I feel as if my head is sliding off my neck like ice cream melting down the cone. I am a witch melting, shrinking smaller as my spine stacks horizontally like shiplap. My body has been refurbished into a pinball machine. Something so tiny as a silver ball destroys so much. It bullets through my body, shooting off like Cuban missiles. I feel the turmoil and chaos seeping through the gutters of this old home of bones. It's like spilled oil sludging through my blood vessels or rats scattering through a sewer, nibbling and feasting away on these muscles of mine until they are frayed like gnawed-on cable wires. At odd hours of the night when time is propelled by the safe travels of breath (that weave in and out like Victorians at a ball) from sleepy children who have yet been touched by monsters or nymphs, whereas each of my breaths steer Odysseus's weather-beaten boat through ten years of treachery. My heavy, melting head slowly sloping like clay off a bust makes its home on my dingy pillow as I lay on a prison bed with cold shackles around my ankles that make my bones shatter into a mosaic as if that could shrink my ankles so I can slip out. I feel like a chained hawk at these hours of the night when I just want to fly until I screech to a halt and flail over the cliff that waterfalls into the ends of the universe. I'd be reluctant at first, perhaps, but what other escape does one have other than to make an autopsist's Y-incision on one's body, then slip out like a hermit crab freeing himself from his heavy shell? Embarking onto a new dimension where there's hope for a radical swap of atoms that don't shape a crippled, deteriorating human is the only choice when you want to live a life other than what you were cursed with. May we then find peace and live as naked souls bearing no heavy shells.

You'll find yourself here,
not sure how you arrived.
But you won't question it.

The mayor is home: his apartment in the fire house.
His lamp is lit, and he is here to welcome you
Though you cannot see him
But you do not question it.

And you'll hear bells and the clopping of hooves ahead
of an old-style streetcar in the age
of the internal combustion engine,
infernal, before the world could burn.

But you won't question it,
No, it's all perfectly natural
As though you grew up here

And here you do grow up as you walk the street,
The buildings pressing ever closer together, merging
And you somehow grow taller.

As a fairytale castle looms ahead of you
As though it were in the sky.
It's color is a pink that
smells of cotton candy
and popcorn
and perhaps, a hotdog

It passes out of your view
Like a mirage or a whiff of cloud
As you smell the food
The advertising of smells
Seducing you away

You stop, and you look
And you don't see the tourists in shorts
And tennis-shoes, dressed ******-chic for an expensive vacation
Or smell their sunscreen or see any sign
Any sign of change since that time, no
No, you don't see anything
Which you don't wish to see

You don't see a police station
Or cigarette butts on the pavement
Or a war memorial
Or a boarded-up building, closed.
All have been scooped up
Swept up, kept up by
white-uniformed sanitation officers
with little bow ties, discretely
cleaning up the world

But you will scarcely miss these things, nor
notice their absence and
You will not question it.

For this street is a wish,
A longing,
A child's prayers
Answered

For this is a place where no person,
No thing is old, but all is new
and useful and present:
As immediate as the trail of ice cream
making its osmotic way along
the edge of your sugar cone in the sun
And down to your sticky fingers.

The castle is there, you see now, but it's so
very far away.
There is no rush.

Step inside a shop—take your pick--and you will find
plush carpets, cooled rooms, parkay tile

Above the souvenirs and tchotchkes you will
Notice heart-stopping detail
In a light fixture
In a cherry wood crown molding
In Tiffany glass and marble counter-tops
Exquisite agony of
nostalgia for the half-remembered

And you're puzzled because you can't buy, here,
An old-fashioned ice-cream soda
With which your great-greats wooed each other
And fed each other, never considering, even
conceiving scandalous sensual jokes with whipped cream
And for this, today, you love them.

Your feet will amble you back and back again on themselves,
turned around (in spite of unmistakeable
castle-mountain-rocketship landmarks.)

There, Just behind these buildings, you're certain, there
should be a baseball diamond, alight with the noise
of boys playing with a stick and a ball

There, a neat row of stately, sabbatical victorians

There, a haphazard school yard with a tire swing
and a red schoolhouse, reliable as a sunrise
keeping protective watch behind it.

And you forget
racism
You forget
any war
You forget
your own
many sins
Like
vanished
cigarette
butts

And you smile, giving the uniformed man
peddling mouse-shaped balloons
a little more of your money
than he is asking for

We love you cos' you are Victorians,
Here we are all Melburnians,
Here there are genres of folks,
Listen up, let's have a joke,
One type of plebs here goes to church,
Or plebs go fishing, to catch some perch,
Some are drinkers and go to the pubs,
Some are football tragics, hubbub!
Then there's the anti-football league,
Not participating non-vigorously,
Then some folk go to the library,
Or some can belong to the Dr. Who Society,
Or they can be a combination of any of the above,
It's all a norm in olde Melbourne town we love!

Fashion designers love foraging through the antique markets of Clignancourt in Paris and Portobello Road and Alfie’s Antiques markets in London snuffling out vintage pieces for inspiration. The flurry of romantic Victoriana on the catwalks for autumn can clearly be blamed on this obsession.

There has been an undercurrent of reserved, covered-up fashion ever since Pierpaolo Piccioli and his former co-designer Maria Grazia Chiuri introduced a more demure aesthetic to Valentino five years ago. Longer skirts, prim higher necklines and covered arms have become the slow trend of recent seasons creating a hyper-feminine look.

Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy and Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen have long been beguiled by the Gothic romanticism of Victorian fashion with their use of corsetry and dark dramatic lace and velvet for eveningwear.

In fact, London-based vintage fashion dealer Virginia Bates admits she doesn’t remember there ever being a time when Gothic Victoriana didn’t feature in at least one designer’s collection. “The fascination with the romantics, poets, artists and even horror [classics and films] give designers a great source of inspiration,” she says. “It’s an irresistible era.”

Certainly a lot of it has appeared on the catwalks this season at McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Burberry (shown only a month ago in the see-now, buy-now collection), Simone Rocha, Preen, Bora Aksu and Temperley London, as well as at smaller brands such as Alessandra Rich, Three Floor created by Yvonne Hoang and A.W.A.K.E.

There were dark distressed Linton tweeds, unravelling knits and black tulle in Simone Rocha’s autumn collection. Rocha was pregnant when she started designing it and was inspired by Victorian dress and motherhood, in particular the nightgowns and matrons.

“All the wrapping and swaddling of babies,” she says, before elaborating on how “the Victorian ideals of properness were made perverse with the conservative and covered-up pieces contrasted by the sheer and embroidered fabrics.”These gauzy vaporous fabrics succeeded in making her eerily romantic silhouette look rather contemporary and daring.

Subversion is key to making such a prim and proper period in fashion history modern and relevant for women today. Marc Jacobs, for instance mixed long Victorian coats, ballooning crinolines and crochet doily collars with sweatshirt tops and laser-cut leather for skirts and jackets together with some scary Goth horror make-up. Nothing is, or should be literal.

As Justin Thornton of Preen says “we love the Victorians, the laces and the white shirts, but it is the vintage pieces rather than the era that inspire us”. His partner Thea Bregazzi has collected aristocratic laces and ruffly vintage shirts from Portobello Road market for as long as he has known her and these frequently find their way into their collections, “but linings would be ripped, garments will have holes in them – it is a deconstructed look”.Virginia Bates once owned a famous vintage fashion emporium in Holland Park with a client list including the biggest names in fashion from John Galliano to Donna Karan and Naomi Campbell. Now she only works with private clients and designers and they, especially, she says were looking for genuine Victorian pieces when planning their autumn collections.

“A black fitted jacket with inserts of handmade lace [that is] embellished with crystal and jet beads, ***** and silk lined ... How exciting and inspiring is that? Silk and fine lawn shirts, soft and flowing with ruffles. Don’t we all want to wear one and live the dream?”

Thankfully a few designers do right now, and there were lots of heavenly creatures in fragile asymmetric lace dresses toughened up with leather corsetry at Alexander McQueen, and richly coloured swishy dresses at Bora Aksu. While Christopher Bailey cherry-picked the centuries in his Burberry collection, lighting upon frilled white cotton shirts, nipped in jackets and military capes from the Victorian era. Given that Victoria reigned for more than 60 years there is a lot of history for designers to plunder, so this will not be the last we will see it.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses

Sonnet is love
sonnet is rhyme'
metaphorical pattern dove
so much sublime....

Popular with poets new
the Elizabethans too
their mistresses so few
used it to woo.....

John Donne, his life
catching the spirit of the Jacobean age
his need to express his love for his wife,
Anne, backstage......

Expression of religious passion
and simply reflections of death
The Victorians fashion
and so many more breath.....

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
the Rossettis, so blue
and George Meredith were around
were so new.....

American poets noted
Longfellow, expounded
E. A. Robinson, devoted
Elinor Wylie, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, astounded....

Sonnets make us sing
makes us laugh
cry with saving grace brings
universal themes of love mon behalf.....

Keep writing those sonnets
all you wonderful and many more
poets, keep wearing your bonnets
that we all adore...*

Debbie

(descent)
Hindered by progress, or the idea of progress:
evolution-in-waiting bellows me to hide,
tattering becomes ruination.

Animism creeps,
not-yet hands pushing at dim velvet.
Peeping one-eyed through the past
where had borne such potent promise
immutability lain intact
flumped into snowy thickness
and thrown hard against Georgian glass.

Here comes the stealth of unillumination
thankfully blanketing
they were tied at the hips
and neck,
then wrapped as old mirrors.

That door went nowhere
it always does
those Victorians, forever meddling,
will folly themselves into any trouble.

(resurrection)
You haven’t changed one bit!
I say to myself,
showing you their brand new niceness
***** as copper pans.
Go on, spit in my fire
the hiss is the thing that’s real.

Sonnet is love
sonnet is rhyme'
metaphorical pattern
so much sublime

Popular with poets
the Elizabethans too
used it to woo
their mistresses so few

John Donne,
catching the spirit of the Jacobean age
his need to express his love for his wife,
Anne

Expression of religious passion
and simply reflections of death
The Victorians
and so many more

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
the Rossettis,
and George Meredith
were so new

American poets noted
Longfellow,
E. A. Robinson,
Elinor Wylie, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Sonnets make us sing
makes us laugh
cry with saving grace
universal themes of love ....

Keep writing those sonnets
all you wonderful
poets
that we all adore...

As Rupal says,
Wordsworth too..
Debbie Brooks- 2014

i. i don’t think i ever expected to live quite this long.
the bus has always been coming
and i have always been braced for impact.
i have never thought that another 80+ years were
automatically allotted to me,
life is too much loss and uncertainty.
i am 17 and i feel tired and oddly lucky.

ii. i’ve heard life is inherently more exciting
when you think of things in terms of “i get to…” rather than “i have to…”
i’m trying to apply it to my life.
i get to wake up tomorrow. i get to go to school, to have a routine.
i get to keep going. i get to live.

iii. some people are born content and some people are born itching --
you were born with ******* poison ivy.
dying to jet set the midwest, always swore
you were gonna leave this town before it burnt you to the ground.
a born nomad who’d never even seen the ocean.
i watched you disappear out the rear view window,
you’ve never left this town and i’d hate for the world
to let you down.

iv. i think that part of me is scared to leave home
because i know that you can always leave but you can’t always go back.
these are the things they don’t tell us growing up;
the way that places are just places
and the air around them can shift into something
that you no longer recognize.
it’s the feeling when you’ve been away for too long
and you come home to find it changed.
it’s the feeling when you want to go home
even when you’re there.

v. i heard you either write to remember or to be remembered.
i dream of crashes and my legacy of stained ink
confined to 15 gigabytes and 12 point font.
there’s thousands of other poets
with shaking hands, bright eyes, loud mouths.
it would be so easy to forget me when i’m gone.
i don’t know how much i mind it.
we are fleeting like fireflies and smoke signals and first kisses.
i still think you burn the brightest.

vi. it’s 10:32 somewhere over the ocean
and i miss you i miss you i miss you.
i’ve heard that victorians believed that if you wrote a poem in a airplane
that it stayed there, suspended in the sky.
your eulogy is hanging somewhere over the atlantic,
pinned up in the stars. waiting.

vii. i held your hand on the take off
until all that was underneath our feet were clouds.

If given some lycanthropy
perhaps I might choose
to chase horses
and Victorians beneath the moon.
Perhaps it would not seem so strange,
the monthly change
and tide of blood.
Perhaps as a were I might
learn something of grace.
The night is big
and so are shadows.
In the brief time
between teeth and skin
might I find some other
kin or love than life?

When I was eight I found an arrowhead
in a creek bed, chipped
from black obsidian,
perfect and out of place
amongst the granite sand.
I held it in my hand
and knew what death was.
Death is like obsidian,
cold and sharp and
liable to shatter.
She was like obsidian,
smooth and grey
and eyes like chipped edges.
I have since lost the arrowhead.
But if I hadn’t,
I would throw it back.

The rain is leaking onto my windowsill
leaving a stain. Until
my hair grows out, it will rain
and rain and rain and rain.
Then the mice can sail
in tiny ships, round and round,
and discover new continents.

Victorians old aged queen hast come to greet me
Come to treat me to extraterrestrial highs
Where her tongues forensic
With mine love we shalt dine!!!

So fine are thy heavied lids
Thy skin painted on spanishly clear
Heaven draws near
To thy angelic trim!!!

Make me feel five again lover!!!

Wherein I haveth no more care nor worry
Just romance novel stories
To maketh me anew!!

Thou missing puzzle
Thou clue I've sought so long

Thou fit's me perfectly friend
Thy smell to be the Rosie's
Mine own to be in stench!!!

Paralyze me again
Thine eyes daily do I seek
Wherein nothing goes bleaque
Between ourn child laughs and words!!!

I'm alive once again
After so long a sleep
The queens kiss
Has once again awoken me

To die for love!!!!

To love for years
For many weeks!!!!

I'm fighting Victorians, Edwardians thinking they're Georgians.
Does Cameron think he's a battlestar?
He may shoot from the lips but does he take things too far?
and where are we in all this?

The kiss me quick, vote for me slick brigade come
on a hunting raid and
bang the **** out of my door.

Whatya knocking me up from my bed for?
Votes just confuse me and you lot just
use me.

I'm still fighting, streetwise, keeping tight in
the clinch
at a pinch I could compromise, might let
them see the light that shines but
when I open my eyes
I think
Nah,
I'll not bother.

&#$ if one presses
the capital button
whilst writing 734.

I prefer &#$, it has
a **** connotation
since # is symbolic.

Jacob Rees Mogg
should write about
the cat @ number 10.

Mogg on Moggy
(the kitty letter)
by Jacob Rees Mug.


ps.

His book sold a mere
734 copies.

Victorians old age queen,
Where art thou to come and greet me?
To extrarestrial high!!!

Where her tounges forensic,
With me thy love we shall dine!!!!!

Soo fine are your heavied lids!!!

Your skin painted on so fluorescent,
Heaven draweth near to your angelic trim!!

Make me feel child once again lover where I have no more cares of worries,
Just romances novel stories to make me anew!!

Thine missing puzzle,
Thine clue I've sought so long....

You fit Soo neatly to me mine friend,
Your smell to be thine gardenias,
Mine own to be its end....

Parylize me extend!!!

Thine eyes do I daily seek,
Where nothing goes weak between our child laugh and words...

To be alive once again Soo long after sleep!!

Thy queens kiss to abrupt me to die for ones approbation,
To predilection for years,

For weeks!!!!

But do I really see them when I'm traveling on the central line?
do I really take the time to take a look?

The window cleaner logo man
reads a book and jammed up next to him is a lady looking very grim,
she's watching me watching him and he's unaware,
but probably in that zone cleaning windows and feeling right at home.

Lots of buns as well
Victorians must have
saved a fortune on hair gel.

Pearl earrings is not a singer
it's what young girl is
wearing
and not an oyster in sight.

People
there's such a large variety
and I only see what I
want to see
if only I could look a
little deeper.

Jarndyce gets off at
Chancery lane
his case comes up after
the crown
versus Abel or is it Cain?

I'm wandering in the inns
but it's time to get out.

Morning Holbein
or it might be
Holborn
I'm just
mooving on.

i might have to revise a former weakness -
in the genre of philosophy
  (that ever most pompous word in
the english langugae that upon use
i dread another use of [it])
   i found myself unable to read this genre
of books in english...
         don't ask me why -
    i tried nietzsche, failed (to some degree),
but at the same time managed it...
  still, i find philosophy being written in
english as bland, mistaken,
         zealous and obviously:
pompous -
            in all honesty, listening to court
members at Versailles,
or the moral stiffness of the Victorians
more bearable than a word of philosophy being
recited in english...
      i know that i have a limit of
knowing two languages -
but philosophy doesn't really belong in or
with, the english language...
          it's all to: iffy, sickly sweet.
how can a nation breed philosophers,
  when its concerns are for productivity?
the genre makes perfect sense in my
nativspreschen - but to digest some of
the books i read, in english? undeniably:
unbearable.
                      the english language is a poetic
language...
   which is why shakespeare and milton
are championed, but to even imagine
an english thinker?
                       the english are too practical
to deal with nonsense -
                    i wouldn't say practical
in a germanic sense of efficient -
but practical in the sense that they are probably
the least concerned with finding
boredom: mildly entertaining.
           if i've ever seen the epitome of
procrastination and hot hair buffoonery -
it would be an englishman -
   notably in his articulation of said language -
but the american is even more amusing
in attempting his british roots -
                 notably american women who
somehow cling to a jane austen syndrome
of the: most splendid spring affair of a wedding,
my dear: trill the R and let's
start making bravado airs and fancies!
titillating my darling... simply ravishing!
some might also say: the scots are the smartest
people on these isles...
now a scottish philosopher i can cite...
david hume...
                         which brings me to:
philosophy is a bit like smoking ****...
            the later your start, the better...
a tiny sparrow sang in my ear the knowledge
that american high schools teach
philosophy classes...
                   bad i idea, as bad as a teenager smoking
***...
                     minimum entry age?
21...
                   you can't exactly read (reed)
philosophy, if you haven't read (red) -
  no open wide, and say AH....
                                      what? teeth inspection!
- if you haven't read at least one major work
of fiction, take me for example,
   dante's divine comedy, stendhals the scarlet
& black, dostoevsky's crime & punishment,
        dumas' the three musketeers,
                mickiewicz's pan tadeusz...
           point being, i've finally found someone
who actually works perfectly in english...
spinoza...
                   **** reads like spreading butter
onto a toast... smooth silky...
      and there's not even a debate of proof:
     regarding the existence of god -
i like that...
                     i can't prove or disprove -
as i can't approve or disavow -
as i also can't know for certain,  
   or uncertainly "know"
                      - not know for certain
or known for its uncertainty;
i know that i'm uncertain of the certainty
that it is so:
           i know, that i don't know,
which is a step up from knowing, nothing:
- i know, that i don't know,
- wiem, że nie wiem,
- scio, ideo scio non
- ich kennen, jener ich nicht kennen
   (and that's three S's missing,
notably the east german orthographic
aesthetic).
       nonetheless spinoza has become
the first, and probably last philosopher i will
be able to read with the ease of the english language...
i have no qualms with atheistic writing,
as long as it's sensible and takes pride in
a certain modesty that does not hinder itself
upon theological sophistry of preachers...
   or some sort of unfathomable corruption
of the mind with the argument for:
          what i can only deem as an object
that is the source of every single impromptu
imaginable -
                      not on any ethical reality of
candy for the good children,
            wicker men for the bad children...
                             beat thinking about nothing,
and is always relatable to the mere use of language...
  it's not me ascribing a personal deity,
but an impersonal one...
   it doesn't invoke a need for the lunacy
of gesticulation and prayer...
             just a sense of a lost memory,
an amnesia - a thought that glimpses something
that is almost: shy...
                                 nothing aspiring
to pomp & circumstance,
   and all to culminate upon self-flagellation;
at least spinoza's language is fluid,
                  and whenever that word is used:
it's used in a way that doesn't allow to start
imagining the offshoot of that word -
       and turn the whole affair into being blinded
by iconoclasm of a deserving narrative.
- spinoza will be the only philosopher that
i will actually read in english...
        the english were never a people of
philosophers, engineers? yes. poets? yes.
       scientists? yes.
                         they're too practical in that
they don't want to deal with
                                                   "nonsense",
they feed on real problems in the real world,
nothing is ever abstract for them,
  and never will be...
                             they feed on knowing,
and shun the opinions of their elders -
              they need to know, for themselves -
philosophy is nonsense to them -
especially since they seek a concrete god
with a scientific proof,
                     which is what obstructs them
from seeking the lesser, and therefore much more
simpler abstract chandeliers, clocks, etc.,
  basically
                   items of refined entertainment.