Standing on a busy street corner
When a limo pulls up next to me
Out pops the head of Johnny Depp
(Not the body mind you, just the head)
And asks where's the nearest Dairy Queen

Not one to miss an opportunity
I blurted out I'll show you the way
So that's how the head of "The Depp" and I
Spent time together that day

In his limo he had his makeup artist
Which seemed a bit odd to me
Everywhere the head of Johnny went
It had to dress up for the scene

Since Johnny was drooling a Dilly
First stop Dairy Queen
With Johnny's head as the Mad Hatter under my arm
It was a very strange scene indeed

With me holding onto the Dilly's
And Johnny's head on the counter up front
Mr. Depp was the King at the Queen that day
Though his ice cream licking habit did turn some peoples lunch

Later on passing a Piggly Wiggly
Johnny's head said what's up with that
Told him it's nothing more than a grocery store
His reply was let's give it a crack

So undergoing more of his makeup
And in the blink of an eye
I have the head of Jack Sparrow
In the grocery cart with a bag of Funions by his side

Yes, Johnny Depp's head loves Funions
Which to me really ranks the breath
But who am I to tell a Big Time Movie Star that
I'm not the keeper of his head

He even dressed as Edward Scissorhands
Which didn't turn out quite right
Since Johnny's head has no hands
To hold the famous Scissorhand knives

That day we went to so many places
With every stop a new disguise
I guess for entertainment you do what you can
When all that's left is your head and some of your mind

Whelp, that's about it on this days adventures
Not a whole lot more to be said
As I stood on the street corner waving bye, bye
To the limo pulling off into the sunset, along with the head of Johnny Depp

Standing on a busy street corner
When a limo pulls up next to me
Out pops the head of Johnny Depp
(Not the body mind you, just the head)
And asks where's the nearest Dairy Queen

Not one to miss an opportunity
I blurted out I'll show you the way
So that's how the head of "The Depp" and I
Spent time together that day

In his limo he had his makeup artist
Which seemed a bit odd to me
Everywhere the head of Johnny went
It had to dress up for the scene

Since Johnny was drooling a Dilly
First stop Dairy Queen
With Johnny's head as the Mad Hatter under my arm
It was a very strange scene indeed

With me holding onto the Dilly's
And Johnny's head on the counter up front
Mr. Depp was the King at the Queen that day
Though his ice cream licking habit did turn some peoples lunch

Later on passing a Piggly Wiggly
Johnny's head said what's up with that
Told him it's nothing more than a grocery store
His reply was let's give it a crack

So undergoing more of his makeup
And in the blink of an eye
I have the head of Jack Sparrow
In the grocery cart with a bag of Funions by his side

Yes, Johnny Depp's head loves Funions
Which to me really ranks the breath
But who am I to tell a Big Time Movie Star that
I'm not the keeper of his head

He even dressed as Edward Scissorhands
Which didn't turn out quite right
Since Johnny's head has no hands
To hold the famous Scissorhand knives

That day we went to so many places
With every stop a new disguise
I guess for entertainment you do what you can
When all that's left is your head and some of your mind

Whelp, that's about it on this days adventures
Not a whole lot more to be said
As I stood on the street corner waving bye, bye
To the limo pulling off into the sunset, along with the head of Johnny Depp

.you can never really write any poetry by not covering the "heartbreak" the loss of your own "printed" words: how much different is the internet, from "real" life? just asking... since: internet banking & internet shopping... to lose a poem / pre-scriptum is not exactly the same as losing a person to mind: father's day... i cooked the dinner, i took out the trash, i wrote an invoice... i guess that's much better than leaving a card of greetings... and, come to think of it? why are we the sort of people subjugated to nostalgia, with but also "without" a history? aren't we subjugated to nostalgia and a history as a "fiction"? the beginning of the 21st century, the end of the 20th century... the 19th century germans associated themselves with a nostalgia for ancient greece, we're the only people who have an inbuilt nostalgia "safety-mechanism"... the only people in time who are nostalgic about the life surrounding their own existence slot, which doesn't have a trans-temporal dynamic... i remember times when we would be teenagers... spitting on people from car-parks on imaginary tonsures, buying *****-magazines from indian cornershops, or belgian freebies of non-insinuations, white lightning cider while sleeping over at youth centers playing snooker throughout the night... even at school: attending a catholic school with the irish east enders... uniforms, sure... a chequered shirt: blue, red, white... tag? made in canada... and if only capitalism worked as it once did, made in canada? lifetime of a shirt? 20 years... now? made in china... not exactly real cotton, is it? 2 years... before ironing the shirt *****... once upon in gants hill, st. valentine's park, and the pub, recently closed, decent karaoke... in the park? golf, basketball, rowing boats in the large ponds... when the jews were there... gants hill roundabout... the hanukkah torches... jews scuttling wearing trainers come rosh hashanah: jews can't wear leather on rosh hashanah (judgement day)... shy like rats... when the jews were there (gants hill, ilford)... the park looked great... tennis courts... now, when neo-Bangladesh moved in? ****** place. what else do i remember from my original pre-scriptum that i lost? oh, that once time in gants hill... walking into a kosher bakery with ****** knuckles, having tested them on a canvas of a brick wall, buying some dough-fused-sweets? with the girl selling the sweets bewildered by fear? i like the look of fear in people when tested by uncertainty, and bleeding knuckles? later? climbing over the park fence, taking a **** while squatting in the darkened palace of the park, walking into a brothel, having my wallet stolen, not reacting in what would have been justified... high school... we wore uniforms... so no high school h'american culture trap / culture... school uniforms are the best idea, there's no chance to "shine" in telling apart the rich kids from the poor kids... there's only the standard... walking to a supermarket, past a thai surprise... sports bra, short hair... walking back... she's still there pretending to talk on her mobile to someone... you take her home with a few beers... play her some jazz... take her into the garden, the moon is a beauty... you **** her... hand in her underwear and you're still gambling... before the emergence of the nag hammadi library and the whole androgynous vogue, the thai were already readied with the lady-boys... when i reached in and found nothing but oyster... would i have stopped finding a wink-wink slouching worm? slap a trans in the face? no, not really... a thai surprise is, a thai surprise... i would have considered doing my first ****... "lucky" for me she was a she... a girl... ****** her in the garden under the moonlight... gave her my hoodie, which she drowned in... finally... the level of interaction where the female is not a mantis, i.e. a female larger than the male... she drowned into my hoodie as i walked her home... i like the familiarity with the mammalian, not resorting to insect superiority of females... these days... i find that males are strictly mammalian... while females? they are borrowing insect-esque ontologies... well, darwinism allowed the time-frame... males are mammals... females are insects, behaviour-wise... two time frame i do not appreciate the english for... darwinism is prime.... cultural-marxism my ***... what about cultural-darwinism?! no?! that doesn't exist?! cultural-darwinism is as real as cultural-marxism, and, in the former sense? it really does belong to the conservative right-wing politico spectrum! might i add? isn't psychology merely pop philosophy? i find psychology riddled with rubric cohesion, it's all oh so "self"-evident! i abhor psychologists... these gypsy philosophers... medicine-men with no pharmacological shadow of power... to prescribe drugs... arguments, persuasions, but no dialectics... psychology will forever be, for me, a philosophy primer, short-cut... pop philosophy... psychologists can treat people who have never read a philosophy book... r. d. laing... i remember this one instace... me and a fwend of mine travelled into central london, went into a bookshop shy of trafalgar sq., i spotted an edition of: the scarlet and the black by stendhal... i told him: i will trade you linkin park's debut album, if you buy me this... the transaction was made... the one book i read after seeing a film adaptation starring rachel (rakhel) weisz and ewan mcgregor... ra-kh-el: not ray-chel... we used to be humans once... at high school getting bullied back... putting pins on chairs once we got up, sitting on them... playing bulldog in primary school, slap-ball, tag, playing cards at lunchtime... 16 fatty boy... one summer in poland, comes back aged 17... the irish girls take an interest while eating a pomegranate... what was the success of your diet? don't go to the gym... excess skin, an aesthetic surgeon is not what you need... there are only two ways to lose weight... either via swimming or by cycling... cycling is the best... lose weight by also toning your body... gym is a bad idea... by going to the gym you are straining exclusive parts of your body, either the torso, your hands, etc., jogging? unless on soft ground, bad idea on concrete, arthritis... cycling or swimming... lose weight... tone at the same time, the skin is allowed the required time to adapt to shrink, and forget what propped it up in plump form with all that excess flab... ugh... i hated being attractive to the opposite ***, i never used it to my advantage! imagine... an irish lad comes up to me, on behalf of some girl while i'm donning a french braid: you look just like johnny depp in blow, impersonating george jung... 14 year old girls walk up to you asking what shampoo you're using... herbal essences... i never used my looks... *******... now i'm a heavy drinker... so much for looks... first girlfriend? a fwend had to call me telling me she called him that she felt butterflies when i dropped her at the train platform after a day's worth of dating: tate modern, edward hopper exhibitions, cinema: troy, starring rose byrne (briseis) - honestly, a man can go crazy over curly hair... and then a restaurant date... that **** just flew over my head... i wouldn't have noticed... honestly though... i missed the whole h'american cultural excavation genesis in high school... catholic... uniforms... jesuit army-esque formation... now, i'm ageing... i'm starting to find the company of cats to be: clingy... my shadow included... i once thought that dogs were needy... i'm starting to think that cats are worse, esp. the maine **** breed... "lonely" or "loneliness" doesn't really resonate with me, esp. when thinking something "feels" like a variation of claustrophobia: hence i write... without a dialectic in place, ever since plato wrote his dialogues... what is philosophy, primarily? isn't it an off-shoot of "claustrophobia"? we write because we are seeking escape from congested thinking, a variation of "claustrophobia"... now imagine a schizoid character... having to focus on an imaginary dialectic, actually... having dialectics enforced on him, with no clarifying exodus to posit a gensis with! now, a clingy dog i could understand, given the overpowering status of the leash... but a clingy cat, when there's no leash involved?! shoom! right over my head... gone, somewhere into the distance!

what, this is the part...
were i cite...
   the weimar ******
critical condition...
       a daft punk troop
of a song,
  end of line....
blow-up a hot air balloon...
worth of blaire whire...
play the tambourine
like a ******* video...
there are,
quiet, simply,
no nazis coming...
fashionista faux pas
examples...
i'm alive,
but i'm dead,
i just forget to don
a strap-on...
  "oops"?
   that **** go down well
with
the "in"-crowd...
usual... metropolitan...
verbiage surge of answers....
   many a fetish after...
we arrive at the sensible
aspect,
"toxic masculinity"...
when guns n roses wasn't,
and nirvana was just plain
gay...
              and then...
whatever that happened,
happened..
                 and people were like:
come to the "new" tomorrow,
there's always a yesterday,
in a dream,
in some phil collins
wannabe
studio...
or... some other random ****
that
excluded peter gabriel.

                 i died:
and just about right:
my harvest had come.

great book reviews...
"toxic masculinity"...
so all masculinity is
about a clockwork orange?
   if it is?
can i be pro abortion
anti mongolian horde?
yes? no?
  which is it?!
neither...
   **** me... that's just bad
luck...

                               sundbeds,
sunflowers,
tulips,
sunglasses,
    plenty of staged
eager nights...
boring political affairs...
and...
         when gaming was
more about the narrative...
and never,
ever, about the microtransactions...

point being...
it's a game within a game...
time, is the prime concern...
you play a game,
by waiting...
you wait: by playing a game...

  microtransactions
are...
you ever move a sim3 avatar
to a computer,
and make it play a computer game?
what's on the macrocosmos spectrum?
you....

               "back in the day"...
you'd spend a saturday morning
engrossed in a gaming narrative...
metal gear solid,
tenchu, final fantasy solid...
20 quid...
and you played the narrative...
and a game became equivalent
to the worth of a book,
resident evil,

            you paid for a month's worth
of gaming,
you exchanged tips,
you sometimes bought a cheat book
because of the homework,
and that was your saturday morning
before hitting the shopping mall
or, whatever...

the current dynamic of
microtransactions in gaming?
i never, ever, do...
i'm an old gamer type...
i see the potential of extending
the life-expectancy
of a game...

   as long as you don't buy into
the microtransactions gambling habit?
as long as you play the "game"
within the game?
the game is an assured classic,
akin to chess...

              you have to play
the waiting "game"...
             time...
                           that's all it is...
whether war robots,
    or dawn of titans...
        comparison...
  you know that the best fruit,
is fruit, allocated
to the geography of it being sourced
seasonally...
you can't actually get better
strawberries,
than english strawberries...
from england, come june / july...
no ******* point sourcing them
from spain in late march / april....

    same thing with gaming...
the modern games haven't made any
elaboration...
apart from dislodging the player
from the concept of narrative...
**** me... that's almost an improvement...
given that now: time is the counter
measure, and the gamer...
   is having to invest,
in a narrative, outside of the confines
of the game,
once upon a time,
games had time-narrative
constraints...
     now: there's time,
and there are gamer narratives,
excluding them from time-narratives,
of a game...
         it's almost a faux pas...
more like a wet-*****...
****** pinky lodged into an ear,
an april fools' day scant...

        if you hacked passed
the microtransactions hype...
and didn't?
and instead took to patience?
it's free...
   where once,
a game would cost you 20 quid,
and a month's worth
of narrative,
back then, when games
resembled books,
when the gaming industry
was heavily influenced
by literature...
and now?
   the game's free...
sure...
it's "unfair", it's biased...
when you don't engage
in imported gambling
of succumbing to what, this is the part...
were i cite...
   the weimar ******
critical condition...
       a daft punk troop
of a song,
  end of line....
blow-up a hot air balloon...
worth of blaire whire...
play the tambourine
like a ******* video...
there are,
quiet, simply,
no nazis coming...
fashionista faux pas
examples...
i'm alive,
but i'm dead,
i just forget to don
a strap-on...
  "oops"?
   that **** go down well
with
the "in"-crowd...
usual... metropolitan...
verbiage surge of answers....
   many a fetish after...
we arrive at the sensible
aspect,
"toxic masculinity"...
when guns n roses wasn't,
and nirvana was just plain
gay...
              and then...
whatever that happened,
happened..
                 and people were like:
come to the "new" tomorrow,
there's always a yesterday,
in a dream,
in some phil collins
wannabe
studio...
or... some other random ****
that
excluded peter gabriel.

                 i died:
and just about right:
my harvest had come.

great book reviews...
"toxic masculinity"...
so all masculinity is
about a clockwork orange?
   if it is?
can i be pro abortion
anti mongolian horde?
yes? no?
  which is it?!
neither...
   **** me... that's just bad
luck...

                               sundbeds,
sunflowers,
tulips,
sunglasses,
    plenty of staged
eager nights...
boring political affairs...
and...
         when gaming was
more about the narrative...
and never,
ever, about the microtransactions...

point being...
it's a game within a game...
time, is the prime concern...
you play a game,
by waiting...
you wait: by playing a game...

  microtransactions
are...
you ever move a sim3 avatar
to a computer,
and make it play a computer game?
what's on the macrocosmos spectrum?
you....

               "back in the day"...
you'd spend a saturday morning
engrossed in a gaming narrative...
metal gear solid,
tenchu, final fantasy solid...
20 quid...
and you played the narrative...
and a game became equivalent
to the worth of a book,
resident evil,

            you paid for a month's worth
of gaming,
you exchanged tips,
you sometimes bought a cheat book
because of the homework,
and that was your saturday morning
before hitting the shopping mall
or, whatever...

the current dynamic of
microtransactions in gaming?
i never, ever, do...
i'm an old gamer type...
i see the potential of extending
the life-expectancy
of a game...

   as long as you don't buy into
the microtransactions gambling habit?
as long as you play the "game"
within the game?
the game is an assured classic,
akin to chess...

              you have to play
the waiting "game"...
             time...
                           that's all it is...
whether war robots,
    or dawn of titans...
        comparison...
  you know that the best fruit,
is fruit, allocated
to the geography of it being sourced
seasonally...
you can't actually get better
strawberries,
than english strawberries...
from england, come june / july...
no ******* point sourcing them
from spain in late march / april....

    same thing with gaming...
the modern games haven't made any
elaboration...
apart from dislodging the player
from the concept of narrative...
**** me... that's almost an improvement...
given that now: time is the counter
measure, and the gamer...
   is having to invest,
in a narrative, outside of the confines
of the game,
once upon a time,
games had time-narrative
constraints...
     now: there's time,
and there are gamer narratives,
excluding them from time-narratives,
of a game...
         it's almost a faux pas...
more like a wet-*****...
****** pinky lodged into an ear,
an april fools' day scant...

        if you hacked passed
the microtransactions...
       and didn't have the chance...
microtransactions are like
the old school cheat hacks...
but not quiet, but somehow quasi-,
       a modern microtransactions,
would be a cheat magazine
thorough-through
a game like final fantasy VII...
you have homework,
but you still want to complete the game...
modern games...
modern games...
there's an "end gole"?
  what modern game is worth
"completing"?
    
   again: tron, ready player one,
back to the future...
star wars just became dead
to me...
   sick people will plague hard-working
people, with a quasi-gambling
addiction,
needing to make microtransactions...
and they will,
my father was plagued by
an impostor, claiming to be a
tax office official:
and what if, that person had
an authentic position at the tax office?!

when gaming was for gamers,
the games were bought...
there was a narrative...
but now... now games don't have a narrative...
why would they?!
   who the hell plays games for
the narrative these days?
i know that on the crapper,
i need a game that allows me
to experience live-stream
interaction with non-bots...

       and these old gamers,
who still invest their money
in literature-esque-games?
so i was the sad one,
investing in vinyl?
   aren't the classic ******* gamers
just as bad,
investing in prepackaged
narrative gaming
experiences?
             a game with a narrative...
yeah... me buying vinyl
is: b'ah b'ah bad...
       what sort of game is alive and well...
when there isn't a crowd pushback
for the currency of microtransaction?

the narrative is time,
   the longer you endure the inadequacy...
the more you realise:
you're basically playing
the same game,
but in your scenario:
it's free...
   in some other ******'s scenario:
it cost him 70 hundred quid...

personally?
   i love this microtransaction dynamic...
concerning the people who
do not engage with it...
it's the perfect antithesis
   of what ruined the music industry
with genesis: napster...

you really are, playing the ultimate
game,
time...
         the one sort of commodity
that games,
without a clear narrative construct,
"forgot" to mention in terms
of them being exploited...
to their full capacity
of the one "commodity"
they "forgot", or rather,
couldn't "sell"...

              a tenchu PS1 game could
have lasted me a month...
now? a free game,
like war robots...
with absolutely no NPC?
hell... i'll be 90 and still be playing it;

what else? applause!

The numerals II Sir I to another
alphabet
ABC* confession
DEF feared_***
My bowl spilled my
heart soup

Have Merci Beau-coup
The S was left alone my survival
Do you love my eyes primal
He points widely- tribal his
marriage finger my editorial
Be kinder strawberry sugar high
Do you want me to bite down
on my wafers
-I for the Ivy League his polo loafers

He's my (Lifesavers)
The bow and arrow I met my
dark sparrow what a rainbow
So intrigued my mystery arrival

Why on earth do you want me down?

To focus staying upright but kinda
Tight-Net gown

I am not a falling we have eyes
The face to face prize to be eyed
The Carribean
That Native American
Johnny Depp
When I make my first movie wish

The pirate birdseye rash
Al Dente ziti  Eggplant Parmigiana
The headless horse Dante always neighs
kills me on
Valentine day hearts lucky horseshoe

Eyes have frozen bird's eye
They thought I was
the sweet pea
He knocked me off
My Twitter tweets
  
I am the writer don't flood
My words everything is shaking
This is the Godly earth

So confused we feel-tightly squeezed
The earthquake head over heels down to our knees

She is sipping her tears down
In her chamomile tea thumbs up
The world is evaporating
like the dead sea
Bring everything alive I am
counting to 1*2*3*4*5

Down to my last words
I'm staying alive my life is more than
A Saturday Night Fever
But feeling down to my sunrise
Your heart deeply graved
I will betcha life has
more downs downward

Even when you wake -up upward

No way out of expensive
price tags we need to save
The give or take to remake
We need to finish not at
the end of the line

Where we were left off
Whats yours is mine

Sometimes you think
you are down
But life has you
well planted

To say I do
With his mind enchanted
Let me go up---++

The spirit is a complicated thing
I got wits to carry on anything

I need more guts
Now Bill said I do
Oh! No love me to please
me as I do

My Bill is always waiting
at the upside down table
Like the will-hunting
For God sake who is on first
Going up with the bucket list
Feeling down to adore me
You're going down Oh! Christ
Don't push my buttons
the elevator
I saw your Realtor
going to
The Skyline Hilton

I-O-U trillion hearts that were
down and wasted

Falling eyelashes no surprise
That stock exchange stars fault

Money lip up and honey
eyes down
Do you want this in singing
or shall we both go down
drowning

I'm going to wash that
man right out? And sent him on
the way he's gone
The brainwashing Scientology
misery loves religious company
Like Humpty dump me
His "snoop dog so sad eating
like Pig whistle steak
Peeping Tom sales week
Anthony Perkins down to seek

The sprinkler shower
Hitchcock scene French Tickler
At Tiffany's Audrey
breakfast jewels Ruby
Hanky Panky pancakes

Like the Amazon in Prime
With fruit slashed smile
Love to love you baby at
Perkins eggs are dreamy
The shoot of ringlets hair screaming
Niagara fall and action roll fall down

You're a shade too hurtful
The red-brown chair or orange perk me
up the crown the Gala gown me

Life is so unkind why
do people smile
Going in and out the door
The rush the high like you could
mop her curls up but your hand down

Feeling inside the apple of the core

The teapot all fenced in pretending
The downspout- you're up-sprout
He's the roundabout -handle
A stranger is routing someone
is always cursing
You're going down

The game sports ball out
And your always looking
down at me when you
talk me out

Like a ring fight
falling black eye
Where is our coffee down
to nothing, she got a pink eye

Her words spilled over
upside down
pineapple printed dress

Having a breakdown
Do you want me down
I am the New York City girl
A clap of party hands
Uptown

A figure of speech when you get
lonely go downtown
To my number
address 13
what a lowdown
In the Wizard of Oz,
the  cowardly lion
crashed the window
My only lip Solo so low

My computer froze my red
rose wilted
I couldn't bring my smile
back to suit you

They were jumping for joy
Do you really want to
love a tomboy
Almond eyes of candy
Grease me down
Sandy
My pretty pink illegally
Blonde pill
Google on down with Bill

Joining the falling down crowd
But no one had a clue my face was
falling down all-stars feeling blue

The 9.6 million followers who tune in to watch Miranda Kerr having her hair done on Instagram — for this is how models spend most of their time — were treated to a rather more interesting sight last Thursday: a black and white photograph of a whacking great diamond ring.

Across it was the caption “Marry me!” and a twee animation of the tech mogul Evan Spiegel on bended knee. Underneath Kerr had typed “I said yes!!!” and an explosion of heart emojis.

A spokesman for Spiegel, founder of the Snapchat mobile app, who is 26 to Kerr’s 33 and worth $US 2.1 billion to her $US 42.5 million , revealed “they are very happy”.

At first, the marriage seems an unlikely combination: a man so bright he founded Snapchat while still at Stanford University, becoming one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires by 22, and a Victoria’s Secret model who was previously married to the Pirates of the Caribbean star Orlando Bloom (she allegedly had a fling with pop brat Justin Bieber, leading Bloom to punch Beebs in a posh Ibiza restaurant).

Perhaps the union indicates that there is more to Kerr than we thought. More likely, it reveals something about Spiegel — and the way the social status of “geeks” has changed.

Since Steve Jobs made computers cool and Millennials started living online, nerds are king. Even coding is **** enough for the model Karlie Kloss, singer will.i.am and actor Ashton Kutcher to learn it. Silicon Valley has become the new Hollywood, as moguls and social media barons take over from film stars and sportsmen not just on rich lists, but as alpha men.

Being a co-founder of a company is this decade’s equivalent to being a rock star or a chef. And, if their attractiveness to models and actresses proves anything, then being a Twag — tech wife or girlfriend — is a “thing”. Sources tell me Twags are also known as “founder-hounders” because they like to date the creators of start-up companies.

Actress Talulah Riley was an early adopter. She started dating the PayPal founder Elon Musk in 2008. Riley, then fresh from starring in the St Trinian’s film, met Musk in London’s Whisky Mist nightclub after he had delivered a lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society. I interviewed her shortly afterwards and she told me they had spent the evening talking about “quantum physics”. A month later they were engaged. Their on-again-off-again marriage lasted six years before she filed for divorce again in March. Currently Musk, worth an estimated $US 12.7 billion and focused on Tesla cars, is said to be “spending a lot of time” with Johnny Depp’s estranged wife, Amber Heard.

Model Lily Cole dated the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2013. Later she had a son with Kwame Ferreira, founder of the digital innovation agency Kwamecorp. Actress Emma Watson is going out with William Knight, an “adventurer” who has an incredibly boringly sounding job as a senior manager at Medallia, a software company. Allison Williams, Marnie in the HBO television show Girls, is married to Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of College Humor website.

Could it be that these women are onto something? Dating a bro certainly has its appeal. They are innovative: how else would they invent apps that deliver cheese toasties or match singles based on their haircuts? They are risk-takers who must be charismatic enough to inspire investors and attract crowd-funding. They may not be gym-fit, but they are mathletes who can do your tax bill. They are animal lovers: every start-up is dog friendly. And they are fun: who would not want to date somebody with a ball pool in their office?

There is a saying about dating in Silicon Valley: the odds are good but the goods are odd. Nerds are notorious for peculiar chat-up lines and normcore clothes. Still, if geeks can be awkward, that is part of their charm. Keira Knightley, complaining that Silicon Valley was all men in hoodies and Crocs, described how one gave her his card, saying she should get in touch if she wanted to see a spaceship.

One Vogue writer recalled a Silicon Valley man messaging her via a dating app, in which he noted: “In 50 per cent of your photos you’re holding an iPhone. It may interest you to find out that I invented the iPhone. More accurately I was an engineer on the original iPhone . . .”

Most promisingly, some guys are astoundingly rich. It is suggested Kerr’s engagement ring is a 2.5-carat diamond worth around dollars 55,000. She has already moved into Spiegel’s dollars 12m LA pad. Between his money and her Victoria’s Secrets bridesmaids, no wonder sources claim they are planning an “extravagant wedding”.

It might rival even the Napster founder Sean Parker’s $US10m performance-art bash. He married songwriter Alexandra Lenas in a canopy among Big Sur’s redwoods decorated to look like an enchanted forest. Some 350 guests wore Tolkienesque costumes created by The Lord of the Rings costume designer Ngila Dickson. They sat on white fur rugs and were given bunnies to pet. Presumably rabbit babysitters were on hand when the disco started.

If such fantasies inspire you to become a Twag, the great news is you do not have to be a supermodel to be in with a chance. Such is the dearth of single women in Silicon Valley that one dating site, Dating Ring, crowdfunded a plane to fly single women to Palo Alto from New York.

Be warned, though: guys are single because they are married to the job.

No wonder most meet their partners at college or work — the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg met his wife, Priscilla Chan, at Harvard.

The Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom met girlfriend Nicole Schuetz at Stanford. Melinda met Bill Gates when, in 1987, they sat next to each other at an Expo trade-fair dinner. “He was funnier than I expected him to be,” she said.

Kerr began dating Spiegel in 2014 after meeting him at a Louis Vuitton dinner in New York. You can bet he was networking. Shortly after Louis Vuitton showcased their cruise collection in a Snapchat story. Last season Snapchat went on to become the biggest new name at NY fashion week.

If you want to meet tech guys, you might catch them at Silicon Valley parties, which is how the Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick met his partner, Gabi Holzwarth, a violinist hired to play. Or they might be schmoozing clients downtown in a swanky Noe Valley club in San Francisco or a boring Union Square hotel in New York. In London you find them around Old Street, aka Silicon Roundabout, in bars, at hackathons, or start-up meet-ups. In the day they are coding at Google Campus or practising their pitching in a co-working space.

Some tech boys date the old-fashioned way: on Tinder. Airbnb founder Brian Chesky met his girlfriend of three years, Elissa Patel, through the app. When I interviewed Instagram co-founder Systrom he admitted that when he had been single he had signed up.

Dating agency Linx — presumably a play on operating system Linux — is dedicated to making Silicon Valley matches. Amy Andersen set it up in 2003 after moving to Palo Alto and being “flabbergasted” by the number of eligible men. She claims her clients are “extremely dynamic and successful individuals’’: tech founders, tech chief executives, financier founding partners of large institutions and “tons of entrepreneurs”.

Andersen says tech guys make “fabulous partners”. Romantic and chivalrous, they write love letters, plan dates, “even proposing on Snapchat!” If you want to marry a tech billionaire, she says, “you need to bring your A game.” Her clients look “for women who are equally, if not more, dynamic and interesting than he is!”

There are drawbacks to dating tech guys. Before Google buys your amore’s business, he will be living on *** Noodles waiting for the next round of funding — and workaholics are dull.

Kerr says Spiegel is “25, but he acts like he’s 50. He’s not out partying. He goes to work in Venice [Beach], he comes home. We don’t go out. We’d rather be at home and have dinner, go to bed early.” Which might suit Kerr, but is not my idea of a fun.

You had also better be prepared to share your life. When Priscilla Chan miscarried three times, Mark Zuckerberg wrote about it on Facebook, while Chesky used a romantic trip with his girlfriend to promote Airbnb - uploading a picture of her in bed, with a note saying “f* hotels”. Besides all of which is the notorious issue of Silicon Valley sexism.

It has a chief exec-bro culture that puts pick-up artist/comedian Dapper Laughs to shame. Ninety per cent of women working in the Valley say they have witnessed sexist behaviour, 60 per cent have experienced unwanted ****** advances at work, two thirds of them from their boss. Whitney Wolfe, a co-founder of Tinder, took Justin Mateen to court for ****** harassment. Her lawsuit against the company alleged that Mateen, her former partner, sent text messages calling her a “*****”.

Spiegel has tech bro form. He apologised after emails from his days at Stanford emerged: missives about stripper poles, getting black-out drunk, shooting lasers at “fat chicks”, and promising to “roll a blunt for whoever sees the most **** tonight (Sunday)”. After one fraternity Hawaiian luau party, he signed off emails “f*bitchesgetleid”.

No wonder some women are not inspired to become Twags. Especially when you could be a tech billionaire yourself. Would you not rather be Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, than married to the boss?Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses

I want to feel and enjoy not be a plot of show
or toy
Not for mass entertainment
What I am and what I express
Is a very happy blissful mess
How I get there and what I feel
is something very Real

The job looks easy and super cheezey sure
But Johnny Depp said No!
Do not be a show
Your not a *******
Go with your flow and go write that poem ; )

Thanks Johnny ; )

you're the best actor i have ever known
i adore you and i am not alone
my friends all say that you are a nutcase
i would like to taste
your beautiful face
I've seen all your films
beginning to end
you were cute back then
the best pirate I have seen or heard of
love
sweeny Todd
ichabod
he is not too odd
johnny depp is best

Another night of television hell I was in the middle of a hell of a block.
And withoout the funds my usal cure of hookers and *******  wasnt a open
road so to speak.

I was lost I wondred the streets like  ****** in need of a john.
When through the darkness it appearded a well lit haven in the middle of
a thoughtless storm.

The cinema cafe drinks and films  hmm from looking at the marquee seems
there wasnt much to choose from .
It read like a preschooler had puked apon the board.

There were sequels, and prequels,  gay vampires that walked around in the day,
Weirdos who flew around on broom sticks and loads of treenage **** minus the ****.
Dear lord! I had to get to the bottom of this problem.

The pimple faced kid at the booth asked me in a squeeky yet firm semi manly
voice can I help you sir?
Yes my dear crater face whats with this **** you call films here ?
Umm I dont make em sir there just whats popular.

The greezy faced hampster had a good point in what he said that is.
cause other than that I had no clue what he was working with really what do you think
I am some kinda pervert?

Let me ask you something do you like this **** you sell tickets to?
**** no dude its garbage for halfwits and retards  and some people from Canada.
Who the hell wants to see that **** from twilight  play snow white?
Let me ask is that a adult film?
Duh no ******* we dont show thoose here.

Would you know were I could see thoose films?
Im doing some umm research on human sexulality  it involves alotta big words
which i cant spell so i'll spare you the details  just point me in the right direction
and nobody gets hurt.

Dude they havent shown thoose kinda movies in theaters for years.
Oh yeah and theres this thing called the internet once is way better than writting on your
cave walls.
Kids there really great *******.

After some back in fourth who gives a **** or really reads this ***** banter.
The man with the pizza face finally hit his limit.
Look *******!
I dont make the **** ,I dont watch the ****!
If you gotta problem take it up with the studio exects in Hollywood.

You gotta point there sparky give me your keys!
What! No.
Give me your keys or else.
Or else what grandpa  your gonna hit me with your walker.

No you silly *******.
Or else I'll shoot you.
Ya see young man that should wear a iron mask.
You may have a I Phone
But I have a handgun  and  that always wins the debate no hand em over.

After a brief moment of the little ******* ***** crying and begging for me not to **** him.
Really he watched to many TV shows I wasnt gonna **** him besides.
Im allergic to prison and it wasnt even a real gun what a *******.

I was off in my borrowed car  to the land of bad ideas and great **** jobs.
A place more fake than barbies dream home minus that dickless tool she always
hung out with  not that I played with Barbie's but she does have some really kickarse *******
and im a big fan of ******* hell what great writer isnt?

It was a drive that seemed to take forever  but finally i pulled up to the front gate
of Warner Brothers studios.
The little weird looking gate keeper looked at me and said .
can I help you sir.

Yes please direct me to your leader strange gaurd troll.
Uhh sir this is a closed lot only people with passes can enter.
Well what if i know the secret word?

Who told you about the secret word?
I had him with that one.
These Hollyweird vampires couldnt have enough brain power to
keep some pass on them.
Okay whats the secret word sir?

I had to think deep and from such a shallow mind that was asking alot.
What could it be it had to be something that rang true like snorting a line of
coke of Katy Perry's  ***'s.

Dear lord I had it.

Brad Pitt ***** donkey *****.

The man looked at me in utter shock  I wasnt sure if he was gonna let me pass
or try to pull me out my slightly worn odd smelling borrowed car.
Alright sir it's lot 69 hahaha  yeah I know im demented.

Right next to the lot there filming Winds Of Change **** The Musical!
Staring Johnny Depp and Bogo the ***** chimp.
****** i wish i wasnt busy  that chimp seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders.
Well when he wasnt jerking off and eating bannans while throwing his poo.
What a talent indeed.

I found myself in the studio people running every which a way.
It was total confussion   seemd like no one had a clue what the hell they were doing.
Hey ******* shouted some weird little man in a chair who the **** are you!?.

The little red haired man must truely be dellusional.
How could someone not know Gonzo?
Well sir just who the **** are you? I replied.

Well im Ron ******* Howard *****!
Hmm never herd of you are you a director or something?
What!!!
Ever hear of Andy Griffith  or Happy Days?
Oh yeah your that little dork that hung out with that cop yeah what a snitch.
I was playing his son *******.

Dam well seems this ginger finally explained to me why that man always had him around
it all makes sense now i just thought he was some kinda pervert.
Course seems like he had picked up some bad habbits from that Fonzie guy
never trust a man who calls the restroom his office but what a man does with
another man in a ***** restroom for plesure or profit is his own bussiness.

Look *******  what the hell do ya want?
Lets start with a gallon's of nothern light maybe some top shelf hookers some good music.
Maybe a couple hits of some lets say nose candy maybe turn off the lights and see what happens.
Im just saying sometimes ya gotta let nature take it's drug filled course.

Im not talking bout from life dip **** i mean what the hell are you doing here?
Oh **** sorry there  carrot top.
I wanna see the person in charge that green lights all this remake **** you souless
morons put out and call entertainment.

The little red haired devil was silent as he explained to me no one ever saw the
studio head it was like meeting Santa Claus or ****** or being in the pressence of a unicorn
really whats the diffrence.

He warned me of the dangers of meeting such a great mind yet like I do with
most people I simply shook me head and agreed much like i do with
women im trying to sleep with duh like I care about her tweenty seven cats.

Finally after learning I wasnt taking no for a answer he lead me to a room
And in this room was a screen and apon the screen appread a face.
Who dare question the mighty head of the film studio!!

The voice was loud  still it had that comfoting quallity that you just have to love in
a windbag *******.
Umm me.

You well who the hell are you?
Duh ******* im the long winded ******* writting the story.
Oh well what the **** do you want?

Sir I wanna know what the hell's wrong with you people.
Look im a drunk but i could never be drunk enough to pay a fortune to watch half the **** you call entertainment between remakes and films based on gay *** stories about vampires
and dudes who run around the woods calling themselves werewolves.

You mean you actully saw twilight?
The voice asked me on the verge of laughter.
Duh i see a bunch of hot chicks  going anywhere im following without asking
much like the mindless drones that watch that ****.

Sir your a sad sad man.
The strange face on the screen vanished out from the curtan appeared
what looked like *** it was Bugs Bunny !!

Bug's!  
What's up gonz?
****** i always knew you were real much like Fergie and spanish fly.

Gonzo i know half this **** ***** but its because mindless idiots love studip ****.
Look you were once a popular writer and you cant even spell.
Ouch now go ahead mighty furry samuri.

Ya see whatever makes money we put out and really stupid young girls much like your teenage
wife love that **** and being perverts like yourself wanna get laid you'll take them to that ****.
Bugs are you saying it's all about money?

No **** *******.

We talked drank watched backroom casting couch tapes of early starlets like
Harrison Ford no wonder he was so good with that whip.

It was magic minus the  money loving **** mouse that'll sue your ***.
Bugs I gotta ask you a deep question?
Shoot there Gonz .
Is Mickey really just a cross dresser calling himself Minnie?

You are messed up in so many ways Gonz.
We laughed swapped ***** stories  like the time Bugs slipped
Daisy some ****** and got a ******* in the magic castle  while goofy watched.

What the **** is Goofy?

Gonz .
My furry amigo said to **** if I know.

Untill next time kids stay crazy

And remember if you wish apon a star  ya better make sure to whom thoose copy rights
belong to truley are.
Cause thoose rich ******* will sue your *** .

Cheers

                               FIN?

I wish I could party with Leonardo DiCaprio
We'd be crazier than "The Wolf of Wall Street"
Johnny Depp would be there, too, riding in the backseat
He would come up and sit with Leo and I, at the party on the couch
And say "Arnie stop it, you're doing too much coke. AHA, just kidding now scoot over and let me have a blow."
After we'd wipe our noses, up we go
To dance, dance, dance and drink drinks that glow
Hours on end we would spend our money brutally
Because our money basically speaks english fluently
Yeah, Leonardo DiCaprio would be a badass friend
Johnny Depp too, we'd have too much fun in the end

Your hands were crisp with the cold chill of autumn;
The spherical time bomb had transitioned into winter,
And your hands had crumbled into nothingness-
Only remnants of frozen ash had remained in the palm of my hand.
I saw far more in those ashes than most though.
I saw *** and lust and passion and want for hands to be against skin and skin to be against hands.
I saw the ashes as lust-full summers;
pure ****** and rose cigarettes.

Every time a cold wisp of winter air brushed against my scarred and pink knuckles,
I was reminded of the loneliness your hand had once provided me with,
And the way it simply gave up into mine, never to return again.
Goodbye said your hand,
And my hand soaked in all of your absolute nothingness,
Leaving me as absolute nothingness too.

Your hands were tight and hot and sweaty with the blinding scent of summer;
Pollin living within the beds of my moist eyelids
and cheek bones swollen with exhaustive heat.
The creases of my hands relishing in vitamin D;
Vitamin D relishing in my human skin-- am I normal yet?

Next to mine, your hand soaked it all in,
I soaked in the yellow, the yellow soaked in me, and you soaked in us both.
You drank our souls through a purple straw and puked us out onto a hotel bathroom floor--
Is this what summer's like?

It hurt how tightly you held onto me and how I was stitched into your lung, into your stomach.
My only escape being a bathroom floor,
And I was just hot.
Throbbing eyelids, throbbing cheek bones, throbbing hands--
I swore my hand would collapse into yours eventually. But it didn't,
Ironic isn't it.

Your hand was warm and soft with the feeling of compassion.
Your hand upon my neck and entangled amongst my falling hair,
It was sympathetic with the feel of a skinny stomach.
Where had mine gone?
Where did my skin go?
You held me and against the frail bones of my decaying skeleton
Suddenly I was feeling some sort of togetherness again.
The way Depp and Ryder had reminded so many of passionate love,
full of furiously mad happiness,
I was now seeing that.
A crumbling hand had now manifested from the fury,
into some sort of crave for my touch for my soul for my love.
I could feel my stomach again
My skin was forming over the once decaying bones
And there I was in your hands.

Memories of autumn and crumbling finger tips and skin and tissue and bones were now vanished.
Memories of summer and sweaty and obstructive hands were now nearly ambiguous to my past.
It didn't make a difference,
Because in that moment your hands were warm and soft and showing me what it was like to be a living, breathing carcass again.

You were now Johnny and I was now Winona,
And this love hate relationship was being felt in my bones, in my skin, in my palms,
And I knew--

You would always be my autumn
You would always be my winter
You would always be my summer
You would always be the forever on.

Jonathan Foreman, Daily Mail (London), August 18, 2013
The 16-year-old girl’s once-beautiful face was grotesque.
She had been disfigured beyond all recognition in the 18 months she had been held captive by the Comanche Indians.
Now, she was being offered back to the Texan authorities by Indian chiefs as part of a peace negotiation.
To gasps of horror from the watching crowds, the Indians presented her at the Council House in the ranching town of San Antonio in 1840, the year Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
‘Her head, arms and face were full of bruises and sores,’ wrote one witness, Mary Maverick. ‘And her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’
Once handed over, Matilda Lockhart broke down as she described the horrors she had endured—the ****, the relentless ****** humiliation and the way Comanche squaws had tortured her with fire. It wasn’t just her nose, her thin body was hideously scarred all over with burns.
When she mentioned she thought there were 15 other white captives at the Indians’ camp, all of them being subjected to a similar fate, the Texan lawmakers and officials said they were detaining the Comanche chiefs while they rescued the others.
It was a decision that prompted one of the most brutal slaughters in the history of the Wild West—and showed just how bloodthirsty the Comanche could be in revenge.
S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’
He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.
‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang *****. Babies were invariably killed.’
Not that you would know this from the new Lone Ranger movie, starring Johnny Depp as the Indian Tonto.
For reasons best know to themselves, the film-makers have changed Tonto’s tribe to Comanche—in the original TV version, he was a member of the comparatively peace-loving Potowatomi tribe.
And yet he and his fellow native Americans are presented in the film as saintly victims of a Old West where it is the white settlers—the men who built America—who represent nothing but exploitation, brutality, environmental destruction and genocide.
Depp has said he wanted to play Tonto in order to portray Native Americans in a more sympathetic light. But the Comanche never showed sympathy themselves.
When that Indian delegation to San Antonio realised they were to be detained, they tried to fight their way out with bows and arrows and knives—killing any Texan they could get at. In turn, Texan soldiers opened fire, slaughtering 35 Comanche, injuring many more and taking 29 prisoner.
But the Comanche tribe’s furious response knew no bounds. When the Texans suggested they swap the Comanche prisoners for their captives, the Indians tortured every one of those captives to death instead.
‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonised bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’
Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors—indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’.
They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.
When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apaches, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.
The key to the Comanche’s brutal success was that they adapted to the horse even more skilfully than the Apaches.
There were no horses at all in the Americas until the Spanish conquerors brought them. And the Comanche were a small, relatively primitive tribe roaming the area that is now Wyoming and Montana, until around 1700, when a migration southwards introduced them to escaped Spanish mustangs from Mexico.
The first Indians to take up the horse, they had an aptitude for horsemanship akin to that of Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Combined with their remarkable ferocity, this enabled them to dominate more territory than any other Indian tribe: what the Spanish called Comancheria spread over at least 250,000 miles.
They terrorised Mexico and brought the expansion of Spanish colonisation of America to a halt. They stole horses to ride and cattle to sell, often in return for firearms.
Other livestock they slaughtered along with babies and the elderly (older women were usually ***** before being killed), leaving what one Mexican called ‘a thousand deserts’. When their warriors were killed they felt honour-bound to exact a revenge that involved torture and death.
Settlers in Texas were utterly terrified of the Comanche, who would travel almost a thousand miles to slaughter a single white family.
The historian T R Fehrenbach, author of Comanche: The History Of A People, tells of a raid on an early settler family called the Parkers, who with other families had set up a stockade known as Fort Parker. In 1836, 100 mounted Comanche warriors appeared outside the fort’s walls, one of them waving a white flag to trick the Parkers.
‘Benjamin Parker went outside the gate to parley with the Comanche,’ he says. ‘The people inside the fort saw the riders suddenly surround him and drive their lances into him. Then with loud whoops, mounted warriors dashed for the gate. Silas Parker was cut down before he could bar their entry; horsemen poured inside the walls.’
Survivors described the slaughter: ‘The two Frosts, father and son, died in front of the women; Elder John Parker, his wife ‘Granny’ and others tried to flee. The warriors scattered and rode them down.
‘John Parker was pinned to the ground, he was scalped and his genitals ripped off. Then he was killed. Granny Parker was stripped and fixed to the earth with a lance driven through her flesh. Several warriors ***** her while she screamed.
‘Silas Parker’s wife Lucy fled through the gate with her four small children. But the Comanche overtook them near the river. They threw her and the four children over their horses to take them as captives.’
So intimidating was Comanche cruelty, almost all raids by Indians were blamed on them. Texans, Mexicans and other Indians living in the region all developed a particular dread of the full moon—still known as a ‘Comanche Moon’ in Texas—because that was when the Comanche came for cattle, horses and captives.
They were infamous for their inventive tortures, and women were usually in charge of the torture process.
The Comanche roasted captive American and Mexican soldiers to death over open fires. Others were castrated and scalped while alive. The most agonising Comanche tortures included burying captives up to the chin and cutting off their eyelids so their eyes were seared by the burning sun before they starved to death.
Contemporary accounts also describe them staking out male captives spread-eagled and naked over a red-ant bed. Sometimes this was done after excising the victim’s private parts, putting them in his mouth and then sewing his lips together.
One band sewed up captives in untanned leather and left them out in the sun. The green rawhide would slowly shrink and squeeze the prisoner to death.
T R Fehrenbach quotes a Spanish account that has Comanche torturing Tonkawa Indian captives by burning their hands and feet until the nerves in them were destroyed, then amputating these extremities and starting the fire treatment again on the fresh wounds. Scalped alive, the Tonkawas had their tongues torn out to stop the screaming.
The Comanche always fought to the death, because they expected to be treated like their captives. Babies were almost invariably killed in raids, though it should be said that soldiers and settlers were likely to ****** Comanche women and children if they came upon them.
Comanche boys—including captives—were raised to be warriors and had to endure ****** rites of passage. Women often fought alongside the men.
It’s possible the viciousness of the Comanche was in part a by-product of their violent encounters with notoriously cruel Spanish colonists and then with Mexican bandits and soldiers.
But a more persuasive theory is that the Comanche’s lack of central leadership prompted much of their cruelty. The Comanche bands were loose associations of warrior-raiders, like a confederation of small street gangs.
In every society, teenage and twenty-something youths are the most violent, and even if they had wanted to, Comanche tribal chiefs had no way of stopping their young men from raiding.
But the Comanche found their match with the Texas Rangers. Brilliantly portrayed in the Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove books, the Rangers began to be recruited in 1823, specifically to fight the Comanche and their allies. They were a tough guerilla force, as merciless as their Comanche opponents.
They also respected them. As one of McMurtry’s Ranger characters wryly tells a man who claims to have seen a thousand-strong band of Comanche: ‘If there’d ever been a thousand Comanche in a band they’d have taken Washington DC.”
The Texas Rangers often fared badly against their enemy until they learned how to fight like them, and until they were given the new Colt revolver.
During the Civil War, when the Rangers left to fight for the Confederacy, the Comanche rolled back the American frontier and white settlements by 100 miles.
Even after the Rangers came back and the U.S. Army joined the campaigns against Comanche raiders, Texas lost an average of 200 settlers a year until the Red River War of 1874, where the full might of the Army—and the destruction of great buffalo herds on which they depended—ended Commanche depredations.
Interestingly the Comanche, though hostile to all competing tribes and people they came across, had no sense of race. They supplemented their numbers with young American or Mexican captives, who could become full-fledged members of the tribe if they had warrior potential and could survive initiation rites.
Weaker captives might be sold to Mexican traders as slaves, but more often were slaughtered. But despite the cruelty, some of the young captives who were subsequently ransomed found themselves unable to adapt to settled ‘civilised life and ran away to rejoin their brothers.
One of the great chiefs, Quanah, was the son of the white captive Cynthia Ann Parker. His father was killed in a raid by Texas Rangers that resulted in her being rescued from the tribe. She never adjusted to life back in civilisation and starved herself to death.
Quanah surrendered to the Army in 1874. He adapted well to life in a reservation, and indeed the Comanche, rather amazingly, become one of the most economically successful and best assimilated tribes.
As a result, the main Comanche reservation was closed in 1901, and Comanche soldiers served in the U.S. Army with distinction in the World Wars. Even today they are among the most prosperous native Americans, with a reputation for education.
By casting the cruelest, most aggressive tribe of Indians as mere saps and victims of oppression, Johnny Depp’s Lone Ranger perpetuates the patronising and ignorant cartoon of the ‘noble savage’.
Not only is it a travesty of the truth, it does no favours to the Indians Depp is so keen to support.

I begin every day with a fluttered lid
A deep breathe
And certain knowledge that everyone
Lies
It iss not to say that it is something
Constantly expected
Or projected
Just that I am prepared
So that when the lie happens
My heart is not soo broken
As to lose sight of the fact that we are all
In fact
Only human
In spite of the benefit of no doubt
That I imagine Gwen herself
Did not find funny
But I do
Everytime.....
Everytime

(JL)

A Monday morning in Richmond
     is like waking up with your head
   shaking with commotion.

You pray while you take a dump.
       You end up going across the street to Starbucks,
    with three-sixty left on your credit card.

For some reason unbeknownst to you,
you feel that you're a Renaissance artist,
brought to earth to perform studies on human beings.

Little by little you realize that you're the son of God.
There's a moldy tennis ball in
your pocket labeled: God.

Rap, or is it, Rock music that pumps through your ears?
And you're not afraid anymore.
You start to notice the handwritten facade built around your surroundings.

The State Farm billboards
perched above the scaffolding.
Your nose drizzles with crimson.

Memories of the Christopher Walken Impersonator stains the keyboard.
There is no real difference between the garbage man
and your best friend, the one who supplies you with mescaline.

And the comedown feels like a Indian Monsoon.
Electrocute your senses
until you've turned numb to your baby sister Victoria.

The Toyota Avalon cruising up
the street corner with the yellow high beams
is not the white witch from The Wizard of Oz.

Trip falls.
Inhale smoke.
Speculate more.

Dirigibles in the clear, blue sky plummet down.
You listen to your parents while you're high on *****,
wondering why mom dukes looks like Johnny Depp.

Fingers tremble as you try to type out
a handwritten letter from prison.
You meant to text message your mom, "Happy Mother's Day."

And instead
you typed out to her,
"Happy Birthday Mother!"

Lows and highs permeate through your heart.
Caving in, the walls crush into each other.
That girl was married and you gave her a head start on life.

You stole your best friend's birthday money to buy M. You tell yourself everything
is going to be okay as you swivel in your leather recliner,
A ****** dollar bill jammed up your left nostril.

Long, blue rails dotting the wrinkled notebook paper,
used up from the last owner. You
can't stop coughing.

You throw up on your clothes.
And you start to think that
maybe you are ******* up and you can't stop without an intervention.

Then
you start to think,
maybe this is all in my head.

The cold wind nips at your exposed ankles.
Red sores develop on the back of your elbows.
Local pariah is far away from his hometown.

Your favorite Uncle has stage 4 lung cancer,
and you're chain smoking menthols
to ease the edge that splits your brain in half each morning.

What is struggle without the lost—
without the success on the other side of sanity?
You pop prescriptions to ward off the insects gnawing away at your eyeballs.

Gouge your intestines with a straight edged blade bought
from the dollar store.
Ode to Keroauc.

The unholy manuscript written with pen and needle.
Cool story bro.
But you have nothing, but mistakes to offer to this unjust world.

And earth continues to spin on an uneven axis.
When it comes to a point where fiction and nonfiction
        are void of speculation.

           When it comes to the point where reality and dreams coincide
and you begin to stumble
over your shoelaces that are tied.

When it comes to a point where
               your enemies and friends seem the same that is the point
when you attempt to sleep.

But sleep will always allude you, you Danny Art
          So read your poetry aloud to the unsung.
To the sleepless.

The Walkers dressed in rags approach you,
smoking on black and milds, dark rings
circling their eyelids.  

And the time of night which you so longingly search for
in the face of listening to The Dark Knight soundtrack, gives you a pulse, a sudden click that boosts you into peril.

That bloodstain drenching
the corner of your eye sweats profusely. And that's when you start to wonder:
is everything that I'm doing baked in fallacy and witchcraft?

The comedown.
The comedown.
The comedown.

You are the burden of my fellow constituents, lost in reverie,
gone in madness, forlorn from deeds,
that are too great to imagine.

Your tears mean nothing
in comparison
to the world at large.

And that's okay.
And that's okay.
And that's okay.


You begin to discover,
that you do not write poetry,
but you write greeting cards in a journal.

Or a pen and pad,
ink
and blood.

She rose the lifted gypsy smile
Little women Big-spender
Gimic
Desperate housewives selling
their soulful tears epidemic
This wasn't 666 Satan heart broke
Got to Lee Remick when she spoke
Going to Denmark Gypsy booth

You could feel the white satin
Saturday in the park dictator
with Stalin, her lips moistened
with her watermelon
But why so manic
Zero tears to panic

City frantic the Rose sensual ******

Over a tear-drop dangling
Love waiting anticipating
How she smiles her earring
drops down waves
fight her fear
The big whale
don't flip my tear

Holiday she's the jingle cash
register Knighting meets Gale
nothing didn't register
Let me entertain you, shy tease
Natalie, Clue lounge tears Grunge

So strange they stripped away
scarecrow harvest October
Remember the Nile love
November
The nightmare gypsy
unfortunate events
No comments

The holiday wasn't
exactly a  Supercalifragilistic
*$ ++ monarch
But she wears herself whip cream
lick
Going for the blue crying her eyes
out "Blue-Terry Cloth"  was sick
eye velvet' the men of the cloth

So religiously afraid of the
Goth  Rosy Lee path
Left her aroma mark
The world is a blackout
Her shoutbox rosy boot
So creepy like a fox-trot
So much to upkeep
Memory lane yellow
brick road

Brown-coffee-accident spilled
she yelled demons allowed
  The buyer made me
Accountant clicking tears

Gypsy  tug of war
Doll Raggetty Annie Oakley
Crystal Expensive tear
doesn't come cheap money
50 winks who wants to sleep
Rose Pomedeur widow weeps
What a square Mr bigfoot
Get off of my cloud boot
Moved her rolling stone


Her tear was in the plate he didn't
even have the heart to pick it up
French danish pastry so prim and
proper  
Another naked spy bad romance
Her cry needed to be homemade
like her rose candles
The roaring twenty- she's 13 going
on thirty
Gypsy of forty your getting old
but flirty
  (Shes so Harvard) Sugar daddies
forever young
Help me Rhonda teardrop tipsy
Graduation Cap the eye owl gypsy
Jeremy the beamer drummer
Gypsy Rose hummer
A thousand tears her death card
People have no regard

Living on a crystal tear end
He's her bookend so beat in
her beatnik house
All staged Cher the Gypsy outfits
Cry babes girl product
What conduct Rose -Lee spanked
on her knee tears popped the waterbed
He never showed one tear
Cry me a river crystalline diary
All preliminaries
We missed her lonely sober tear

Mona Lisa Mona Lisa how the men
have met you how death becomes
you
I'm not buying your cry I was deeply
hurt it set such an impact
The -new- Boy George culture of tears
Over-erase she highly medicated
More I see you having affairs
happy, sad, overjoyed,
you have been had

Carribean Depp Pirate rotten teeth
Statue of liberty is crying at birth

I am not going to lower my
standards just skip
Cinderella so sinister to sweep
Wizard at her boutique
Mysteriously eyes unique
Best tear to enhance is always
the antique now start crying

He looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the world,
not like a piece of meat that is waiting to be devoured
more like he needed her like plants need sunlight
it almost seemed like she is oxygen and he needed her to be there and fill his lungs every time he took a breath
with every glance you could see the love in his eyes and the smile that played at his lips like he wanted to love her until the end of his life
and to be without her would be the end of his life
The way he looked at her said "I will never leave you"
like every moment with her could have been his last, and every moment without her was utter torture

She looked at him like he was the blood in her veins and every time she met his eyes it was the first time
like her love was unfathomable and without it she would not go on
She looked at him like she saw every moment they ever had together in the curve of his jawbone, every kiss they ever shared in the color of his lips, like all of the love in the world was resting on his brow

The prelude of their kiss, where their foreheads rested against each other and their noses touched seemed to be endless and peaceful as though nothing else existed

The moment they kissed looked like it lasted forever in their eyes, but felt so fleeting
like it kept them grounded and without it they would be 10 ft off the ground

"When I met Johnny, I was pure ******. He changed that. He was my first everything. My first real kiss. My first real boyfriend. My first fiancé. My first guy I had *** with. So he'll always be in my heart. Forever. Kind of funny that word." Winona Ryder
She sounded so nostalgic and soft, he meant the world to her
As though the world would be off centered without him

"I'd die for her. I love her so much. I don't know what I would do without her. She is going through a lot right now. I wish I could just kiss away the pain, make it go away, stop it, **** it! If she, you know, I don't know what I would do. I'd **** myself. I love that girl. I love her. I love her almost more than I love myself." Johnny Depp
He seemed so passionate, like without him he both couldn't and wouldn't want to go on
Like the world wouldn't stop, it would just cease to exist
"Believe me, this Winona Forever tattoo is not something I took lightly... Her eyes **** me."
I believe they did **** him, that just the thought of her cut him like glass
that every moment he spent with her made him love her so much it hurts

I want a love like Johnny and Winona
a love so strong that it'll leave me thinking about every kiss, every accidental brush of their arm against mine, every second since their eyes met mine. I want a love like music, a love that makes me feel like with it the world will slow to one beat per measure.
A love that feels like the ocean, they are the shore, and I am the seashells that get swept up in it
A love that is completely undeniable on every account

A love like Johnny and Winona

He drives into the desert in a Toronado,
Dust in his eyes from the open window,
Sun on the burned skin and black mascara
That augments his vivid gaze.
Black orbs that stare at the burning sand,
His mouth is defiant and morose,
He turns off the path into the sage and saguaro.
The car is like a black beetle on a carpet of tan.
He lifts a shovel from the trunk, looking crazed.
Digs a shallow grave in the sand,
He rips a talisman from his neck
And declares he is looking for something
Unclear and he slurs a chant.
“Something is coming”, he seems to say.
He buries the necklace and drives away.
Will he come back for it or leave it
for the spirits of the desert?
No, he will come for it every day
Bury it again and again
Until the spell wears down,
The perfumed season is done,
Or perhaps the spring floods
Wash it all away.

Ever wondered about my style?
What I admire and what I deem vile?
Well, gather around, I'll let you see
Who I am, through what else, but poetry?

My favorite flower is a cherry blossom.
As for food, bread is awesome.
I spend much of my time on Twitter.
I like birds, the ones that flutter.

My favorite author is Ms. Anne Rice.
Her book, "Memnoch" is very nice.
My favorite poet is Aleister Crowley.
As for artist, that would be Dali.

I like Reggae straight from Trenchtown.
Most of all, I like System of a Down.
Philip Wesley is my favorite composer.
If I may be so bold, Chopin, move over.

My favorite film is Sweeney Todd.
By my top director, who is slightly odd.
Johnny Depp is my favorite actor and hunk.
I'm not a fan of touchdowns and dunks.

A big interest is Nutrition and Health.
I'm against Corporations and Banks, with all their wealth.
I like Documentaries and things that make me think.
Carrot juice is one of my favorite things to drink.

My favorite painting hangs on my wall.
The artist or name, I have not a clue at all.
I like eating cherries and playing pretend.
I like talking to those I consider a friend.

I like dancing at raves, even on the stage.
I like my job, though it's minimum wage.
I'm good without gods, I bow to none.
No political party, with that, I'm done.

That about sums me up, I hope you see
My likes and interests described to a tee,
In the fashion of the rhyme scheme A and B.
Did I mention the fact that I write poetry?

If I had
Three
Wishes, I’d wish for
A unicorn
Nice skin
And you

If I could live on only
Three
Things, I’d survive on
Lemonade
Lasagne
And you

If I could only watch
Three
Things when I turn on the television, I would watch
That fireplace background
Futurama
And you, even if you are a runway model

If I was stuck forever on a desert island and could only bring
Three
Things, I’d bring
Food
Water
And you

If there was a zombie apocalypse and I had only
Three
People I could trust, I’d choose
A ninja
Chuck Norris
And you

If I could only cheat at
Three
Things in MAS*H, I’d change
To the mansion
To have less than ten kids
And to be with you

If I was in jail and I somehow got
Three
Phone calls instead on one, I’d call
My dad who would bail me out, maybe
Chuck Norris who would break me out when my dad refuses to pay the bail
And you, just to say hi because you’re broke and can’t pay the fee

If I had to choose
Three
Of my celebrity crushes, I’d pick
Johnny Depp, duh
B.D Wong, just for his voice in Mulan
And you

If I had
Three
Works of art in my room, I’d have
A stolen Picasso painting, shhh, look don’t tell
That painting where that guy gets knocked out by the apple
And you, chiselled into diamonds

If I somehow got amnesia and the doctors could only restore
Three
Of my memories, I’d want to remember
My name
That time when we killed those zombies with Chuck Norris and the ninja
And you

If I could only say
Three
Words, I’d say
Is
This
Creepy?

Hello you say as
you saunter through my door  to
flop onto the couch and
fluster me with a lazy grin.
got any food?

I am elbow deep in a bag of nachos
why?I ask suspiciously
and you smile wider.
Because I'm hungry, you say
and
kind of fried.

Of course you are
and you
laugh and grab the bag
your fingers brush mine amongst the
crinkly chips and
the artificial cheese dusting.

Who, you ask later between
crunches, is hotter. Gerard Butler or
Johnny Depp?
I nibble a chip in
consideration distracted
by your arm sneaking
around my waist.

It is obviously
Gerard I say because of
reasons I forget when you
start to kiss me.

The nachos suddenly lose
importance because
you taste like
smoke, cheese
and a friday afternoon.

the soft grass tickles
my bare feet
as I walk across the bluegrass
and I realize that it may be
a bit sterotypical for a girl like me
a sundress wearing
sweet tea drinking
southern girl like me
to tell you that Kentucky
is not a place i want to leave
but heres the thing
I've got all my teeth
a pretty full vocabulary
and a 28 on my ACT
and here in Kentucky,
we're hobbits, not hillbillies
we're more than just a basketball team
and maybe in the dictionary,
its Daniel Boon and geography
and home of the KY Derby
but hell we've got Johnny Depp and George Clooney
and the beautiful mountains and trees
in Eastern Kentucky
and we have culture and cuisine,
and so many things
that if you still think I'm stereotypical, then maybe
I dare you to see what youre missing.

My grandma has worn face masks over her mouth and nasty bruises from chemo treatments,
But the smile never left her lips. Her hands never too cold to squeeze.
My grandma was told she would have to go through a half-mastectomy,
and she dealt through the pain with as much bravery as a soldier going into war.
So when you ask me who my role model is, I won't say it's Audrey Hepburn, or Johnny Depp,

I'll merely point to my grandma, who now has a full head of hair, and say we're doin' just fine.

Your girlfriend must really be something...
I'm not one for secrets but she must love the ones you keep from her like our cuddling like our conversations like your seven turn on spots 

You two must have a lot in common I mean does she like Johnny Depp as much as you do because I know you're a big fan of his quotes and does she like pull out couches too? Oh wait I was the first girl you shared a bed with, too bad we didn't have *** though eh? But those are your words not mine 

And she must love the way you talk about her to other people I mean you've taught me compliments I've never heard of before like how people you find attractive never talk to you...I didn't realize she was the quiet type 


I need a break
But hey, there's always Kentucky

I’ve been sitting here for weeks,
and this is the first time you’ve noticed me?
Do you think I like being under this teacup?
I’m terrified; it’s dark and cold.

You’re out at your party,
and all I can think about is my wife,
all alone on the web back home just waiting for something, anything, to fly by.
It’s all a joke to you though, you sick man.
And would you believe that I climbed into a man’s suit,
got on a plane, flew all the way from Europe,
and lived with Johnny Depp for a while?
No, no you wouldn’t—
you work at NASA,
you drive a corvette,
you are dating the Aphrodite of your age
and it’s all not enough.

So let me tell you about me:
I’m not like you or him or anyone else here.
I don’t own shiny medals or have my own talk show,
I’m just looking for a chip in a cup,
some little imperfection that will set me free.

I’ve been thinking how I like
smooth jazz
poptarts
gushers
wheat thins.
I have hundreds of kids I’ve never met,
and a home in your bedroom window.

But none of that matters anymore
because I’m trapped under this ridiculous cup
and it’s dark, and I’m cold.
I’m beginning to think I should just give up.

meditating under a glowing orange sky
as the morning sun comes arise
naturally high from this meditative state of mind reaching a caressing every innered of my Cries.
with my eyes fixed on the sky
I can feel the warm whispering  breeze  subtly caressing my cheek
Depp brsathes in  making my body thump gently .
down to my tranquil heart beat.
im in heaven no need to speak
all thanks to my beautiful yoga instructor *Emily

You never see the rabbit hole before you fall in
She just shows up
Blonde haired and in the way
And somehow that very urgent, very important...
...
...thing you had going on
Is all so suddenly not blonde and very very much in the way
But the certain mghmhm inside of you insists you whiskey up and go handle your business
While the mhmm inside of you makes you look back
Just in time to see her doing what all the good blonde girls do in all the great black and white movies
Kiss the crap out of some guy you can't stand
And while we all think we could pull off a fedora
Truth is we're all just one injection of testosterone away from ******* the whole thing up
Letting it slip through our fingertips
Then where does that leave you?
At the track placing bets on Four-for-the-winter's-socks like he's finally going to pay off
Or at the bar with the touchy hair dresser who smells like cat ****
Back in your office
Feet on the desk
Cuffs off
Four AM
Watching green lights turn red like it's the fourth of July
Then again
If that dame's worth her weight in the dead baby seals it took to make the paint that's got her lips so red
She'll be there
Knock knocking
With a pocket watch hung round her neck so low you'll forget it's tick ticking
And you're late silly rabbit
Tricks are for kids
Unless of course they're wearing red dresses
But this one's not like that
No
She's got a story to tell
A sucker to make out of you
And since neither they nor I could care less about what she's saying
And you're too busy practicing different ways to say yes to that dress
Let's skip to the part where you're taking a bullet in the *** in an alley behind a speak-easy on a cold damp Friday night
Where the fog from the steam vents conveniently cover the shooters face
The part where the guy twice your size is between you and what she wanted...I mean the truth
Where you wake up tied to a chair being interrogated by a man in a white suit and gold **** cane.
The part with you questioning your morality
Where she had it
Then she didn't
Claus did
But he really didn't that was a fake
Where it must have been the big guy two timing his boss
Or the guy she was kissing, but, no, he died
And come to find out it was the little person handing out papers on the street corner where you first saw her and they were in cahoots the whole time
And that's when you realize you're not Johnny Depp
And the Mad Hatter doesn't get the girl at the end of the movie anyways
So what the **** are you doing here
Eat the cake, get big, and go the **** home
Let that high heeled ***** walk her sweet *** down the yellow brick road alone in the rain

I see that you started following me
Did you click the gold star on a whim
Are you now sitting back, trying to relax
Waiting for it all to begin

Did you come here looking for answers
Or simply to be entertained
Should I now bring in the flamingo dancers
Arriving daily on the boogie train

Are you here to share in some laughs
Or looking for a shoulder to cry
Maybe you felt a pull to follow this fool
And you have no idea of why

Did you read the fine print..."If you follow me"
To closely it might drive you insane
I have dozens of  lawyers waiting in the wings
That can expertly shift all the blame

So whether I hang out with the head of Johnny Depp+
Or start belly button lint dust fires+
Even digging up the body of Elvis +
All would be true if it wasn't a lie

Just remember that whatever happens
When I open the door to my soul
And give a slight peak, inside to see
It's not like you haven't been warned

a quart of tequila,
still no feelings,
spinning ceilings beneath me,

in my venomous state,
we went to comedy night at the viper room.

torn to shreds in the front row,
of a gung ** americanised show.

i came because the river still flows,
with depp and the stageshows from the whiskey a go go,
directly opposite the pavement.

the boulevard was full of cars,
and homeless superstars,
that made it far,
but not past the stars on the walk of fame,
Holly would never be the same again.
*******, *******.

we walked past the cast of a bottomless flask,
cast in the shadows of the sorrows of rodeo drive,
staying alive is easy,
follow,
the yellow brick road and wish for a dollar.

tomorrow is another day.

i seen a man of my same age,
he was a traveller,
vocabular immaculate,
hair cut ******, dindn’t shave much,
one of the same touch.
grubby hands and unfinished plans.

his sign said, were ******.
i teared up,
he looked up and stood up and we hugged.
i could see me in his weird look.
just another rhyme in my page book.

i gave him a bag of survival necessities,
i hunted him down after 24 hours.
i was worried to go back,
and finish what i started.

i consider the concept as an artist,
but the truth is this,
the humanist within,
could never miss that appointment.

he sat there in the same spot,
and if i didn’t come,
he could of lost faith in the promise of a circumstance.

i took a certain stance,
he said he was a traveller,
a poet with grubby hands,
i held him with open arms.

i don’t worry about him,
i worry about you,
a ***** and the truth,
trumps and mansion and no use.

i’ve read between the lines,
and wrote this motion on tightropes and suspended emotion.
they want a showman,
but when we show them the ocean,
the don’t want to know the deepest minds inclined.

absolutley,
mutiny in the ranks,
my heart sank when you decided to revamp,
your opinion of me implicitly.

minor to me,
skeleton key to multiple routes.
i never gave a **** about your opinions then,
and I certainly don't give a **** now,

nor have i ever,
stared the gift horse in the mouth.

A text for five voices.

Note on text: For formatting reasons, this should be read on a full screen, or in landscape mode on a mobile.

i. Blank copy

I look out of the window at
the houses as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                    or glide past
                                                the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
House after house after house after house
                                                dit-dit-dit­-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the houses
                                  as they pass.
It’s 10 o’clock when I arrive at my office
and no-one is there yet
and I turn on my computer.
I sort of just
                sit there
                for quite a long time. Then
at 10.37 I print a document I’ve been working on
and I pick up my mug and I go to the kitchen where the printer is
and I put the kettle on.
I log on to the printer but instead of pressing
                                                Print
  ­                                              I press
                                                        Cop­y
                                                        instead­.
The machine whirs
The light goes
                        across
And out comes this copy this
        Copy of
                nothing.
I pick it up from the cradle.
It’s warm.
And I hold it and I look at it and I think:
                                                This is a copy
                                                                ­of nothing.
And since it is no longer an empty piece of paper but now
                                                             ­   something more
                                                            ­    something
                                                   ­                                imbued
I don’t put it back in the paper tray
and I don’t put it in the bin.
I carry it carefully with my tea back
to my office and put it
                                Carefully
                    ­                            on my desk.
I close the door.
Usually when I arrive and no-one is there I keep the door open for a bit.
It’s my way of letting people know I’m here.
It also helps me get a sense of what’s going on in the building
which students are there and what they’re doing
and once I’ve got a decent enough idea
or if there’s someone around I don’t really feel like helping
                                                         ­                           I close the door.
Today it is quiet.
It is a Friday.
                     Fridays are quiet.
It is the seventh of March.
It is 2014.
              I’m looking out of the window as I recall
              without much interest
              that yesterday was my father’s sixty-first birthday.
The buses tick past the window.
Without really thinking I
roll down the blind
                            Until the window is as blank as my copy of
                                                              ­                                           nothing.
I look at it but I
don’t
              sit
                     down
                                   yet.
My computer makes a noise and a purple box
tells me I have a meeting in thirty minutes.
                                                        ­Oh shut up I tell it
                                                        out loud.
Now I realise that I never did print my document
so I go back to the printer and the file is still there waiting for me
and I press Print All
                     and out it comes
and the piece of paper looks
Obnoxious
                     scrawled over in heavy black print
                     and ****** coloured columns
                                                                ­      and smelling
                                                        ­              Smelling of toner.
For someone who claims to be conscious of the environment I
print excessively. But only at work.
It’s the combination of it being free
                                          (or at least, no cost to me)
and that feeling you get when you
swipe
your access card to log in to the printer
and tap the screen dit-dit-dit to choose this or that.
It feels
       to me
              like being a grown-up.
It’s intoxicating.
I don’t want to go to the meeting
and I’m suddenly annoyed by this ***** piece of paper
which
       I ***** up
                     and throw in the bin.
**** it.
Not even in the recycling.
**** it.
Who cares.
              What difference could it possibly make
              whether I throw this piece of paper
                                                 which I will now have to print again
              in the black part of the bin for waste
              or the green part of the bin for recycling.
I go back to my computer and press Print but
this time
I keep clicking my mouse
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          Yeah.
                                   ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
                         ­          ditditditditditditditditditditditditdit
And I go back to the printer and the name of the document comes up on the built-in screen
dozens and dozens of times
the same name of the same document
and I tap
              Print All.
And as the machine spits out clone after clone I
mutter under my breath:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
Then out loud:
                                   **** it.
                                   Yeah.
And as I throw them in the bin and go back for more I think
I’m going to buy a car. Yeah.
And I’m going to drive my car to work and
when I finish work I’m going to drive it
to a big supermarket
                            a hypermarket
                            a super hyper mega market
where I will buy and buy and buy,
and on my way home I will buy petrol to put in my car
       And I will go on holiday
       I will book all those last minute deals on the internet
       And go to Turkey or Lanzarote or Corfu for a hundred
                                                         ­      or a couple of hundred
                                                         ­      pounds, every month maybe
And I’ll fly there on a big plane.
I’ll soar over the ocean on a big plane.
And when I come back
I’ll soar over all those people outside Stansted Airport
All those
people
With banners
Moaning and complaining and protesting
Banners saying things like
                                   I don’t know
                                                 “Down with planes”
And as the flight attendant smiles goodbye I’ll think
yeah.
       Down with planes.
                                   And I’ll drive my car home and I will
                                   stop
                                   worrying
                                   about
                                   everything.
I go back to my office.
I retrieve one copy of my document from the bin and I
put it on top of my copy of nothing.
Whereas before the document offended me
                            now I have difficulty
                            telling the difference between the two.
My colleague arrives and she tells me about the motorway.
She’s always telling me about the motorway.
I think about my car I’m going to buy and I
think about being on the motorway.
I think about being on that part of the M25
where the planes are so low you duck as they thunder over you
and they come
                     in rapid succession
                                          dit dit dit
                                                        rapid­ eye movement
                                                        ­radar.
I think about being stuck in traffic there and the air
thick with exhaust fumes
mixing with the air around Heathrow
and all those tons of jet fuel from the planes zooming over
Blink and you miss them
                                   but always another follows.
I go to my meeting.
I realise that I have picked up my blank copy
along with the document I printed for the meeting.
Someone says they wish I’d printed more than one copy
as it turns out it would be useful for everyone to have one
and I laugh in their face without explaining myself.
                                                         ­             I make notes on it.
                                                             ­         My copy of nothing.
                                                        ­              Without really realising
                                                       ­               I’ve scribbled notes on it
but as I look at my spidery black biro handwriting
and think with some real despair about how I have mindlessly
destroyed
something pure
the notes
              disappear
                                int­o the paper
and it is clean again.



ii. Ringing sea

My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough.
What I’m looking at
my rational brain tells me
is a video of two people having ***.
I have seen that before.
But what I’m actually watching is a video of
my husband
                     having ***
                                          with another woman.
And my eyes don’t refresh the image fast enough
So I keep seeing his face.
The whole picture melts away and
I just see his face
                     Which belongs to me.
                                          It’s my face. I – own it.
                                                        It’s my- my- my-
                                                        And it freezes there
just his face is all I can see then the video continues for a
split second then freezes again
                                   His face
                                   His face
                                   His face       It’s him
                                                        It’s him
                                                        It’s him.
I stop the video and I put the phone down on the table
and I breathe very deeply and
every time I blink, between every saccade
there is his face
                            a face I know intimately
                                                      ­         and it’s looking away from me.
I turn on the television. It is Saturday.
He is flying back from Asia on Tuesday. I have until then to
                                                              ­        what?
The sound and light from the television
flicker over me
And I sort of just empty,
Quietly, like a balloon disappearing into the sky.
I don’t know what I’m going to do but
for now that’s
fine.
The brown armchair swallows me up
and I cry for two hours without really noticing.
The cookery programme I’m not watching finishes and I think
the news is about to come on so I turn off the TV
and I put on my shoes
and I go down the stairs and out of the house
and I get in my car.
It’s raining and I just sit there.
Without starting the engine I flick on the windscreen wipers:
                                                         ­      Dit / dit.
                                                            ­   Dit \ dit.
                                                            ­   Dit / dit.
It takes less than three seconds for them to pass
from one side of the windscreen to the other.
And I get this feeling this
unexplainable feeling
that I want to crawl inside that moment
when the wipers are moving from one side of the screen
                                                          ­                   to the other.
I flip down the sun shield and look at myself in the mirror.
There are two lipsticks in the glove compartment.
I pick the darker one
                            and apply it
                                                 carefully
                                                       ­          sensually.
I start the car.
West London ebbs away to the motorway
My car is silver and in the rain it feels invisible
I don’t know where I’m going
                                I follow words on signposts I recognise the shape of
                                without really reading them
and I keep driving
I let my eyes come away from the road and
watch the fields and trees tick past like cells of film
and I look at the cars on the other carriageway
and I notice they’re all silver like mine
                                                        (onl­y mine is invisible)
and I duck as a Boeing 777 soars over near the M4 interchange
and let myself scream soundlessly under the roar of its engines.
I wonder where it came from.
                                          I think about the people on board.
I think about their mobile phones and
all the ******* there must be on them
and I realise
how many videos there must be in the world
of people having ***.
I take the M23 past Gatwick Airport
                                          the motorway ends but I keep driving
until finally I come to the sea.
No-one is here because it’s March and it’s raining.
I have always loved the sea.
Not sailing or swimming or surfing
Just being near it, for me it’s
                                   a spiritual experience.
I’ll lie on the stones and gaze at the sky for hours
but not today.
                     There are some flowers tied to a railing
                     somebody has drowned.
Presumably they never found a body to bury.
The awfulness of that strikes me like a stone.
                                                        It­’s the not knowing.
                                                        ­The lack of 100% concrete total proof.
I take my phone out of my handbag.
                                                        ­But I know now.
The shingle crunches underneath my flat shoes.
                                                        No­w I know.
The cold burns my ears and the wind picks up as I get closer to the water
the tide slips serpentine up the stones
white-edged
                     beckoning me.
Without realising I’ve slipped
                                                 out of
                                                            my­ shoes
but the stones do not hurt my coarse feet
and the wind
                     howling now
                                          catches me behind my knees
quickening my stride.
The spit curls around my toes.
And then I catch myself wondering
                                          whether my husband will call me or
                                          text me when he lands
and I hurl
       my phone
              into the sea.
On the drive home I listen to the radio.
The news is dominated by the Crimean conflict
and the referendum that’s coming up there.
Florence Nightingale
                            is all I can think about when they talk about Crimea.
Until recently I never even knew where it was.
At school you only learn about Florence Nightingale
                                   not the geography
                                          not the conflicts
                                                 not Ukraine’s edges so charred by
                                                               invasion and,
                                                                ­             subsequently,
                                                                ­                                  explosion.
                    ­               We live in so many war zones.
and I’m wondering what else I never learned about when
the story changes and now they are talking about a plane.
A plane is missing
                                   between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing
                                          and the blood drains out of me.
It isn’t like floating away like a balloon this time
it’s like plunging off a cliff.
And at once I see
                            with brilliant, burning clarity
                                                        m­y phone, ringing, on the sea bed
The light from the screen illuminates the stormy water but
I can’t see the name:
                                   I can’t see who’s calling.
I need to know.
I need to know it’s him.
       I drive back at twice the speed limit.
In the dark the flowers look menacing and half-dead; my
shoes fall off in the same place
But the tide is in so the whole beach looks different.
I’m up to my waist but my
top half
       is as wet
              as my bottom half
                            because the rain
                                          is torrential
                                                      ­  and I can still hear the phone ringing
                                                        b­ut I can’t see the light in the sea.
and I howl
       his name
but the wind carries it away soundlessly
       and I can’t tell if I’m
              further out
              or if the tide’s further in
                            and the ringing grows louder
                            as the current takes me powerfully by the waist and
                                                             ­         the stars rush by overhead.



iii. Acid rain

Every time I blink, between every saccade I see
a brilliant but infinitesimally brief flash of colour.
       Purple
       or green
       I think.
                     One on top of the other.
It’s hard to tell for sure because they’re so brief.
It’s like when you look at a light bulb for too long
                                                            ­   or stare directly at the sun.
I see it sometimes when I’m on my bike
or on a really big rollercoaster
                                   going downhill at 100 miles an hour
                                   the wind blasting through me
                                   the screams whirling through the air.
But I’m not on a rollercoaster, I’m sat very still
it’s Monday afternoon and I’m at school.
I haven’t said a single word to a single person today.
I didn’t even answer my name in the register.
I feel a bit dizzy like
                                   everything is turning together
                                   but I’m on a different
                                                       ­                 axis?
I think the bell goes, I’m
not a hundred percent sure,
but I leave anyway and no-one stops me.
       Outside in the sunshine the flashes of colour are
       several thousand times brighter.
In the next lesson I slip in my earbuds and
it looks like the teacher is singing the words.
                                                 I put on the most obscene song I can find.
I must have it on too loud
because eventually she notices and
she forces me to give her the headphones. This is the first time
someone has spoken to me today
                                          it feels a bit surreal
                                                         ­      but the world stops spinning
                                                        ­       a bit.
After school I go into the supermarket on Wigmore Lane
the enormous white of it is tinged in green and purple
and all I want is to buy a drink
                            I have a feeling of exactly the kind of drink I want
                            but I can’t find the right one
                            even though the fridge must be longer than
                            the driveway of my house.
Racks of newspapers and magazines clamour for my attention
       the only real colour in this great white warehouse of a store
       red tops and blue spreads
       and green and purple and green and purple
              and green and purple…
They’re talking about that missing plane in the news
and they keep using the same phrase.
They’re talking about the people on board the missing plane
and they keep saying
                            Missing
                      ­      presumed dead.
Not dead dead. Presumed dead.
I start wondering what it’s like to be both dead and alive at the same time,
as if all the people on board that plane are like Schrödinger’s cat
              (cats)
and we won’t know whether they’re dead or alive until we find the plane
and pull it out of the sea
and look inside
                     so
                         until then
                     they’re both.
Out in the car park I count the planes as they descend onto
the runway less than a mile away.
       One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
       I figure about a hundred and eighty a plane maybe,
       which means fifteen hundred people just arrived in Luton.
Nobody comes to Luton for the scenery.
Soon they’ll be gone,
A town haunted by a ghost population of thousands an hour.
                                                 filtered onto the trains and buses
                                                 and out from the sprawling car parks
                                                 to the motorway, and
                                                 onto connecting flights back into Europe
              but none of them will stay in Luton
                                                           ­                  Missing
                                                         ­                    presumed dead.
As I bike through Luton I think it might not be so strange to be dead and alive at the same time.
I’ve lived here my whole life and the whole place
                                                           ­                         which is a *******
                                                 moves with the mundanity of machinery
                                                 like the big car factories by the airport
                                                 the lights on, the production lines rolling
                                                 but all a bit automatic and lifeless.
But in the airport, it’s different.
The air, with its artificial chill, hangs with a faint shimmer
and the people here move purposefully, and with charge
                                                          ­     excitedly
                                                       ­                      or dejectedly
                                                      ­         but not neutrally
heading for the gates where they are sealed two hundred a time into airtight tubes
like Schrödinger’s cat:
                            dead and alive in the air;
                            one or the other on the ground.
                                                         ­      My teachers say I have an
                                                              ­ “odd way of looking at things”.
I leave my bike outside without chaining it up and go into the terminal.
In a café in the check-in hall I find exactly the drink I want
and I pay £2.75 for it.
                            I look at the departure boards.
                            Edinburgh. Bonn. Marseilles.
                            A green light flashes next to each gate as it opens
                                                           ­                  green and purple
                                                          ­                   green and purple
                                                          ­                                 Missing
                                                         ­                                  presumed dead
The flashes of colour are growing brighter
every time I move my eyes a green and purple streak follows behind like a jet stream
but the bustle and activity of the airport is so much that I can’t keep my eyes still
       so they keep darting
                            this way and that
                                                 until my vision is painted over
                                                            ­                 green and purple.
The streaks roll over each other like clouds of acid rain.
       This is the final call for flight 370 to–
My bike is gone when I go back outside
The front of the terminal is a plateau of thousands upon thousands of cars
and it’s probably in one of them
                                          but I’ll never know which.
The car parks reach all the way back to the runway.
Green and purple acid rain from all the jet fuel mixed with the air
melts a hole in the fence and I slip through
moving purposefully
                            with charge
                                          across the green and purple grass
                                          scorched by a hundred thousand landings
                                          a hundred thousand people arriving in Luton
And there on the tarmac
                     glinting in the rain
                     surrounded by blinking amber
       there is my bike
       its black handlebars spread like the wings of a jet plane.
I duck as an Airbus screams in just a few feet over my head
the rush from the engine lifting the soles of my feet from the ground.
I pick up the bike and start pedalling
                                                 pedalling down the runway
                                                 pedalling towards the blinking amber.
It feels light, nimble, fast
the tyres take the asphalt with ease.
And the faster I go the lighter I feel
       the acid rain eats away at my clothes
       and they melt off my body and pool on the runway below,
                     Lighter
                            and lighter until…
                                                 The wheels lift away from the ground
                                                          ­     and in the air I am dead and alive
                                                 and maybe nobody will
                                                                ­                           ever
                                                            ­                               see me
                                                                ­                           again.



iv. Burning sky

The faster I go, the lighter I feel.
I’ve taken the night watch and the yacht
is cruising across the Indian Ocean
penetrating the black abyss like a white bullet
and the lights in the portholes send shimmering white bullet shapes
for miles across the endless ink.
                                                            ­                 What?
                     We’re not going very fast at all
                     But it feels like any minute
                                                 we might drop off the edge of the world.
I hope we do.
I feel light and dizzy and irrational
                                          and I feel aware of being
                                          light and dizzy and irrational
and I wonder if this is what going mad feels like.
Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
I
       feel like that a lot lately.
Marc is sleeping.
We didn’t speak much today.
I can’t really remember how long it’s been
       since we left Victoria but the fight
       we had there
                            in a bistro by the port we
       said things we
       said things that
                            we can’t take back.
The Seychelles were stifling.
The heat was stifling.
He was stifling.
And the people were stifling
                                   the people kept talking about pirates.
                                   They kept warning us about pirates.
                                   You’re sailing where
                                                        the­y say
                                   You must be careful
                                                        t­hey say
                                   It’s notorious
                                                       ­ they say
I have fantasies about being kidnapped by pirates.
Not stupid Johnny Depp pirates with *** and parrots, no
       Real pirates.
                     Nasty pirates.
                     With dark snarls and AK-47s.
When we were at sea off the Horn I’d see things on the horizon
Dots or lights I couldn’t make out
And I’d imagine the rifle against my neck
Their hot breath
Chains and ransoms.
                          I’d wonder how much we’d be worth.
                          If we’d make national news.
                          Would it be David Cameron to announce,
                                                       ­        regrettably,
                                                    ­           we don’t negotiate with pirates,
                          or would it be someone less important?
                          Maybe just the foreign secretary.
                          What is the worth of my life at the end of a steel barrel?
But it would only be a buoy, or a plane on the horizon,
and I would get into bed with Marc
       disappearing under the covers like a different kind of hostage.
I
              oh
                                   I
                                                 Sorry
I’m crying.
                     I don’t know when I started crying.
The thing is I don’t know if it’s me breaking the marriage
or the marriage breaking me.
I’m watching everything literally fall to pieces and for all I know
it’s me with the detonator.
And then
              everything
literally falls to pieces
                            My mug of coffee falls from my hand
                            shatters on the deck
                                                            ­and the sea rears up nightmarishly.
Above me
a long orange **** of flame
is burned into the sky.
                            No, really.
                            That’s not a metaphor.
                                                       ­        There is fire in the sky.
It’s about a mile up and a mile away.
Look.
       There.
              ****.
                            **** **** ****.
What is that?
                                   Marc!
I call for Marc.
                                   Marc!
       There is fire in the sky.

–              Katherine.

       Fire in the sky.
       Fire in the
       Fire in

–              Katherine.

       Fire

–              Katherine.

       What
              Marc, what?

–              Are you awake?

       I think so.

–              You were calling out again.

       Calling

–              Calling out. You were shouting.

       What
       where
       What time is it?
                                   Where

–              Dubai. We’re in Dubai. It’s 7.
                They delayed again while you were sleeping.

       Dubai?

–              Katy I really think you should see a doctor.

       Don’t call me that.

–              Pardon?

       Katy.
       Don’t call me that.
                                          Like

–          ­                                       Like what?

       Everything’s okay.

–

       Everything’s not okay.

–               There’s
                 doctors. You’re not well. You’ve been confused since,
                 well actually since before it even happened.

       You think I’ve been confused.

–              Not right.
                Not you.

       You’re **** right.

–              Forget it.

       Thank you.

–              Go back to sleep. ****.



–              Are you still seeing it?
                The plane? On fire.
                                   You’re dreaming about it, aren’t you?

       Yes.

–              It’s affecting you?

       I’m
              just
                     unhappy,
       Marc.

–              That’s not just it though is it?

       What’s that supposed to mean?

–              Something about seeing that
                                                           ­   plane has scared you.

       We don’t know it was the plane.
       The one that –

–                            No. But, right place, right time.
              They said

       Maybe.

–              It’s still a coincidence.
                It’s not

                                   What

–                                   A sign.
                                     From god.
                                     Or
                                          whatever.

     ­                                     Whatever you think it means.



                            Katherine.

       The thing I don’t know, Marc
       is if I’m more scared that it was the plane
       or that it wasn’t.

–

       Imagine.
       Vanishing.
       Into thin air.

–              I know.

                            No, you don’t.
       Disappearing
                            into thin air
       Or falling
                            out of it.

–              Falling.

       You can’t imagine that.

–              I can.



–              I can, Katy.
                I ******* can
                                          Imagine.
       ­         Falling.
                Disappearing.
             ­   Into thin air.

                *******
                            i­nvisible.

                 I am
                           right
                          ­          ******* here,
                                                        K­atherine.

       I see you.
       I see you Marc.
       But you’re not
                            solid.

       I’m not
                            solid.
                          ­                              See?

                           ­                             It passes
                                                          ­     right through.

       Now you see me.
                                   Now yo–



v. 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re living in a corner of your own life?
The hotel room here in Singapore is almost identical
to the room I had in Mexico City.
The heat feels the same and it’s the same
nondescript decoration
which doesn’t really belong to any time or culture.
It gives me a headache. The neutrality of it.
As I check my messages I remember
                                                        ­       I’m not in Singapore.
I’m in Kuala Lumpur.
I haven’t been home for nearly three weeks now.
It’s ridiculously late
The IOC conference is at six thirty
              and I’ve been asleep all day.
                                   I get dressed and grab my camera
                                   and leave the hotel with a large, black coffee.
At the press call I see a man from Reuters I recognise.
       The coffee here is terrible.
I talk to him about his family
              his daughter is four now
              he’s shaved off his beard since I last saw him
              and he’s moving, he says,
                                                 near me apparently
                                                 to Southend.
                                                       ­               “London Southend” he jokes
                                                                ­      with a roll of his eye
                                                             ­         and inverted commas.
I say yeah that’s quite near me then move away to take a phone call.
Inside the press conference there are ten people at the table
       the women are all wearing identical powder blue suits which
       strikes me as idiosyncratically Asian for no good reason.
The men all wear simultaneous translation headphones
                                                      ­                but the women don’t.
I wonder if this is because they speak better English than the men
or if it just isn’t considered necessary to translate for them.
       They have given the Winter Olympics to Beijing.
              I wonder what is lost between the
              Mandarin spoken by the mayor of Beijing
              and the English spoken by the translator.
                                                     ­          The space between words.
                                                          ­     The space between looking left
                                                            ­                               and looking right.
It’s a nice atmosphere in the cool air-conditioned room.
I’m struck by how nice everyone is
       except for the British delegates
       including the man from Reuters who speculates
       that the voting was rigged.
A while later someone else calls it a “farce”.
              I get a photograph of the IOC President’s face
                                                            ­          as it falls
              and email it to my office from my seat.
Outside, the Petronas towers rise above the conference centre like
enormous empty silos.
This is my first time in Kuala Lumpur
                                          the last city I have to visit before I go home.
I get in a taxi and say the name of my hotel
                                          and the city flashes by.
I look out of the window at
the buildings as they pass and they
don’t so much slide past
                                   or glide past
                                                        the motion isn’t smooth.
They sort of click past.
They tick past, dit-dit-dit:
Building after building
                            dit-dit-dit-dit-dit
My eyes don’t quite refresh the image fast enough
to keep up with all the buildings
                            as they pass.
The taxi stops and I pay seventeen ringgit and get out:
it has gone by the time I realise this is not my hotel.
I don’t know where I am but I was in the taxi long enough to know that I
am some distance
                            from the centre of the city.
I look up at the name of the hotel the driver has taken me to
and the English transliteration is very similar to the name of the hotel I am staying in.
       I go inside.
There’s a nightclub in the hotel
I order Glenfiddich
                            double,
                 ­           cut with water.
              not because I like it but
              because there’s something about scotch that feels
                                                           ­                         moneyed
              heavy amber liquid in heavy-bottomed glasses
              it helps me buy into this idea of the travelling businessman
              even though that’s a lie.
                                                        I’m just a man who takes pictures.
                                                       ­ And I want to go home.
I sit at the bar which is as long as my driveway.
I swirl my glass and watch the amber legs trickle down the sides.
A moving light above it hits the gloss black surface
with an open white like the early morning sun on my gravel
                                                          ­                   as I get into my car.
A girl from here, young enough to be my daughter, is talking to me.
She points out her friends and I half-wave, uneasily
and she asks what I’m drinking.
                                          A news alert on my phone says a piece of
                                          plane wreckage
                                          washed up
                                                        on Réunion
                                                        i­n the Indian Ocean,
                                   east of Madagascar and south of the Seychelles.
The girl seems nice. She says her name is Dhia
                                                            ­                 it means “glowing”.
She doesn’t seem to want anything,
certainly not ***;
her friends have disappeared so
                                          I dance with her.
As we dance I see something in her eyes that is at once
both young and
                     endlessly wise.
She has deep brown eyes exactly the colour of earth
and a small mouth which smiles brilliantly.
In the half-light they open up to me like pools
                                                 and I imagine
                                                         ­             swimming
                                           ­      in them.
Even though she’s only nineteen, twenty-one at most,
there is something about her that’s
                                          maternal
       ­                                   spiritual
                    ­                      nourishing.
She asks me what I’m doing in Kuala Lumpur and I tell her
I don’t know.
She asks me what I did today and I tell her I
                                                               ­              slept
                                                           ­           then took some photographs.
You’re a photographer, she says, and I shrug
then she leans into my ear and says
                                                        don’­t tell anyone.
What
       I say
and she says
              I’m a princess.
And I look into her eyes and she isn’t lying.
She says no-one is going to recognise her
but
       just in case
                            she isn’t supposed to be seen drinking.
Who would I tell
I say to her.
She grins and finishes her beer and it’s true
                                   no-one is looking at her
                                   but she’s the most magnetic person in the room.
In the taxi I say the name of my hotel extremely slowly
and the driver replies in perfect English
                                                         ­      yes sir, I know where you mean.
Kuala Lumpur ticks by in electric darkness.
I flick through the news as we drive
                                                 I see the photo I took this evening about
                                                 a dozen times
                                                 or more.
There is something bitter about the tone in all the British press when they talk about the Olympics
as if:
Beijing get to do it twice?
                                   What about us?
I think about a country with a quarter of the world’s population
and I think about the tiny little island I’ve come from
                                                        and I feel smaller than I’ve ever felt.
The aircraft wing that washed up in Réunion is from a Boeing 777,
they say.
The same type of aircraft as the one that went down last year.
The one they never found.
                            It was going from here to Beijing.
                            Last communication at 1.19am.
And it’s at
                     that
                     time
                     precisely
                                   my phone rings.
It’s my boss in London
she says the Chinese Olympic Committee
are scheduling press conferences.
                                                    ­    It looks like I’m going to Beijing.

i'm going for a new style, i've been with these
metal origins for ages, long hair post-hippy
crap for too long, too much shampoo and definitely
too much brushing, i finally realised the stink
of what long hair encompasses, high maintenance,
too much of it... doing the monk, grow a beard
keep it 1 millimetre away from a skinhead,
more places to scratch my head... but the other reason,
and i mean the other real reason...
there's an elephant in my brain and he's practising
the ivory section of the orchestra, quiet similar
to the trumpet and trombone, but not quiet like it,
i still remember high school, chubby kid
prior to the gcse prom, a summer spent with my
grandparents cycling like mad about 50 kilometres
in the polish countryside, eating grapes for supper,
by the time i came back, the trousers were too
big that i had to use suspenders (at a party this
fat guy was wearing them, suspenders didn't catch
on because it was Transatlantic english, he thought
i was talking stockings and high-heels...
annoying since the two can't work out that both
are ENGLISH and not french slang in Calais
when Henry the 8th still had it: brace... oh loop
de d'ah) at first and then tailored myself to a good suit...
suddenly i was thin, donning a french braid
and was the Johnny Depp for a day after Blow
came out, the younger girls asking shampoo i was using,
that exercise regime i had, and what kind of fruits
i was eating... but prior to that i was the chubby boy
with a knack for geek stuff... and this one memory
really sticks out, 16 at the time, art class, massive crush
on this girl, a rose one valentine and then i quickly
sketched hair in her youth looking into a mirror
with an old lady in the mirror... i don't know the motive,
but this same girl was... see i was born elsewhere
and she was born over there, and she didn't recognise
and biological connectivity between the two,
a fully integrated-assimilated soul... but the comment
was a fiery burn... hence me ageing and finally realising
i'm looking like less of a James Hetfield and more
like Immortan Joe... i can't remember having hair this
short (i'll include a picture)... but her comment was
about an ethnic signature regarding the cranium,
indeed it's true, but the self-identifier as such an ethnicity
only having acquired the use of the english language
as a lesser characteristic... she said something about
occipital bone being less protruding in slavic men:
a flatness on the back of the head... that got me, don't ask
me why, but the sheer sneer of her comment got me...
it's as if the lack of occipital protruding was some sort of
evolutionary defect, a meat-head syndrome the ugly cousin
of a skinhead... and as if a missing protrusion on
the coccyx was also degenerate - monkey on a tree,
monkey on parallel bars, monkey on a tree,
monkey on the high bar... monkey on a... you get the picture;
it's this strange analogy, there are absolutely no
benefits of a missing tail... well there are...
you remove the coccyx and you turn into a monkey
in a constrained space, a limited space, you get the
gymnastic on the floor flipping and hoping you're not
******* like a marathon runner after 20 miles...
but the evolutionary benefit of a retracted tail is only that,
fast runner of the monkey form, but not a cheetah,
compare the lynx... in monkey form you needed a tail
to travel, not do gymnastics... but that cranium comment
got to me... and i'm almost 30 now...
like watching this programme about Alzheimer's...
i've been practising deep sleep for a few years now...
sleeping pills don't work without alcohol (even though
mixing the two is "prohibited") and some sort of
paracetamol... i sleep for more than 8 hours...
deep sleep is the kind of sleep where you don't even
dream... because your brain is a sponge but not
a unconscious muscle, deep sleep cleans the synapses
or neurons or whatever... check out
BBC's Horizon take on it, great program...
what i mean about remembering such a particular
event from school is what i call selective memorisation,
when a chance opportunity comes in your life
you get to make a lot of choice: where to live, what job
to have... but you sometimes just can't make choice
in the realm of cognition, unless it be in the faculty
of memory or imagination (daydreaming) -
thinking is the only aspect of the brain that's related to
all the other organs in the body, after all the brain
isn't in some pickle jar along with ****** rats
bred and stored like pickles until they turn yellow
and are used by biology students to dissect... the brain's
muscle, it's automation is thinking, like a heart's
thump-thump-thump... whereas memory and imagination
are component of the mind's threshold with the soul.
and guess what... after being called big 'ed too
they didn't realise i won't go bald, it's in my genes,
my paternal grandfather died with lots of hair,
my father will die with lots of hair...
   and i'll shoe-shine those baldy neos with a laugh too.

Before the hordes of his extended fashion family descended on Somerset House last night, Sam McKnight was pacing through the two floors of an exhibition of his life as one of the great sessions hairstylists. He stopped in front of a formal British Vogue portrait of Princess Diana, taken by Patrick Demarchelier in 1990. “I put on the tiara and had to make her hair big for it,” he remembered. “But, oh, God, then we had such an amazing day afterward. We were chatting and she suddenly asked, ‘If you could do anything, what would you do?’ And I said, ‘I’d cut it off!’ And she said, ‘Well, let’s do it now!’”

Thus, Diana, Princess of Wales, got the best slicked-back look of her life, the cut that defined her chic, grown-up, independent years—and her cutoff from her marriage. “I didn’t realize at the time,” McKnight said, “but in retrospect, with everything that was going on in the background, she wanted a change.” McKnight, after that, became Diana’s entrusted hairdresser. As photographer Nick Knight puts it elsewhere in the show, McKnight has that general effect on women when he’s working. “When he goes near the girls, they relax.”

It’s a testament to McKnight’s popularity in the magazine and fashion show milieu he has worked in since 1977—nearly 40 years!—that so many (who are sometimes so difficult) cooperated and gave permission, and that Chanel and Vivienne Westwood lent spectacular clothes to illustrate the interpretive cut and ****** of what a great hairstylist contributes. Straightaway, as you step off the street into the exhibition, you’re plunged into the next best thing to a backstage hair-and-makeup station and the kind of frenetic scene that goes on minutes before Chanel, Fendi,Dries Van Noten, or Balmain shows take to the runway. In place of the mirrors there are videos—say, of Kendall Jenner getting her Balmain hair look at a recent presentation—which have been recorded by GoPros worn by McKnight’s assistants. Every facet and every angle of the transformations—sometimes with four pairs of hands working on one girl’s hair—are captured.

From then on in, it’s easy to see how this exhibition will become a magnet for kids who want to experience the atmosphere of fashion and worship at a temple of a sublime hair alchemist. Shonagh Marshall, the curator at Somerset House, has run the numbers on the hairstylist’s Vogue covers, many of which are displayed on a faux newsstand. “Sam has been involved with 190 Vogue covers, which is more than any one photographer, or anyone else over that time,” she reported.

That’s not bad for a Scottish lad, born the son of a miner in 1955, who made his way to being a central team player with photographers and editors in the high supermodel years. Glorious images of Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington,Cindy Crawford, and Tatjana Patitz abound. “It was a golden era. We were on the road the whole time with Patrick Demarchelier, traveling the world with the same 10 people,” McKnight said, laughing. “We were making it up as we went along, really.”

The massive sweep of the show brings out the important collaborations of his career, with photographers Demarchelier, Knight, Tim Walker, and more; with fashion editors Lucinda Chambers and Edward Enninful; and makeup artists Mary Greenwell and Val Garland. It’s studded with celebrity—Lady Gaga, Tilda Swinton, Kylie Minogue—and honors the spectacular shape-shifting talents of Kate Moss, from her early days as a fresh tousle-haired ’90s teen in love on a beach: “Johnny Depp was there,” McKnight recalled.

There are the moments when McKnight changed models’ fates with short, blonde crops—Jeny Howorth’s in the ’80s and Agyness Deyn’s in the aughts. We see his process, with the hairpieces, wigs, and frizzing techniques integral to creating Westwood and Chanel shows, in both videos and installations masterfully laid out by Michael Howells. Right at the end, there’s a room Howells describes as “Sam the Man,” the walls checkerboarded with pictures of flowers from his garden and the ridiculous varieties of wigs he poses in on his Instagram feed these days. It’s testament to the energy and humor of a talent happily adapted to an industry that is constantly working on the new, in the now; an inspirational treat for all those who remember and for all the many thousands of young eyes that will be opened for the first time by this extravagant journey through one man’s career.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses

“Comanches put the prisoner to work digging a hole, telling him they needed it for a religious ceremony. When the captive, using a knife and his hands, had completed digging a pit about five feet deep, they bound him with rope, placed him in it, filled the hole with dirt, packing it around his body and exposed head. They then scalped him and cut off his ears, nose, lips, and eyelids. Leaving him bleeding, they rode away, counting on the sun and insects to finish their work for them. Later, back at their encampment, they told the story as an excellent joke, one which gained them a certain celebrity throughout the tribe.”
     —  Stanley Noyes, *Los Comanches, The Horse People 1751-1845