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

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

They were immediately comfortable, and comforting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I deserve a better pair of shoes.”

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

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

“Or I can throw them away.”

And she began to plan.

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

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

They helped make her who she now was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I deserve much more than “friends” like you.

& most of all

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will sit in my sadness
as I drape it on like a mask
I'd even wear it to bed and alone
but never while sunlight hours pass

My sadness is often rooted in my chest
it's built to last
creating a storm
of anguish and despair
and outgrowing other emotions
in its path

My sadness looks like envy
and is filled with wrath
too much pride to subdue it
but easily broken like glass

My sadness looks like you
when your leaving

You,
when we're not speaking
You,
when you don't need me
You,
when your not near me.

Love.  

Love is
awful/wonderful/
terrifying/beautiful/
frustrating/amazing/
foreign.

It's amazing how something that you've never had
can leave such an empty feeling inside you.
I was made with an empty space in the middle of my heart.
Meant to be filled with someone's "I'll love you forever."
There must have been a mishap in the factory, though,
because there seems to be no complimentary piece.

I have a mantra I go through, a set of excuses I remind myself of
whenever a chance is lost, an opportunity runs sour. '
I call them "The Three Things I Know To Be True About Love."
             Not interested? Someday he will be
             Isn't into relationships? Someday he will be
             Isn't attracted to you? Someday he will be

Well, I can't say I know the third part to be true.

I know what you're thinking.
Sad, whiny fat kid complaining about something he caused himself.
Look, I know what I look like. I know what it allows me in life.
To be fair, it is my own fault. I've let myself stretch,
outgrowing my skin and confidence till they're threatening to burst.

I know it would be hard to look at me and say "I love you."
I never have been able to do it.
I think if I heard it just once, though, I'd be satisfied.
Just to give me the sensation having the words
pass through me, enveloping my insides
with warmth, hope, promise.

I'm not asking you to mean it. I couldn't ask you for that.
Even though I'd know of their false implications.
I have always been a fan of playing pretend.

I know that I'm young,
and that I haven't been far outside of the
cornfield fence that has enclosed me for 19 years.
But patience has never been a virtue I've held.

I'm just someone who is desperately tired of "somedays."
All I'm asking for is a "today."

The dusk sets its hasty way
On the bricks and alleyways
where gypsies are endowed
smoking, trashing and fly tipping
Cursing, gossiping and fighting
and it all passes like an oasis
as a monster evades time
as the scorched leaves greet
after all those year and seasons
The tree by the window has grown
having seen misery and laughter
drunken nights and loving days
****** dates and eventual transitions
The burden of truth, it caught my eyes
Captured the barrenness of my soul
it thirsts for a far away distance
those reachable mountains of fortune
It hungers for an embrace full of life
outgrowing the space by the window
tearing the netted curtained screen
Every time I see the that tree
I giggle and then smile a little bit more
as if captured by an angelic love

I can't write anything
    that doesn't sound slightly stupid
            anymore
                    my words haven't kept up
with my maturing. Or so it seems.

         maybe I'm just outgrowing
   the stupid words I used to use to describe
things. but maybe is also another stupid word.

maybe maybe maybe
          the word dances off my tongue. which is totally
(completely) repulsive.
        why should a word
that sits on the top of everyone's
        tongue
               waiting to strike
dance. it's a drug they don't warn you about
     ****** if you use it ****** if you don't.
        
the next best excuse
                     to 'I don't know'-- couldn't tell you how many times
i've held back because i clutched that word
     like it was a part of me.

maybe. here it is again. maybe, I thought that "maybe"
     really was a part of me. it's hard to distance yourself
from something so excruciatingly
     fitting.
there was something about "maybe" that just felt
necessary. as though certainty never stood a chance.

the worst of things being that we were all defined by our cowardice and that we couldn't stand
       the thought of being wrong (not even once.)

nobody  saying anything
with any certainty. they knew how fragile
the world was. none of us were
strong enough to deal with being any shade of WRONG.
we're all too insecure to be throwing around words like that anyways.

Old ballet shoes,
Yearbooks with letters wedged into the cracks promising friendship until the end of time.

The yearbook signatures that promised to call or catch up,
and the signatures that actually should have ended with "good bye".

Children's books and children's clothing,
Tiny t-shirts and itty bitty shorts.

Ticket stubs and concert tickets,
ID cards and senior portraits.

Long lost poetry and crinkled letters
To boys I thought I'd love beyond the time I did.

Photographs of us in our youth
And some of us apart, outgrowing each other.

Homework from freshman year,
Art projects I thought deserved life beyond the magnets on the kitchen fridge.

Baby blankets and old rosaries
for when I thought Jesus could keep my faith in all that's good.

Books I haven't read in years
that still make me smile when I roll my fingers down the spine.

My grandpa's memorial announcement
and his old fishing hat.

The CD's we used to make dances to,
and perform for ourselves in my old costumes.

Friendship bracelets from girl's names I can't remember,
and friendships I lost
Numerous diaries with long entries about being older,
and how someday older will be better,

How age will bring me adventure, maturity, love, resolution, clarity, a sense of myself, happiness.
Here I am with more age, and these endless memories make me wish for the time when I could still fit into the little shorts and stick my tongue out in pictures.

The someday I wrote of is today
and I'm teary-eyed over what used to be.

I'm missing the old you and the old memories,
the old friends and the old ways of happiness.

I'm here, older now,
and I wish I knew if older was better.

We grew the earth, grew it around us and grew into it.
We grew into pairs of shoes after pairs of shoes
and we grew into our names.
We learnt to tie the laces of our shoes
and to tie our tongues around our names,
and the names of other things, other people,
and around other people's tongues.

We planted our cultures, cultivated them,
and they blossomed into traditions
and stereotypes and generalisations and rituals.

We broke in our shoes, broke the ice,
broke our voices, broke promises.
We broke glasses, hearts and bones.

We built hierarchies, looked up, looked down, bowed down.
We broke down into dictatorships and demonstration.
We found solutions like democracy
and diplomas and delegated.

We fixed fountains and freight trains
and falling trees in the forest and faucets that leaked.
We formed partnerships, made promises,
pledged to parties for both politics and both parents.
We made marriage and then we annulled, we divorced.
We fabricated the faiths that we fed on.

We invented stopwatches, reality television,
pedicures, lampshades, philosophy,
greenhouses, dictionaries, exclusivity,
feng shui, hand-holding, ****** medication,
street art, lawsuits, lingerie, car boot sales,
snow days, karaoke, comics, psychics,
boarding schools, toast, baseball, psychiatry,
bird-watching, plaid, research, stag nights,
slasher movies, salads, and interventions.

We wanted and we wished and we waited
and we wanted for more.
We were growing faster than we invented.

We were outgrowing ourselves
and our earth
and our shoes
and our names.

We forgot what we had found and fixed and formed.
We broke down and went broke.
We are waiting to invent a new way we can fix ourselves.

To the inner wisdom
To that outgrowing system
To the pillars of belief
And to the childish relief.

To the chastity, modesty & respectability,
To not loose virginity over someone’s purity

To **** the innocence of mine,
And to retain from thine.  
Lately I’m seeing a glass of wine,
Pouring emptiness in the mid sunshine.

To forgive you from the first meeting,
To forgave me from reciting pure words melting.
To known from strangers again
If this is that, then I don’t want to wait in vain.

To the dimensions I think insane,
To the remembrance of high schools mane.

          Through highs & lows
                 I’ll be at bow !
           My submission to the
                  Actual vow.

Yesterday we talked and I realized
we aren't the soulmates that I wanted us to be
We grow neither at the same pace
nor in the same direction
Maybe we've been soulmates one day
But I guess we've outgrown each other

I didn’t think this is what would be happening

At this point in my life

I wanted to be okay(?) with it

Whatever it had become

I had no understanding of


How to be able to live with this(?)

no other - a windowsill and an open window -
sitting on a folded leg and slouched
like a crow - i would be begging for it to rain -
no other music can capture rain -
safety net of all that sporadic improv. -
                      other other music - except jazz...
whether it be rain nibbling on the countryside
or the full-on cosmopolitan havoc of grey,
dust, grease, cement and rats and glass...
                 never mind: because i never thought
i'd say this...
                of the moderns... closely ruling out
wojciech kilar - for no particular reason other than
he's probably more known -
christopher young - since his hellraiser stint...
what's new - the revamped pet cemetary?
well... if christopher young was primo...
      soon to follow him... graham... plowman...
work on h. p. lovecraft adaptations...
                     horror as a genre...
                                the music wins me over...
however spectacular the visuals are...
                               if the music isn't bone grinding -
unsettling the nerves -
well... that's like pop music when it's raining...
i guess: oh i guess jazz can capture more feelz
when it comes: when it's raining...
when it's lazily sun-dazzling with the impression
of an "underneath" sizzling sensation -
or melting butter - or for that matter melting chocolate...
or adding splashes of cornflour made in water
to a sauce and watching it thicken...
this recipe i will remember by heart...
i will have to at someone point...
but this dhal was quite sublime...

   scrap book recipe...
          a man in a kitchen...
               and in hell... the devil's mastery...
almost like a chemistry experiment...

       half and half: masoor and mung dal... lentils...
kabuli chana (chickpeas)...
    a bay leaf...
              3 cloves...
  a tsp of cumin coriander turmeric
                     chilly powder and another of kashmiri
   chilly powder
                chopped tomatoes
  coconut milk...
            onion ginger garlic
                spinach
      gochugaru flakes coriander for garnish...
veg and chicken stock...
                          ghee...
butternut squash...
                    cayenne pepper (1 tsp)...
    i was looking for a pinch of asafoetida...
i knew it was in the kitchen...
    alas... also know as a substitute for those
vegan cults that don't include eating onions
and garlic... or perhaps just onions...
    cinnamon stick? no...
but three decent pinches of a homemade
garam masala...
  and yes...

   https://ministryofcurry.com/moms-garam-masala/
is the only spice blend...
   the russians can have their nukes...
the americans can have their nukes...
i have an arsenal of the following spices and...
i'm feeling... like i just had a manicure done...
the only garam masala:
asafetida, bay leaves, black peppercorns,
black cardamom, cardamom, cumin seeds,
(sorry, no black cumin seeds),
      cinnamon, cloves, cordiander seeds,
dried chillies, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds,
(mace? no mace)...
         nutmeg, poppy seeds, star anise...
turmeric...
          again: no stone flower...
well... that's almost covered it...
                it's not the recipe asks for black
mustard seeds... those i do have...

                   cult recipe and it says: who needs...
meat?! even i'm convinced...
god i do love a good steak tartar...
    anything ****** and oozing wriggly bits
of life - as tender and gelatin grizzly as a...
even the names: bleu... ooh... saignant...
  haha... medium: demi-anglais... what else?

the butchers rolling in their graves
when someone orders a steak: fini-bien...
                          or some other frankenstein of the kitchen...

coleman hawkins - the high and mighty hawk...
some guys were putting up a fence
for me and my neighbour - it only took 15 years
but who's counting - they were told to
cut out all the bushes and foliage in my garden...
so that they could get a straight line
and so the fence would be put up...
unlucky for my rosemary bush...

r.i.p. my rosemary bush...
        today i started to salvage the poor thing...
the newer shoots i placed in water for
a drink and hopefully 2 weeks from today
i might think about planting them back in
the ground... for the rest of the bush?
i had to freeze the rosemary...
all afternoon my fingers were scented with rosemary...
which is fine... when you're working
with a raw piece of lamb...
but i'm no walking and breathing and aching
lamb of god about to be hanging
on the cross...
                even through the soap...
an afternoon of my hands being heavily scented
with rosemary...

vivaldi can have spring and the other three
faces of "god"...
holst can have his mars and the other circle of hell...
but thank the high-flying-****
that jazz can capture a rainy day better
than that song: i'm only happy when it rains
by garbage...
            
  guess i'm not letting go...
         an active rebellion against classical music...
one jazz record after another and i can gravitate
to...ward... the entire e.p. being played...
none of that new wave harakiri diat l.p. scene -
much appreciated... but i always need to move
beyond the half-an-hour mark...

         then again: i can't see how jazz could
compensate for snow - snow on the exit format -
jazz doesn't - then again...
no, categorically...
                           if there's only a sly insert of drum...
no horns - the piano and some guitar -
  
   otherwise you can't go wrong with
joshua redman - back east...
         a modern classic - notably with zarafah...

speed-conversations - none clinging
to a cameo of a date...
                 fickle minded - always changing
the course of events that... nonetheless remain
intact on binding themselves to a blind will -
        
music and all these interpretations are my own -
too bad to see and have to work with
a cipher - what's behind this image -
what's behind that image -
at least music stands stark and shivering naked...
less chances to abide by some propaganda...

unless of course mathematics is to be given
the crown - i hardly think: one shouldn't really
think about music -
                one can never really fathom
the constraints and the escapees from these
constraints... these constant revisionary scribbling
over and skimming the orthodox:
brick-on-brick intricacies of: immoveable objects
being: nonetheless moved...

- i too am waiting for my libido to die off -
anytime soon... like right now...
no harem therefore "jazz hands" and the algebra
of "magic fingers"...
idle man and all that *** that could have been...
until that magnetism is steered off a cliff
of: not another tomorrow -
                    at least no ***** or *** doll upon
the horizon -
            no point getting intimate or personal...
only a few days back i found a weakness in
this exoskeleton -
standing in a shower... pouring running water
onto the back of my head...
i almost knelt and said my prayers from
the exhaustion of succumbing to this multiple-******
of nuance...
       right on the spot where
a higher evolution of a more, protruding occipital
bone: as i've heard it once before: being noted...
i'm waiting for my libido to **** itself off...
in the meantime no harem...
imagine my luck when it comes to
the wisdom served up by men like king solomon...
even by then:
this most exhausted man had
to settle for a swan's dignity in monogamy
with the queen of Sheba...

                 but it's hard to translate wisdom
when you have all the basic forebodings
already at your disposal... the harem will discover
***-toys and you will be...
the limp **** in the whole affair...

                 such hard-on feats of fear when it comes
to... two cakes too many
when all you've been asking for is, merely a slice...
jazz... i can't find
a clint eastwood in alcatraz...
or steve mcqueen in sagan...
               or witold pilecki in auschwitz...      
but i can find myself in jazz...
hummingbird or some, other, champagne flute
and that bothersome fly...
nothing against flies: everything against
mosquitos... i would **** those buggers with
the same joy of donning wool having
just sheered a sheep or two...

jazz and: the wriggling fish...
jazz and all the fish out of water...
i'd call them constipated ***** and lobsters
but... jazz and the wriggling fish...
jazz and smoking a cigarette to appreciate
the deaf centre point of night's culminations...
living close by to central london...
"walking in" and not feeling like
anybody important: or a tourist...

       if i wasn't a billy joel: i would most certainly
not want to be a bob dylan -
hard to be living the obscure with a cross
made up of iconography...

the applauded and the: billy joels' piano man meets
neil young's old man...
they shake hands and subsequently depart
where the crossroads begin, and end...

believe me when: i'm the last to be believed...
usher in a dozen penguins attired
to be... fizzy kosher dosh...
in all their napkins and bowtie-neck strangle 'em
into a hush of a bamboozle...

such the life the music the mathematics
of living in shackles - wriggly ol' ****** with
those improv. would-be-turns and...

how many words will it take for it to be clear...
i have nothing but rejoice at clinging
to my obscurity... primo amigo:
alea iacta est: too bad for me...
or too bad for my shadow...
                       faking being a gemini
in the horoscopes of fate and superstition...
shadow: mime out of the confines...

      these is my second chance at retaining
the crown of obscurity? is it?! is it?!

   to have to burden oneself with love...
akin to... well... if i were about to spoon her...
but no... i wanted to catch the 8 hour kipper....
but every time i would fall
to sleep... i'd fall asleep with a tarantula bite...
numb all over to one side...
because i was oh too willing to fall asleep
when clinging to her...
like a bracket fungus to trunk and core...
one side of me complete in numb...
which had a rubric of recitations
should all else not be true...

but *****! that slap in the face...
                             come to think of it...
i'd like something to eat...
less **** with... that could pinch me...
i'm starting to think that
being ganged up by a group of hyennas
is not such a bad way to go...
perhaps being mistaken for a tuna
when a shark attack is being
noted...
            hard to imagine
sharks or bears or lions as having
sadistic undercurrents to their day-in-day-out
beats...
  even sharks nibble but never gorge
and feast on... this cranium solid first and only
hope when it comes to god
not making mistakes when gambling...
the ******* roulette or a black jacks' "choice"
of cards...

i can't exactly "think" this out to appease
a gravitating en masse...
                       pour me another shot and
debackle! all in the faith and hope
of un-thinking thinking...
trying out this suction tenticle of the void...
replacing descartes' res cogitans with
res vanus... what is due: is due...

no more wisdom from me aged 34
as me aged 73... there's only rain and jazz...
i'm buying time...
concerning whether it would be even
remotely likely to appreciate jazz
when it's snowing... unlikely...
very much hell-bent unlikely...

      - who would have thought that peering
into an aquarium would have to,
become more entertaining that zombie-clad
watching a t.v....
what ever happened to the watching
a klepsydra... or the tick-toe-tightening
of seconds into minutes into hours...
dying from the skeleton diet of time
whenever catching-up: unaware with
the clock in the confines of:
old people not really...
no, not really, listening to coleman hawkins'
much of anything...

                     because this doesn't tease
the affections of the young...
like a trainspotting revamp might....
because there's, clearly no new dracula...
and there's no new: new....
                     i wait patiently like a salamander....
no easy picking no low hanging fruit...
no fatty boy'oh to matter...
         no leeching off the three-quarters
of                               the better part of the engineering
cohort that were behind
the manhattan bridge... or Malbork Castle...
and hands on hands: do touch...
the event horizon of a dead star...
                    in that: pulling fabric...
basic genesis... talking fire "misanthrope": "god"...
bushes outgrowing fungus when
it came to 1970s ***** flicks:
notably in fwench and italian...
                   prune the perm hair...
                             keep that afro on a leash!

these days ***** is half of the cure's nostalgia
and more...
onomatopoeia and...
    refining the contorts with painting...
and keeping the act on a hush...
               the lazy hands speaking
dozen **** cracks being discovered but
none being experienced...
bone the hand...
it's called a ****** just because
of oysters... it's called a ******
because of the clams and of the irises...
and because the tongue:
god... ever time i wanted it to exfoliate...
it's forever that timid tulip!

         what came of a ****** became a hand
and the cusp... and what would never
become a San Francisco needle hinge epidemic...

was anyone praying that
one direction would become the next rolling stones...
cougar: meow...
that **** jagger was going to be
the "reincarnated" harry styles?

           knock-knock... who's there?
a premonition... i.e. touch-wood...
base: i will require the wood to be touched
by bone - notably a crunch of the knuckle in how
the fist is formed / fathomed...

        otherwise known as the lap-lapping-dance-off
with a tongue wriggling in imitation
closure of a worm...
or a fighter for a boxing champ. contender...
belt-up... knot and noose down....
the new news is no: good skit...
i **** myself to fickle my shadow
whenever i see a hoopla or a trance inducing
recoil of the swinging dancing spare
of a: rope that's not leftover for
the dangling first come first served...

daydreaming zeppelins...
the day the elevated english man will fall...
and bring down the bowler hat with him...
touch the philosopher's stone and turn
that attache of good taste into an umbrella...
the same day i stop daydreaming
about zepplins...
will see me think of the anglo-saxon
as whittle brother... the younger Swabian...
and all part of the infuriated minor
Germany that found inkling to behave
like the nomad Yids...
and move... and move... and...
never the sort of people to conceive of a ship...
without also being receptive of carrying
an anchor!

then again...
                   monkey man albino and...
forever the one to follow the white rabbit back home.

moss outgrowing angels
in the baby fog
of dawn.

the place
peeling stories
out of you,
the pretty face
invading you,
making you want
to talk to someone,
anyone.

he calls it eden.

here, the fingernail moon
is playing modest.

here, the stars
have room to think,
and because they think

they also want to know

about why words tremble
under the tongue, how
body beats brain,
and they beg, but

how do i tell them
about the man

with the laugh like confetti
breaking the sun into fire,
that sweet, sweet fire
of constellations that bite
my nerves, about the man
forging the sky on his chest,
the lightning in my legs?

he was there, you see,
from the first handshake
to the fatal heartbeat
at the other end
of the vein.

blood thinning under
quick kisses of glass,

the words fidgeting
out of our wounds
mean nothing,

the mouth spreads
like butter.

ankles protest
and i float to you,

but it looks like
you're leaving
for that world,

back to that world,
where we smile at screens
instead of at each other.

I have a  garden
No one ever sees
From all others set apart
In it grows black flowers
The color of your treacherous heart

They have the smell of rotting ground
Outgrowing every flower around
Ugly to the eyes
Always need weeding
Much to my distaste
Always seeding

Black flowers for my love betrayed
Black flowers for words spoken
Black flowers for a love lost
Black flowers for a heart broken

Though I rip them out
By ones and twos
Leaving an empty space
In the morning
Much to my disbelief
Others have taken their place

Legends say black flowers
Should be given
To heart untrue
There is no one I know
Who deserves them more
So black flowers I give to you

This poem is copyrighted and stored in author base. All material subject to Copyright Infringement laws
Section 512(c)(3) of the U.S. Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. S512(c)(3), Tammy M. Darby

Sadly, Kiddo, that's what's called life.
There really aren't fresh starts for day-to-day strife
just different street names to remember
(or not, as as the old ones, I find, are usually much better)

Bills, work or chores are always the same
Laundry, dishes, mopping the floors,
the phone, electric or price for gas -
don't care where you live
or that you're dragging your ***

The rent or a mortgage, unpaid, are no different;
tires, brand new or
used from the dump "down'a way,"
all intend to go flat in a week, regardless
(it's in the fine print if you read it ... I did once)

groceries cost more than you'd planned at the start,
but kids will eat food and have those "growth spurts,"
too soon outgrowing
new shoes that you'd bought them
  
When you boil it all down, we must do what is needed -
mostly for them, the brats we are raising;
it's the love of a parent: unbidden, unasked
  
I just close my two eyes before coffee on waking
(or sometimes just the one that sees that I'm walking)
and hope I'll make it to work in the morning

expect to come home in time to cook dinner,
collapse on the couch for a much-needed breather
remembering my bed is a-waayy up the stairs
where, sometimes, I make it before
the snores take me

Repeat.

Her, a silent twilight, alura of lights, glitter outside
from the in. A sublime way, letting go of her own
queenness, surpassing poetry and any narrative
of symphony. Thought ballet tried to replicate.
Belonging only to herself, for herself and none other,
than the chess game of mind, body and soul.
Musical actions, outgrowing sentimentality. Modern art,
portrait paintings, clanker's orchestra. Mystical
in fluid literature, writing such as these, potent poetic
prose. To where she won’t notice, nor even care.
Mother to art. Sister to romance. Regal without effort.
Harmony in thy soul. Because her breathe is harmony
in this world. Where this earth or matrix, perhaps
isn’t as sinful as I thought. (I repose from spells,
there is a belief in love and romance that sparkles
in this world as poetry.)

Home is not where I want to be.
I want to adventure,
wild and free.
Away from the chains
of my adolescent self,
to grow up to be hung
on a greater shelf.
For outgrowing this nest,
wanting to fly away.
You'll be proud of me someday,
just maybe not today.

Take me away,
away from it all.
Away from these chains,
who are there when I fall.
I want to fly,
with my own compass,
I want to fly away.
Away.
Just maybe not today.

curling confetti
   litters like cleavers
      ‘neath ***-bound lungs
outgrowing his ribcage
     she shoots
           unrestrained
                rambling t’ward
         a celandine sun

For Mary Adams*

The gestational carrier
                          Of certainty,
Picture frames in bloom.
Their photographs
                          As precious as petals
Outgrowing her empty room.

Falling now, slipping the fingers;
A moment - A whisper

Gathered like winter twigs,
Her sweet and gentle bones.

Hath they quaver
By any other sway but West
To sunset
For its fallen brother
I would have taken
Far from mistaken
The beads of sweat from rest

Risen dried
Crackle bones lost milk of mother
And other
Departed as the bending sigh
The one that bred its daughter lie
So seed can bloom with mindful bride
Shed off the blissful slumber

Would golden blaze
Be unlike the brass war-chains
In low remains
Whilst weight shift in its wake
Tell moving breath
Out come its wealth
And not the founding of its pains

Slip from sightless
Gloss a cover of unknowing
Left bowing
No wisp of remorse or remiss
But metal shifts
And opened rifts
Divide an ocean outgrowing

Shards beneath
Emblazoned even if in dark
I shall hark
Precious dull that beckons breathe
Even if restrained
Will not let waned
How earthen dreams have left their mark

If I could see
Old ones with minds of gilded time
Would it shine
And make pearls out of shapeless sea
Take their age
Befit a sage
To wrap this darkened world with light

Safe walkway
Come by the cobbles by the days
And passing they
Make moulded casts of harshest clay
So must I
Wait then to lie
Once sibling star has passed my way

Ore-laid wreath
Weigh low my courage rash and weak
So bleak
Beside the timeless task to seek
Shores for the flame
Never the same
Like sands through spyglass let receive

Should they fall
In avalanche cascade their edge
A hopeless fledge
Understand a broken wall
Births fouled resentment
Doubtless consignment
The dam repent its burden baggage

Return
By rivers come a lightened sky
A catching eye
To spread the scattered overturn
Ringlets in the armour glow
Wind suffered gently blow
Witness resending wisdom fly

slowly, warmly, we
crane our soft necks,
catching the droplets
of sun while reaching
for palms, sticky skin,
interlaced fingertips—
outgrowing our shells
that drop like sky pillars
around us, blood racing
through veins in a dense
forest, our romance like
infinity in water tubes,
a melody in ocean waves,
the gravity in his words
causing me to accelerate;
the world divides us into
night and day; the earth
mistakes us for air.

There once was a girl who spoke in poems.
Her words were English but sounded like Shakespeare
she would've had better luck trying to speak Latin.
At least then a few people
would have understood her.
And because no one understood her
she was always alone
since the day she had stuttered her first words

In elementary school
the girl kicked up dirt on the playground,
not because she was shy
but because the kids shunned her.
Whenever the first through fifth graders
were picking teams for kickball
she was always on team none-of-the-above
because when the girl had even
a fraction of a chance of being picked,
there always seemed to be somebody
who appeared out of thin air who was faster or stronger or cooler,
who pulled the rug out from under her,
leaving the girl to simply smile and skip away to play
by herself

She was too naive back then to know any better
she carried her hope in her hands
a big candle with a small flame
but that flame, though small, stayed strong
always bending with the wind but never blowing out.
Because of this, the girl with a well full of hope
never knew that she was different

At least until she hit middle school.

There the girl got beaten down to the ground
there the students would play tricks on her
and there they hid her things and called her names
"Let's make fun of the freak!" they laughed
before they threw her backpack in the trash.
"Look at her, she's weak!" they pointed
as they watched the tears roll off her cheeks,
dousing the flame of hope she held.

A lot of the time the teachers thought
about asking the girl second questions
because she spent most of her time in the bathroom
crying and sighing,
her lungs inflating and deflating,
soaking the sleeves of the jacket she wore every day.

Oh, that jacket was the only one
who really knew her sorrows.
When her parents asked her how her day was
when she stepped off of the  school bus,
she sobbed as she told them the story of the day.
But since no one understood her
they only ever smiled and nodded
like she had just told them that she
had made a new friend
like she had been talking to the wall instead.
And that's the moment when she
would shoulder past them and stomp up the stairs.
And there she would throw her jacket in the dryer till tomorrow,
because it was the only one who would ever get to know her sorrows.

Until high school.

When the girl hit high school she continued to carry
her candle around,
the wick almost brand new,
like there was never enough hope,
like it had barely been used.
Every day she would set her candle on her desk
and stare out the window,
floating in infinite space
as teacher after teacher
filled the room with white noise
somewhere far away.

She felt numb
looking out at the street,
at the people filing past,
talking and laughing and feeling understood.
And this was always when her own feelings arose,
feelings of jealousy that started from within.
That made her ball up her fists
and want to scream
from the inside out

The glass that held her candle,
because only God knows
what would've happened
if she had held it herself,
started to chip away day by day
along with her heart.

This was a cycle
she repeated every day,
balled fists and scratched up wrists and
angry, angry, angry.
Her fury was so hot
you'd think her candle
would ignite,
but its wick continued
to remain a dud.
Maybe it wasn't the candle's fault.
Maybe she was the dud instead.
Maybe she should just throw
the rest of her life away.
That's all duds were good for anyway.
The. Trash.

Day after dragging day as she did this,
the teachers started to noticed the decline in her learning,
wondering why she was wasting the teacher's time
staring out the window
instead of robotically writing down
and taking notes like everybody else.

After a matter of weeks,
each teacher moved her away from the window
and ****** a notebook into her hands,
forcing her to balance
her candle in one hand and
her notebook in the other.
And instead of staring out the window
she was now forced to stare at empty pages,
as fresh and as crisp as freshly fallen snow
with strict and straight lines that tried to confine her.
Eventually, a pencil came along for the ride
and just wanting to be spared,
she picked up the pencil
and wrote down her thoughts.
Soon she reveled in rebelling against the teachers.

At first, she wrote down the simple things of life,
of boredom and of how
she was tired physically
from nights without rest.
But then she began to write about emotional tiredness,
of anger and pain and sadness
and all of the madness inside of her head.

and oh, it was beautiful!
Her words peeling
off the paper
and becoming as alive as you and me,
born not from love but from raw passion.
Day after day she picked up the pace,
writing so fast she was afraid
she was going to set fire to the page

But it wasn't the only thing that caught fire.

at first, the classroom wavered with smoke,
A smoke that made only the girl
cough and wheeze,
a smoke only she could sniff out.
Whenever she wrote, that smell
followed her around like a stray dog
until, sitting at her desk, she found its source,
a significant spark
that ignited her little candle,
so hot that the wax
was the consistency of water within seconds.
She jumped back,
hardly remembering a time
she had seen anything so bright.
A time when there was hope in her heart

Till the end of her senior year
she burned with passion,
Passing each class by the skin of her teeth.
But the girl could've cared less.
she didn't strive for a college degree,
her true love was poetry.

The day after graduation,
she filled her bag to the brim
with notebooks and pencils.
The thought of packing
anything else made her shiver,
for she didn't need any more burdens
than the ones she already carried.

And the jacket that knew her sorrows?
She shed that that soggy old thing,
like a butterfly does with a cocoon,
and abandoned it there on her bed
next to her nightstand where framed pictures
of a younger stranger
smiled up at her,
a painted-on smile that slipped the second
the photographer had captured the shot.
Then the girl had had a closed heart,
but as she walked out of her parent's house that day
It was open.

She marched straight to the bench for the bus
And boarded it to the last stop
until she saw a glowing building burning
as bright as the blazing inferno
that was now her candle.
She entered the scene inside,
her heart on the outside of her chest.
But just as the girl was starting to gain her confidence,
she suddenly grew nervous
as she waded through the sea of smiling faces
That parted for her like the Red Sea.

She climbed the steps up onto the stage,
the words caught inside her throat.
goosebumps broke out on her skin,
missing the warmth of the jacket
she had left behind with her old life.

The breath of the crowd nearly blew out her candle.
The blow caused the girl to shrink inside of herself
like a turtle inside its shell.
What if these people laughed her offstage?
But most importantly, she worried,
What if they didn't understand her?

But she smoothed her goosebumps flat
and grabbed the mic in front of her face.
Her eyes traced to the back window,
letting space and time float away
the same as she used to in class.

Her hope grew so much in that moment,
the fire so hot and so big
her candle shattered,
her hope outgrowing the small space
that used to be her prison.
It was the only sound to fill the silence

Until she began

She began with words of grief and sorrow.
Of hope for tomorrow.
And though she hadn't spoken her words aloud in years,
her voice rose and floated down like snowflakes onto the crowd,
her proses making them shiver
and cling to each other for warmth.
And at the end of her final stanza,
she saw them nodding as one in acknowledgment.
In understanding.
The girl who spoke in poems
who used to believe that words only existed to chain her down
believed in that moment, as the crowd roared,
that words can set you free.

The blues, the blues, these Blues, the Blues,
The Blues.  The Blues won't stop moving,
but haven't gotten to going.  They're a-move,
they're soluble insomnolence, they're
indefferant irreverence
in reference to reverence.
The Blues won't stop going,
but haven't yet left.
All day, I've sat on this Furthest Shore,
unsure if they'd ever get to outgoing,
if they'd ever get to outflowing.

All day, I've sat and worse yet,
all night (we know the nights are the
very darkest sorta pretend-to-be-blackened blues),
sat on this dew-damp Distant Shore,
unsure if I'd ever get to outgrowing,
if I'd ever get to outgoing.

The blues, the blues, these blues, the Blues,
The Blues.  The blues won't stop wounding.
I won't stop choosing.  I won't stop two-ing.

Tilting at horizons, I hold anchor to
Torii.  Summum Bonum, I insist it be.
(Can't let it be.  {whatever it is.})
(Can't let it be.  {whatever it isn't.})
Gateway from humdrum to hallowed.
A red atop blues, also unmoving.
But still in its unmoving, still unmoving.
How unlike the blues.  This red, how unlike the blues.