Wimbledon’s playing on the TV in the living room. Dad and I are watching on the sofa.

In the kitchen, Mom cuts carrots and cucumbers with a long blade. She slices the vegetables one by one. Orange pieces. Green pieces.

I glance over Mom chops up the carrots and cucumbers without a cutting board, taking each long carrot and cucumber and slices it with precision, as though she’s a professional like the film with Natalie Portman and Jean Reno.

But she’s not a little girl and she’s not a Frenchman. She’s like a mix-in-between, like the asphalt in our driveway and the grass sprouting in between the cracks.

Dad is a computer engineer. He used to be an artist. Used to study technical drawing in a university in Saigon.

He met mom when he was working on a play. She was the lead actress. Shakespeare had said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

He’s right, but right now I can’t tell what act I’m in. Dad focuses on the TV. Watches Federer and Djokovic, his eyes, darting from left to right like the mood of a young boy that crosses back and forth from light to dark, and back again.

Blade in hand, Mom makes longer and deeper cuts across the cucumber, cutting away the skin, leaving deep cuts in the vegetable. Dad turns his head towards her, his neck cracking like the forehand swung by Federer.

He clears his throat, softly, soft as gas leaking out from a stovetop from a studio apartment, like the scene in Fight Club, a match about to be struck.

Mom sets the blade down on the table, and bites her lip. Her nostrils flare. I press down on the couch arm, and stand up, my head bent, my eyes wandering to the doorway.

some songs are just, ****** hard to find,
name me a song where
you get an intro of a synchro.
of the rhythm sections
  from drums, bass and rhythm guitar
with slight accents of solo guitar?
i can only name one so far (short memory):
motley crue's dr. feelgood.

anyway, so i had this muslim schoolfriend,
and boy, hard enough to going
to a catholic school, in an all irish
neighbourhood...
         "broke" the fast of ramadam with
him by eating a date at school once...
but he had a real "moral" conundrum...
  he fancied *natalie portman...
i said to him: you know she's jewish
(if not in practice, then by heritage alone):
broke the guys heart...
        i think that means getting ******
in pakistan...
       well... natalie portman: fair enough,
but she's a porcelain beauty...
you imagine touching her and doing weird
**** in the attick: you start building
up this phobia of carrying champagne flutes
and a bull in a shop that sells... well:
either chandeliers, glass statues,
or... porcelain.
   i was watching this 1999 film today and
i found an answer to my "longing":
it seems i was always into rachel weisz -
(ray-chell or ra-ra-k-k-k-el? never mind) -
but you see, that's where the porcelain
beauty disappears: and in comes the onion
beauty, the babushka poly-layer -
the mandible jaw... you can imagine doing
circus acrobatics with a girl like that...
and yes: she's also of hebrew heritage...
  curls and curls of a woman's hair are a sight
equivalent to a tornado in the elements...
so much for poster boys and girls,
but in all honesty, ms. weisz was the face
that made me read stendhal, working
from the book-adaptation on screen of
the novel the red & the black (alongside
gweg mc'gweegoor) -
              nope, not going to change my mind:
natalie portman is a porcelain beauty,
some platonic, pristine,
worthy of only having homosexual friends
of the opposite *** in her company...
           tamara? oh, who? that one night
stand... a spanish girl, picked her up in shoreditch...
couldn't get a *****, took a bath with
her the next day... the whole bit of she's:
almost passed out, and wants to do it
with the lights on, but under the bed-sheets...
+ the word angel... well not quite...
  i love how girls break up with me:
tamara said she was going to seek love
on the luvvie-dubbie island of ibiza -
   well fair enough: could have given me a day or
two to relax and get a *****...
        not all men objectify that quickly:
it's not like a drop of blood a mile
away with the shark sniffing it out...
plus the madonna-***** complex
that i completely agree on with regards to
my "anti-semitism" of freud.
so yeah... rachel weisz is a babushka beauty,
hidden layers, a mandible jaw of ***,
while natalie portman is a prized possession
readied for trophy and the glass cabinet
among the other porcelain-type prizes;

the muslim school-friend?
probably the only muslim i ever liked -
no... that's a lie...
   this other muhammad in kenya wanted
me to go to his crocodile farm...
evidently i refused...
  and this other pakistani that invited me
to visit his family...
                 anyway...
                                       true story;

and god, how much easier to write about real
life, than having to stage the intricate
labyrinth of finction, and reduce yourself
to a constipation,
   while your tongue gets snipped by a minotaur.

those
who has so long been submerged
in the water of the womb-cave
now when the sun rises
would they put their lips in action

the pantograph
the wheat-plants
that has been sowed in autumn
the shyness of the houses
going away farther and farther

how much should i become glum
for those stations
on which i suppose to never put my steps

since taking birth
the same story of huggis and wrappers

i’ve told you to say good bye
to the portman
full of rust

and to make an aquarium
for the flying-fishes
with the water-moon

there may also exist
some social forestry

mr slumber
you can’t keep the good-wishes
arranged properly

so as soon as the eyes get open
the palpitations start

Night and day I see your face at stores;
A famous one, seen in different shapes,
That does express life, which each fan adores,
Adventures with downfalls and escapes.
Like stars of olden days, in black and white,
In every scene you shine with emotions,
Each smile, each tear a different sight,
Praised for many philosophical notions.
Oh, and my teenage years were filled with you,
Right and left I would see you for a while,
Till I would suddenly find someone new,
Making me feel safe with a lonely smile.
Amongst the loved ones you were then, O star,
Nonstop, while I was always apart so far.

as ever, not a preference, or a pr.s. (pre scriptum)... more like an afterthought... never presume too much in case of diacritical ownership or necessary use... the language had terrible fathers... sure, once they said thou instead of you... nay instead of no... thee and still said you, as in: to be (that's thou without the index finger)... but when they applied diacritical marks ******* their faces, they attracted ridicule no one seemed to be bothered about... kinda like a Copernican trajectory... why put a dot above iota? well, the answer is the same as saying to clown-juggler (a) jesus... and saying to clown-juggler (b) yehovah... apparently the former is a res vanus (an empty thing) and the latter is a res cogitans (a thinking thing)... and a crucifixion is a binding process... collateral damage: it's the reverse... and you get to keep your yuppie christmas lights... but there a limb missing... ý and j... both have adequate indicators of children with single mothers... it like this genetic encoding, ** for woman, xy for man, xxl for a t-shirt... but why bother ι (iota) into owning any diacritical marks? that's ******* overly presuming to start things off to an Orff composition of a bulimic neptune that's why i suggested diacritical marks on a y... to transfigure it into the presupposed j... you know how many diacritical marks you can add to an ι? many... you can have a dozen brats while you're figuring out the plumbing... presumptious... presumptuous... see! false applicability of diacritical marks makes you a ******* worth of spelling! you're bound to be naturally dyslexic... ****, what a magic trick! ****! gone! dis and then there's dys- and the lexicon going berserk... make your ******* mind up! yes, i know that between dιs- and dys- the former means without, and the latter actually means an adjective, i.e. bad... or a jumbled up lexigraph; then into the tornado machine we go peacocking at the height of synonyms... but i still find it overly presumptious... ****... presumptuous to apply a dot above an ι (iota) and subsequently a dot above a non-diacritically existent j... it's how you yoyo and how you jump... there's so much ambiguity in anglican that the yhwh was drunk obvious... hence i'm drunk... and stating the obvious... you can clearly apply many other diacritical marks to a letter, rather than simply applying two: to aye and to hurray and forget the rest... rhyming couplet that... follow suite with jay... but write anything else in anglican and you see a Cardiff lazy... first the cymru, then the gaelic... well, you have to... given that english didn't come but shakespearean from the caribbean or india... you have to mind saying syrkloffipompusdumpus in Cardiff... it would be a bit diff not not... be gentle... get the rolling hills motto into that word, extract syllables like a German, or a chemist, please.

sometimes it really takes an evening like this, you go through
them until you hear the prompt and emerge on stage
and say a few lines...
you start off with *the connells 74 75,
then move onto blind lemon no lemon,
then through to kula shaker govinda,
      then reef with gimme you love,
    then onto snake river conspiracy
with a cover version of how soon is now,
then you decide to take the steps toward
formalising a mix-take (ancient history
courting techniques, high fidelity crap,
and i did manage to make one for a former
girlfriend... how ancient it all seems right
now... it also seems that i should be
70! by the looks of it... sadly i'm not...
yes yes, my teenage dreams was to work
in a music shop... swear to god, once the mp3
format came out i knew now future anti-Beatles
maniac had his hands tied and couldn't
buy the Beatles vinyl and burn them...
what can you do in Tron-land that's equivalent?
buy a Salman Rushdie and rekindle the
          bonfire night of Munich?
i had a muslim friend that really fancied
natalie portman... but because she is a jew
that was kinda difficult... how about
i obliterate that problem with alicia vikander,
hey there, poster boy... reach for the stars).
the thing is: we're in an en masse shock,
it happened all too quickly...
then came placebo with pure morning,
and then back to covers, daddy cool -
             and then back to boney m with
rasputin... and and then i picked up a book
by jack spicer, and then i thought:
i hope that i write enough so they can do
a my vocabulary did this to me: the complete
collection, yep, i hope they can't hone in on me,
that they can only print (if ever, yuck)
           a selected works artefact
which, given the Darwinistic interpretation of
history... is not even worth bothering about...
the damage has been done historically,
it's answered in seven (if not more) news channels
with 30 minutes of original script, repeated
24/7 until another headline blip appears and
changes the narrative, just a tad.
    indeed i did pick up a book i own by the
san francisco renaissance poet jack spicer...
      and i immediately forgot what song i was
going to d.j. after i finished with thinking about
what she said when i made that mixtape for her:
listening to king crimson's epitaph at
around 5 a.m. on oxford st. going to work...
              i don't have a library, i have an a-to-zed
of avenues, streets, possibilities...
i don't think... i make cocktails...
                       the un-literal... literally applicable.
philosophy really taught me to not crave intimacy,
or bemoan it as some genius robotics inventor
who equates all things responsive as necessarily
needing an artificiality... so where's the antonym
dividing line between artificial and superficial?
men are from Mars and women are superficial?
               oh sure... we can have this talkshow logic
going round and round...
   wolves don't bark, but the domesticated dog
can't wow us with a howl... is that whining or whimper?
and i know i don't have a novel in me,
      tragic (said keith lemon style)...
                    because i never wanted a zoo,
or wanted to cage anything or see cages...
and then become scholastically holistic -
                      it was never going to be a chance to see
"the whole picture"... at best all you're going
to get is interruptions in my life...
        which is hardly what you'd call the disappearance
of Tiger Woods after rumours circulated that
he owned a harem...
                               and i really do believe that
hinduism got one thing wrong... Shiva is a girl's name.
        shaven... never stirred... sounds just about
right as if were indeed a mexican ****** drinking a mojito.
yes, we can have a mini lecture:
i abuse language, i enslave it, language the over way
round can have a bunch of protestors with
placards walking down the street and chanting slogans
that never make it into advertisement...
     speak ill of the Pharisees: get crucified...
speak ill of the plebs? they disperse - ha ha... i should
know... i could be considered a pleb anomaly...
        broad shouldered and strong enough to move
a tonne of bricks (once)...
             so anyway... i picked up this jack spicer
book i have (that ****** Lorca fetishist!
he'd **** his **** any chance he might have)
   and this weird thing came about...
i lost track of what song i would play to
murmur out the clicking sound of the keyboard
(forget it, typewriters were rapists compared
to computer keyboards) -
             it's from the poem phonemics -
and by god... i'd be gutted to have derived the same
conclusion... and i did...
    yhwh is a phonetic study...
esp. given the anti-diacritical approach of anglican
pragmatism... it's not exactly what people
expect you to believe: circumcision and kippah
and niqab... that's for people who own
about... well a single book or as Erasmus could
have said: in alles reiche... including spanish
dutchland...                        it's not even
mean-spirited that i say it: i said once:
i don't want fans... i want snobs.
                                 any respectable man with
a following of siusiumajtki (a queer way
of saying the verb of ***** and majtki?
                          )maýtki? ý, yep, rarely done(
just means underwear... what the pop stars
get when they ****** standing up)...
                   i really feel like i should write
the second to last part of the poem...
   it's itching me to do so...
             i just don't understand why i see it differently
to how jack sees it... i treated it as the case
of two Adams... aleph and ayin being
the protruding vowels...
                i didn't treat aleph as a consonant...
  maybe i made a mistake in doing so... but akin
to the Greek principle and the rule of prefix and suffix
you cut apart omicron and get o- out and attach
it to ν (nu) - of course once you cut up ν and extracted
n and forgot about the cascade that leads you up
to upsilon - to get the word νo out from the pick 'n' mix.
unless i'm speaking dutch, then i think that
makes sense.
              why wouldn't aleph and ayin be vowels?
           Semitic languages aren't going away...
as is neither the semitic religions... forget it...
it's too complicated, adding to the fact that i'm
bewildered about treating vowels as women and
women veiled and women in hiding and consonants
as men... in the same way that the Latins hide
their children in English... children? diacritical marks...
where the **** are they?
      you get them scooped up by consumerism,
only about 10% climbed a tree...
          the rest are churned into premature adulthood,
and you wonder, with all these advertising
campaigns why most of them develop mature
negations of ease, in ref. to premature depression...
  you wonder... where are the children? swallowed up
by another set of pop idols?
          did they ever play with marbles,
or hide & seek, ever played games with girls
and toys and tic-tac-toe?
ever skipped a rope?
                         it's fading because it's being exploited...
so you end up with a song that prescribed this
poem, folk implosion - make it with the best...
from the soundtrack to the film thirteen...
as it stands i need a refill, and i'll probably cite
the poem by jack, giving about half a second's worth
of care for copyright laws of a dead man...
   just so i can see if my logic serves me right
in saying that hebrew has to variations of a-,
as in aleph (א) and ayin (ע), as does greek
  with thought (θ) and philosophy (φ) -
but let me get back to you on that one.

With winter and awards shows upon us, the celebrity-obsessed wonder, "What are they wearing?" When it's fur, you wonder, "Why are they wearing it?"

Fur makes the shapeliest star look like a pudgy cave-dweller. Kim and Kanye become dumpy mall rats when they pile on the pelts. The matter of animals by the dozen being electrocuted for a single coat is of no interest to the self-absorbed duo.

Fortunately, the most admired and articulate personalities are speaking out. After winning a Golden Globe last month, Taraji P. Henson said, "I love clothes and to dress up, but no fur. Stella McCartney laced me with all these incredible faux furs." Taraji's ex-con character Cookie on Empire may have a fur fetish, but Taraji ditched the fur from her closets after seeing raccoon dogs skinned alive for fashion in a PETA documentary on HBO. She then ditched all of her clothes to star in a "Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" ad, which she unveiled at PETA's Fashion Week party with fellow animal advocate Tim Gunn.

Another dynamo who removed the unsightly hair from her back — I'm talking about fur — is the fabulous Wendy Williams. In addition to her daily talk show, Williams now hosts Wendy's Style Squad to cover red carpet fashions. "Fur is not the mark of success anymore," she said at the photo shoot for her PETA campaign, which she unveiled live on her show.

Sia led the charge this winter, with this imaginative computer-generated spot in which animal models strut down the catwalk in human skin.

And then there's Pink. "I would like to say I've always been fur-free so I could be proud of myself," says the pop icon. "Unfortunately, I went through a selfish phase and wore fur on a couple of occasions. But I wised up and now boycott fur completely. I wish everyone was forced to learn the horrors that these animals go through for fashion trends. I hope fur wearers get bitten in the *** by the same kind of animal they wear on their back." She took this message to the masses on a PETA billboard in New York's Times Square and stars with Ricky Gervais in avideo about fur and exotic skins.

Who else is fur-free? Lena Dunham, Rooney Mara, Jessica Chastain, Angelina Jolie, Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and Natalie Portman, to name only a few.

Sharon Osbourne, who won a People's Choice Award last month for The Talk, says, "The reasons I stopped wearing fur were because I was educating myself through documentaries on what goes into actually making these fur coats and fur scarves that I was wearing, and when I realized how it was done I was sickened." Sharon hosts PETA's newest video showing how hundreds of chinchillas have their necks snapped for just one fur coat.

Many of you may be thinking, OK — gross — but I don't wear fur. Terrific! I'll end by suggesting you take another evolutionary step by visiting PETA.org to watch Joaquin Phoenix, Eva Mendes, and Pamela Anderson reveal how less-furry animals live and die before ending up in someone's closet.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/bridesmaid-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2015

Whose visions

Were established here

Where cold stones brush the sky

While mirrored in their icy grace

The homeless men walk by

Aesthetically

The Portman breed

Revised the urban face

How could such soaring intellect

Conceive this heartless place

Brad Pitt picks his nose and eats it

Natalie Portman cries in the tub over trivial things

President Obama has sleep apnea

And you are afraid of the dark

You look at me like you're dreaming.
Like I'm your personal Jesus.
Like I've been sent to begin you,
to start you again.
You look at me like I'm a ray of sun,
like you've never seen something so
transcendental.
Like, 'I could die right now.'
Why?
Why am I that to you?
How can I be that to you?
I'm not that.
I'm pretty, but not Natalie Portman,
smart, but not Stephen Hawking,
kind, but not Mother Theresa,
talented, but not YoYo Ma.
So why are you looking at me like that?




Quit looking at me like that.

im wrapping these lights around the balustrade? of my stairs and i thought they looked beautiful but now that
im stepping off my chair they
don't look that nice um
they look sloppy and tacky
like the ones off the side of a Mexican restaurant
i wonder how natalie portman decorates her christmas lights.
they must be nice.
i used tape
she probably gets someone else to stick it up anyways but
the tape is pretty when the light hits it and the
colors blend and stutter like it's trying to short circuit the tape but
the tape is swimming in it even though there
is only light in glass in light
i stick the tape on the wall.
there is something psychedelic about holding a handful of rainbow lights alone on a chair until they start spilling over and you tilt your neck to see where they go but
there is only the ground there is only the ground there is no where to fall into but
the light is moving again because
you are the tape
and you are standing on the chair where the glass blooms with filaments that you
touch and suddenly you are
swimming in colors that don't seem sloppy and tacky anymore.
you pull the plug.
the house is bright again.

Swear to god this is a true story.
Picture, like, the hottest woman you’ve ever seen-
like Natalie Portman in Black Swan
like Angelina Jolie in Gia
like a young Carrie Fisher in her slave Leia outfit
like any **** star you’ve ****** it to, honestly, any **** star
and there’s this woman, she’s standing bare-assed naked in front of me
swaying her hips slowly and making all these other women
look like Sloth from the Goonies, “Hey You Guuuys.”

Her hair, I just want to run my hands through it, messy it up,
yank it tight the way a jockey grips the reins when he’s about to come
in first place at the Kentucky Derby.
Bend her over, make her my Kentucky Derby.
Her hair, I **** you not, it looks just like yours.

Her eyes, I swear to god, in her eyes I could see the sunrise,
the sunset, the Aurora Borealis, the Perseid meteor shower,
and a lesbian **** on the beach in Cabo during Spring Break.
Honestly, if I couldn’t **** her brains out,
just staring into her eyes would’ve been a great consolation prize.
As a matter of fact, you and her have the same eyes.

Her smile, sweet Jesus, I wanted it.
I don’t just mean I wanted her lips wrapped around my *****.
I mean, her smile was enough to run to Kay Jewelers or Aaron Brothers
or wherever the ******* go to get a ***** a ring.
I wanted to love her the way police bullets love black bodies.
Believe it or not, her smile was exactly like yours.

And her ****, do I have to mention they’re the best pair I’ve ever seen?
God probably even patted himself on the back for those.
Of course, I haven’t seen yours yet…

I swear to god, she smelled like a waffle
and I don’t mean that cheap instant toaster ****,
I mean like home-made batter poured into a waffle iron,
topped with gobs of butter and expensive, top-shelf Vermont Maple
and I don’t know if I’m supposed to be ***** or hungry;
but either way, I want to dive right in.
Don’t give me that look, breakfast is my favorite meal.

So she takes her finger, brushes it against my lips,
and I would’ve ****** the Universe out of that finger,
but her touch is like gossamer.
She slowly dances her finger lower,
pauses at my chest, probably wanting to swirl it in some chest hair
but I don’t have any–this is probably confusing to her.
When she trails lower toward my belly button, it tickles
but in a good way, the way it tickles when you slide your finger into
the envelope that holds your Christmas bonus.
This woman is such a tease and I can’t help but think I should tie her up
and go down on her like a bulldog eating peanut butter.
She’s not even touching my **** yet and already I want to blow my load.
I’m afraid I just might when she finally gets there.
Her touch still so soft, so gentle, so delicate
like the extra-absorbency tissues I ******* into…

****!
It all makes sense now.
I’ve fallen asleep after ******* again.
See, I read this article about the benefits of ******* before bed
so these days I’m finding every excuse to take a nap.
Only imagine my surprise when I open my eyes.
I wasn’t imagining that delicate tickling sensation.
Sitting proudly atop my ***** *****
like a ******* prince charming ready to take down the dragon
is the biggest, meanest, ugliest, blackest black widow I’ve ever seen in my life.
I swear to god, we do something like lock eyes, I’m frozen in terror
and I shake my head furiously but the ****** bites me, anyway;
I scream that like poor sap Aron Rolston; only
it’s my ***** that get caught underneath the boulder.
I smack the **** out of that black widow.
But it’s too late.

And now, after all the venom
and the swelling and the oozing
and the scabbing,
well, my ***** isn’t as pretty as it used to be.
I wouldn’t, but others might even use the words
“ugly” and “deformed”.
To be honest, it breaks my heart.
And no ******’ kidding, now, my *****, well,
it looks just like you.