iconoclasm... you want an extract?
bombshell blonde at your bidding -
assumptio mariae: mary as the bride is united with the son
in the heavenly-chamber, and as sophia, with the godhead.
basically Mary is a schizophrenic ****-child of lust
for a Roman centurion who makes the story of a ****** birth
her wish to bed-wet her son (Jesus) into joining **** John
and Toe into her ****** (***** *****, like her already)
in heaven - she thinks her body will **** her "******-birth"
son and her wisdom (Sophia is her alias, or nickname)
will **** god in the head. oh hell this is sacrilege -
i'm not afraid of it... boo! ha! caught you mouth dry with the
boogie man. so this is a psychiatrist reasoning his religion...
as i said, the Greeks had no omni- Roman put the **** back
into his boots before he starts river-dancing...
all these quizzical ultra-mythical words that the Greeks
used starting with the Logos and Hippocrates were attached
to the failed Platonism of the unconverted Damocles principle
and the tyrant succumbing to drink and never bound to
a sober wish for anything more - (i'm guessing his intentions
were laid with Nietzsche as source of discipleship) - in short
let's just say that Platonism failed in practice,
and it needed a populist movement, a redemption from
the curse of Oedipus came from Hebrew with the schizoid-birth,
Joseph bin Adam was: better bite that ****** of the cow-fruit
and remind her of the stoning practices around here -
oh it's all pretty much Eastenders around here, it's
not the ******* Vatican marble corridors, we're talking
Gaza dust sneezing while whipping the donkey's *** to
move along... split-mind: beautiful metaphor... premature
dementia, obviously misunderstood... if premature "dementia"
while so much creativity among the split-minded...
it's like all the zodiac signs became jealous of Gemini,
incorporating Gemini-Solipsism... well, i have a neck like a bull
and a *****-count like a charging bull... but the thinking
behind the 3.a.m. is kinda staggering... oh right, you want
more quirky clues from Jung's book:
- silvia loret
- maritza mendez
- aria giovanni             (get a hybrid and i'll believe in Disneyland) -
****, that ain't what i was going to write, never mind,
you get a chance to see the palette of what's fudge for
fucky-fucky sized 16+ and what the Renaissance men
knew would be better than duck-feathers in pillows;
- meister eckhart: gott ist selig in der seele
- puer aeternus: vultu mutabilis albus et ater
    (of changeful countenance, both white and black)
- pius XII's apostolic constitution (munificentissimus dei)
   words like muni-imus really make you train in
    grammatical arithmetic, don't they? playing doctor with
   them as to where to cut them for a aqua format of rivers
   is quiet like reciting a 5x table up to 30 (sometimes)
- oportebat sponsam, quam pater desponsaverat, in θalmis caelestibus habitare (the bride whom the father had espoused had to abide in the heavenly bridal-chambers): st. john damascene (encomium in dormitionem);

summa summarum?
Nietzsche answered Job... this is my answer to Jung as also an answer to Lot - **** your daughters, your wife turns into a pillar of salt... and i equate that as a precursor to the man of sorrows on the ****** crucifix - salt is a metaphor for misery (that's etymology for you); and the Roman phonetic encoding survived over the fates of Egyptian and Babylonian is precisely why the adopted son of Caesar later made his uncle's adopted nephew his successor - as with the four dogma canon gospels, we're replicas of the tetragrammaton... well... i was never confirmed, i'm one short of joining the god-men that came out from catholic school after choosing a name for themselves they could have changed not having wished to be known by the two names given to them by their parents... few did... i just ended up an acronym of Einstein: M C E.

golfers riding mechanical bulls.
puking on street corners.
awkward cops. angry to boot.
***** fights. purple dresses. gold heels.
greasy cheesesteaks.
shuffle board AND bocce ball.
spirit'o'mericuh.
doritos. cool ranch AND nacho cheese.
white and black pin strip cardigans.
breast pumps or sound amplifiers?
****** indie.
photo booth bombs.
hot tea.
cheap whiskey.
expensive cocktails.
sticky icky danky green.
missed shows.
long lines.
wait.
remind me why im here again?

You're like a window
Light shines through
But it's dark inside

Cardigans for Curtains
All those lovely shapes, beside
Depending on the weather
Sometimes you're blue (Don't forget I can see through)
Sometimes you're black
Sometimes stars get stuck
           Fixation, Oxygen deprivation
Where would we be without you...?
                    dot, dot, dot, Question

The stars get stuck in the cracks
Obviously a metaphor for your flaws
And these lines/curves/obscurities
                  of my vision
Help me see you

Prism, dancing, and trying to age like wine
Getting, getting better all the time

Reflect it back
   Childhood
Magnolia leaves
Currently being abandoned
             Streets
Real Estate
   And different Paint

Then College
NOT taking you're money
"Too bad, see you next time honey"

Lanterns and Moths like houseguests
   Here to assess the property damage
You are not Real Estate

You are a Window
Light shines through

Ivy like a crown
Curtains like a blanket
You're looking from the corner
Feeling like the abandoned streets
Ex boyfriend like kids throwing stones
                      their blind, so they usually miss...you're beauty

You may crack, fracture, fractal
But you are Urban
                   There will be renewal

Here comes the repairman (Not that you need a man)
            Band-aids & stickers
Heartache like a stomachache
And he's looking in

There's the Windowsill
Light Shines through

You are more than a Window
But it's dark inside

it’ll be shaved legs and summer dresses
without cardigans
sunkissed hair, skin, eyes even
though you’ll never know, I wonder,
would your eyes burst out of their sockets
like rockets
if you saw that much of my skin
under healthy light?
instead of naked in your bed
I’m untouchable,
a fantasy, barefoot in a meadow
skin so wanted
- though she’ll be wearing hers
blatantly and ready
for you to have,
smoking a cigarette she says is her
last
because
‘she’s only smoked three
this week’
she’s proud, sure she is
though you’re not even sure you care at all
and the sun makes the day longer
the moon makes the night as romantic
as Paris
and you’ll get along
even though you don’t smoke
and she doesn’t know what it means
to not need you
and she doesn’t know what it means
when you’re with and crave the skin
of another woman
- like me for instance -
but you’ll get along
like sea turtles or baby pandas playing
under sheets or
spontaneously in your kitchen
weaving breaths
weaving beats
an effortless ******
then heavy sleep
because you two know what it’s like
to know each other that well
yeah,
you’ll get along  
for months to come

Thump Thump.
Butterflies crawl in my chest.
Thoughts swirl around in my head.
I can’t focus or see straight.
This is anxiety.

And it’s not something I
talk about often, though it’s
more common than one might
think, where my heart pounds so
loud and anxious
thoughts threaten to
drown out everything
that makes me,
Me.

You see, my brain sees simple
things incorrectly.
Texts and sometimes the
thought of leaving the
house sends
adrenaline coursing through my
system like
a thousand shots of caffeine
into my bloodstream.
The logical parts of me fled on the
first flight out of town,
leaving me to feel the tremors and
full force tsunami
on the ground.

Anxiety is a lot like love,
but it’s a battle not a dance.
A lifetime, not five minutes.
Unlike love, it’s often violent.
But just like love, it’s quite silent.

Anxiety feels like hunger, but stronger.
Like fear, but it lasts longer.
Writing this poem has quelled the
qualms that anxiety often spells.

I wish that I could be honest
about this part of me. But it's
one of those things you’re trained
not to talk about from a young age.
Because unless you’re depressed,
medicated, or heaven forbid
you’re not seeing a therapist,
then it’s not bad enough to qualify.
It’s not big enough to report.
I’m not suffering enough.

But if you could just feel
my heart beating fast.
If you could interpret the swell
of my tell-tale blush.
If you could whisk your fingers
through all of my thoughts.
If you could only
hear all of the things I’m feeling
but can’t quite express.
Then you would know that my
silence is telling.
I may be smiling, but currently I’m
fighting for sanity in my own mind.
The mind I feel is no longer mine.
I’m walking a dangerous
tightrope *****.
My mind is a minefield of poisonous
butterflies.
They threaten to swallow me alive, so
I tread the violence quietly.

I fear when I expose you to this
side of me, you’ll only see anxiety
or that maybe I’m lying.
But anxiety is not me.
I am more than mixed up brain signals.

The rest of me is cardigans in the summer,
because it’s cold inside.
I am mock converse and ponytails and
words on paper,
thoughts poured out,
slowly.

I just feel anxious
Sometimes.
More than normal, actually.
But I’m dealing with it.
And I’m no less me.

You were the world, you were the sun.
You stood out in a green t-shirt.
Your guitar solo sounded like a possessed cat.
I was amazed, I was in awe.
How many girls are there in the world like this?
A rarity in this deadbeat town.
A warm feeling in the corner of my stomach.
A spine jolt at any word said to me, any smile given to me.

Euphoria and pleasure, molecules touching.
Twisted sheets and callused hands.
Young skin, the softest I had ever known.
Where am I, and how did I get here?
A biopic and a box-office failure comedy.
In each other’s pocket.

The moons passed, the candle flickered.
The 12-bar blues was wrong, but you could not accept.
Your pitch was all over the shop.
Tone-deaf, some would call it.
But I did not want to harm your feelings.
You’re perfect, and there’s nothing else to it.

The rains came and went, and there we were.
Perched atop a hill in a new city.
I forced good feelings into my stomach.
I wrote and wrote songs, I poured them out.
You didn’t care. You never cared about my music.
All right for you, taking on the world.
Shaking percussion across hand-railings.
That’s pretentious. It all sounds the same.
This strange behaviour automatically makes you better than me.

A night comes where I wish to stay in.
Perhaps watch a Jim Jarmush film.
No, let’s drink plenty of cider and head out.
Visit the valley. Go to stupid clubs where everyone is cooler than me.
My father’s suit, I brandish it.
I am verbally knocked down by the filth of the valley.
I should have stayed home.
You and your stupid friends are drunk,
And I join you on a 2am bus home.

We lie in the shadows of the nest.
I talk of the cigarettes.
I do not wish to walk through this smoke with you.
Stop it now, do it for me.
You didn’t give a ****. You would continue.

You never cared about my music.
Whenever I picked up a guitar, I got bad vibrations.
Any of your perfect hipster friends pick up my guitar, instant praise.
Play that again, Oscar.
That’s not a person’s name, that name belongs to a Muppet.

I should have done what I wanted.
I should have bought my groceries separate.
My money flew away in the breeze. My job wasn’t enough.
You didn’t care.
It was all about you. You couldn’t get money from the government.
It was all about the scene.
Putting on your most op-shoppy clothes, heading out to roll cigarettes and drink with other pretentious lower-class folk.
******* cardigans. Get the **** out.

I hate the way you didn’t give a **** about the songs I wrote.
I hate the way we’d always have to buy dark chocolate because the normal kind hurt your teeth.
I hate the way we’d never hire out a zombie film because you thought they were real.
I hate the way you cut your hair to look like Agynes Deyn. You didn’t look like her.
I hate the way you’d bag out our old town and think you were so much better because you lived north now.
I hate the way you told me about the clone of me you were seeing. He even played a Jazzmaster and had the same haircut as me.
I hate seeing new photos of you looking so sick. Every photo you’re holding a cigarette.
I hate thinking about what you’re up to right now.
I hate how you always come into my mind when I’m trying to get on with life.

But what I hate the most is the fact that I know you never think about me, ever.

And I think about you almost every day.

6/10/11 12AM

I am a rare breed. I'm a soft breeze in the very beginning of fall. The little orange leaf that's fallen off the branch of a forty foot tall tree. I am cardigans and ginger hair braided back with a little daisy chain tucked behind my ears. I am the smell of a new book right if the shelf of Barns And Nobel. I am the leather bound journal used for writing down the secrets God shares with His children. I am twinkly lights hung around white walls. A sweet smelling candle and warm pumpkin pie.

Decorum is corrupt, decorum is dead, the books we told were good
            have all been read.
Fitzgerald has been bled dry by institutions, teachers and those guys in
            red chrome cardigans.
Those Pennine walks have turned to drunken talks in the eaves of the night,
            high above conscious thought and the cold glow candle light
The long haul flights back to the heavenly sight of tyre black
            tarmac have become tedious meditations;
though those lamentations still exist within my wrists,
            a yearning for your riverside kiss.
Bus journeys along roads and routes I already knew are
            changing without consultation,
it’s temporary probation, an experimentation, a test
            of time well spent.
Time well spent in ground floor, high rent, properties,
            fading away into a slack attitude disease.
Needles and fluid, *** and Cupid won’t lift you from this
            perpetual stall,
nor will anything at all; though maybe plans scribbled down on
            napkin edge corners will.
With thought, white paper vertices can quickly become
            mountain range peaks.
Throw politeness out of your transport’s window
            and become a widow to the road,
black veil eyes, cold and grainy, lost in your endeavour
            to find somewhere new to feel safe and clever.
Take those books that you thought were good to tear
            into the new prose of the year.
Rip title pages and dedication pages and index pages
            from the spine
and throw them in the air
            to make a new line of literature and pain.
Take also your pencils and strip them of
            their back bone lead
and shave them into clean kindling for fire start
            shavings for a warmer lonely camp bed.
It’s there and then, in your fake polyester,
            four season sleeping bag womb
that’ll you’ll experience the darkened tomb
            of unbound freedom.
But like paragraphs of small print found in the back of the squint-again-magazines,
            freedom comes at a price, as if long hair and lice or poverty and bedroom escapade vice.

thankyou
we are all looking after ourselves
carefully here as you suggested

family, few friends too

as I hope you are too

there is a routine come natural
with walking peering
and poking with sticks

there is drawing as you know
and they come as magic for company

the red especially

thick and covering the plainess

i give them cardigans with buttons
and sometimes dots

i looked out yesterday at the raining
on and off all day

washing in and out

then cotton bits ironed for i like the feel of it

you look after yourselves too

when critique is about, the unsuspecting walk like peacocks, showing off the wooden dutch slacks of fear prior to criticism, forging a proof of god so debased that it would require the holocaust to have taken place.*

- yes, this call is immediate, what's the severity?
- immediacy in all circumstances.
- sounds terrible.
- yep, blood in my **** too.
- ooh, dialectical diarrhoea?
- skidding at one hundred miles per hour with a popsicle swerve on the slurp.
- trafalgar sq. fountains?
- lions roaring in alabaster to the breaking of bony hinges.
- triage.
- can i see him face to face.
- no, you need to speak to him first via the triage telephone system.
- so he's the now receptionist and knows the daybreak slots with chemical compounds.
- no, thingy thingy, dum dum **** a toe, crackle fun pull a twig: we're
   the receptionists, he prioritises the eventuality of a cancer advert.
- three quid down the drain?
- yes, we, the receptionists of the world will stand against the robotic onslaught!
- ****** on winter sledges.
- exactly.
- not exactly, you, receptionist, you jane, me tarzan, you book face to face, now.
- you tarzan, you straighten bananas.
- you jane, you book, appointment.
- you tarzan, you straighten bananas.
- you jane, you book, appointment, now.
- me jane, me receptionist, me on the conveyor belt of corn crop patched harvestable.
- me i.q.
- me one hundred and fifteen.
- face to face to farce.
- farce to bloke to pole.
- pole leaning on a pole.
- englishman eating a napkin.
- blackjack and ingredients for the pride of britain: vindaloo child.
- sloshed on a cricketeer's return.
- puns and cardamon cardigans of colour without scent.
- pushy apple sours coloured acid green without the mojo juice.
- spank that gimp ***** into a piglet.
- leathered up, boots on parole.
(who the hell is talking now?)
- i need to see the doctor face to face, i need my sick note to live on:
   on brink of day in ultraviolet twilights, and drink.
- are you a banker?
- i'm a sick man, a beggar.
- we only provide sickness to the rich and famous.
- so what do i get?
- premature death.
- oh, can i have a bank account with that?
- oh sure, as long as you can accept debt.
- 5% like standard a.e.r.?
- no, 2000%
- so my debt interest will be crazy dizzy above my savings interest rate?
- yes.
- do you sell h.i.v. positive syringes?
- we're accommodating.
- thank you very much.
- thank you.
- goodbye morrow and marrow tight.
- bones ashore.
- **** all ahoy.

The cardigans have invaded Carnegie Hall
Flickering in the reflection of an antique disco ball
The piano keys tremble in fear
Of the beauty no one will hear
Dulled out through a clash of commotion
Rumbling in the raging ocean
Stomping their feet in senseless rhythm
Leaving wayward elbows to cause a schism

The violins bellow noise
The band play with their toys
Everyone seems perfectly content
Forgetting how much money they spent
Waiting for one lasting memory.
Something akin to 'Discovery'
Then as the precipice reaches the sun
A fire alarm cause everyone to run.

Did you know they pay people to study here,
to stay here after studying? It’s the human
capital flight of the tech-smart who type faster
than an entire room of secretaries in cardigans and pearls.
But the bigger question is, if all the brains
are draining out like spiders in a shower, then who is still here
weighting the state lines down with stones
if not zombies? Brainless bodies hungry, crabby, and without
an appropriate sense of boundaries.
          They lure you in
with home values and cheap houses—the tired ones
who are getting old for their age, who don’t run as fast or as often
and want an easy life with chubby children and a yard,
or those who are sick of being felt up ‘accidentally’ on the 22 Fillmore bus.
This is how they get you.
          And you stay because it grows on you
the way everything grows in Indiana, effortlessly and way too fast.
Plus, let’s face it, you’ve gotten lazy and don’t
make enough money to one day move away
with the kids and the yard and all.
So the zombies win.
          But being Indiana,
the neo-conservatists would swoop in to save the day
against the zombies who hate us for our freedoms
and the liberation of our women. And sometime after
the "Mission Accomplished" banner is broadcast
to all 50 states from a ship safely tucked away
on Lake Michigan,
          the zombies will regroup again
and pick us off like old ladies at the bus station.
Then with even more determination and hatred of the living
they’ll get fat on intellect until they’ve eaten the last,
and the un-dead of Indiana will die of starvation.

My English teacher told me that my sentences didn't have enough commas. Sounds to me like she just needs some looser cardigans. I just want Swarovski crystals and silk pajamas. I want nice bed sheets and curtains. Preferably white and lacy. I want a nice little part time desk job that's only a few days a week. you see, I'm actually a good writer, but it's not straight A's on essays that I seek.

actually, the only home i have are the muddy fields of belgium during world war i, or among the jews, but given the jews are settled, i guess i better daydream: i mean i never got the cultural imprint of the english idea of dating... put me in the Czech Republic and i'd be freely participating in ****** any day... this stiffening date-culture never appealed to me, it always felt like a divorce before a marriage: so no amorous fun with body but fun in making out in cordiality of being fully dressed and lapping palettes up with tongue rather than the *******, as if throwing a coconut at Robinson Crusoe? yes?! ah crap... point towards the Zulu clan, i just feel the need to strip naked.*

yeah, i believe in meow-meow land,
that's the country next to la-la-land...
where you're trying to sterilise
yourself in terms of organic
historicity and integrate yourself
in terms of inorganic sterilisation
via importing alien values to hush
the monogamy crescendo of failure.
with the irish telling you:
ain't no english...
and with scots you shout back:
there's no thing as to be treated impossible
whether in thought about or moved!
the irish want you to have a coarse
enough accent as them so you can be belittled...
i always favoured the scots, warm-hearted *******,
and i too the first hairy-shinned trans-gender
kilt loving twirly girl of a music box
of cherry tree cheaply picked Muzak
for the thrills of shopping for cardigans and pineapples.

it's abut 9pm and I decide I don't want to be alone



there was a car crash earlier that day up west towards Salida--
some Kansas man who was killed by a driver trying to pass
in the right lane, declared deceased on scene, another man
from Monument who was air-lifted to St. Thomas Moore,
no critical injuries.

I tend to ask God for these big signs, signs that I'll recognize. I tell him
that they need to be something I'll notice because you know me, sometimes I can't hear you. Anyway, signs, crashes. A Kansas man died.  It's 9pm and I pull on some jeans and leave the house.

I'm supposed to be at a rodeo dancing, but maybe I wasn't supposed to be there after all. I have this white dress in my closet that you can't even see, tucked between everything else because it's so thin, lays flat beneath the aztec smocks and cream cardigans. I take it out and brush it off, thread my fingers through the open lace--

10pm. When I breathe soft enough the stars look like they're hanging on strings, like I could reach up and snap them off,
they'd be no bigger than dew drops on a spider web
so light they'd drift up in the night breeze and
set up in my own natural atmosphere.

What good would it have done me to be there? I only ask
myself to assuage the warm fear i've been feeling since Friday
night, a lingering umbrage I did not think would stay--
I can see the white stitches in my jeans that look
like they're glowing,
smells like rain out here.
I wish I was out at Chaffey
for a quick moment, enveloping
someone else in this chanel perfume
makin' someone else envious of the
way another man got to spin me out--

I'm trying to be all these people at once, an  
audience of crowd pleasers piled into one body
It's so quiet, I'm so quiet up on the sideways knoll in
Florence, tired of letting people down easy off the sidewalk
curb and being tossed off the bridge over the state highway myself,
I can't help it, I want to say aloud.

I can't help that I am this way, collected.
calm in hearty hysterics, anxious to tell
you about how I've been fixed,
that warm fear growin' hotter
a coal for every man who suggested
I be less than who I am by pourin' more
into my cup,

I'm trying. I'm trying.

I miss you
You always smelled like flowers
Like a woman
I wanted that scent
so I could breathe it in every day and feel you
picture you
put in on and become you
I still want to become you
You're perfect
Your ***** blond hair
Your moon-shaped glasses
Your shoulder bag
Your salads
Your smile
Your quick wit  
Those rebellious ears that stick out
Just like you do
In a crowd
The freckles and tiny hairs on your arms
Your slim fingers
So perfect
So immaculate
So precise
Your forest green cardigans and white dress shirts
Your tweed jacket and pants
Your ancient blackberry
Your voice
Smooth as milk and honey
Your exercises
Your books
Your mind

Your ring
Which you no longer wear
What do divorced men do with their rings?
Do they make love to them?

tuppence middleton is careful of british ***,
she doesn't refer to british antics from
holy ****** soil in spain, bunched-up ******,
and diving into the pool from a hotel balcony
as a modern epitome of courage... / stupidity
without a cause or a sword;
while everything back home goes on in your
daily orwellian backstreet surveillance,
pristine (chocolate on rotten teeth clenched
elocution); she forgot to mention that the brits
have a viral infection worse than alcoholism,
they treat *** with the nasty-pill,
so they can make banter about it (jokes)
to carry on bloodhound drooling for more.
make joke out of *** you'll end up easily shocked
and shackled to no ***, but joking that
the burning bush that spoke to moses on mt. sinai
was the ***** region of his egyptian mega-*****
will get you further than expected.*

so she's writing her drunk through her twenties
memoir, one fascinating detail emerges
(i could have written thing, like all the philosophers,
to condense the vocabulary of a few categories of
words to reach the philosophical pinnacle
of abstraction, i said detail, although i could have
said anecdote, tarts in cardigans of printed tartan):
verbatim: i dropped a bottle of wine on kitchen
tiles and was lapping the drink like a dog,
along with dirt from the floor and broken glass;
i was half as bad, one night i couldn't mix enough
alcohol with the sleeping pills i'm taking,
i knew of one off-lice that sold alcohol into the wee
hours of the night, a few miles away,
next to a brothel i used to frequent, upon entry (drunk)
asking for water, the prostitutes bemused by my
courting ways without a chandelier ballroom in sight
(kissing hands after giving an ******, all that),
so i thought i'd catch the night bus (N86) to get a few
beers... on my way to the bus-stop,
2 miles away, i spotted a hit and run fox dead
by the bus shelter, a few houses prior a skip
with two bins bags... two spectators...
spotted the fox, emptied the content of the black bin bags,
bent over the fox, put him into the bin bags
(i was thinking of the guy who had to work a sunday
getting rid of the health hazard),
i almost choked and almost vomited,
i could snort up the odour of blood from the fox,
packed the fox in the bin bags...
walked back home,
weighed the fox on the scales outside my home
(9 - 10kg, about as much as my ginger maine ****),
then walked on, dropped the bag into the bushes
in the green belt...
(the closer i am to a brothel, the more i'm eager to go in,
which isn't particularly odd, given the slime juice
eagerness of the flower if not the pouch oysters);
and then a shamanism appeared out of mutual respect:
sat on the curb drinking a beer, sat with a fox,
a girl walked less than half a metre from the fox,
the fox didn't move,
drinking a beer lying down so close to a fox
scratching the fox's fleas could have jumped on me...
my ginger totem, you are my ginger totem...
so what about the sheep the wolves and the foxes?
who's to attire the foxes into a metaphor adequate enough?
but i'd never sip a broken glass bottle from the floor,
i mean, i ****** into my favourite mixer bottle
coca-cola, then poured it into a glass with whiskey...
but i wouldn't go as far as to drink it...
i'd wait and experience the fluctuations of metabolism,
cook some food, read a book, you see words
can salvage a man from the depths of drinking,
they're akin to stones, i'm basically piling stones
into a mountain, effectively there's nothing moving
them once they've been written, all you get is
a bemusement:
peel                                v.                         pelt
poker                             v.                         pooh
pill                                 v.                          no y in peel
new woos                     v.                          news
pepper                          ­v.                          penguin
in the word ego, the e is a prolonged syllable,
i had many more, better examples,
but the way i see it, without evident diacritical units
to example off, you'll get hidden aesthetics
of many particularities of expression,
based upon many odd instances where it's written
one way... but spoken another.

in the shutter of my camera.
in all the worn holes in my cardigans.
in the smell of your cooking.
in the sound of cutting strawberries.
in the turning pages of all the anthologies.
in the broken windows.
in the crumbled sheets.
in all the songs I hear.
in the place where you used to sleep.

The seasons change
and you paint what you see:
Silver snow banks,
fragile trees with budding leaves
red blossoms, exploding pink roses,
and gold leaves gleaming in puddles.
And we wear the seasons on our backs:
Sweaters with snowflakes,
light-weight light-green silk scarves,
blouses and strappy sandals the color of tulips,
cardigans and boots heavy like the falling leaves.
And so inside reflects the outside---
the sky above the water,
photo next to the paintbrush,
the window on the house,
the window in your living room.

With college comes rebellion,
Or at least that's what I'm told.
New hair, piercings, "self exploration."
"I'll never change,"
I would always adimately insist.

But now things seem so different.
Is this really who I want to be?
The goody-goody everyone trusts?
I want to show I can be something different.
I'm not all cardigans and pearls.
I can have a little danger, a little rebellion.
I have already been tamed,
Conformed in a certain image.
Now it's time to let loose.