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judy smith Jan 2017
Britain's dame of fashion Vivienne Westwood wrapped up London Fashion Week Men's on Monday with an eclectic collection showcasing edgy designs that included dresses for men.

Westwood, 75, who is known for her eccentric creations and environmental activism, presented both menswear and womenswear for her autumn/winter 2017/18 "Ecotricity" line, putting men in dresses and skirts and ties on women.

Models wore colorful knits made up of jumpers and trousers as well as long dresses and arm cuffs, at times slit on the sides. Men's suits were deconstructed or had wide, ankle length trousers and sometimes were worn with long cloaks.

Women's jackets had asymmetric cuts or exaggerated shoulders. Shirts had large collars and colorful prints and patterns, including skulls and faces, adorned most designs.

"She and he are having fun with unisex and swapping clothes," shownotes for the collection read. "'Buy less, choose well, make it last' limits the exploitation of the planet's natural resources."

Outfits were often layered and looks were accessorized with face paint, paper crowns, colorful socks, tights and boots.

Westwood, who previously showed menswear in Milan, was the biggest name at the four-day London event following the departure of brands like luxury label Burberry.

"London is my home. I regret leaving Milan because they've been so kind to me," the designer said backstage.

"It's just easier and more efficient for us to be here."

Burberry will present its menswear collection alongside its womenswear line at London's higher profile women's fashion week next month.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/red-formal-dresses
Vivienne Westwood
Always wears Chinos
By Moschino
When making Cappuccinos
And insists all that drink
The aforementioned fare
Wear clothes
Adorned with safety pins
And have blond spiky hair.

Vivienne rarely makes Cappuccinos.
Sean Flaherty Apr 2014
Twenty classless, eight cigarettes. 
Fighting over the radio at the 
Inpatient Mental Health Facility, 
A broken sense of belonging, 
And a dearth of veggie burgers. 

Listless with his lists, of course. 
Angst from the Anglophile, unable to 
Put a stopper in the pouring, 
Bleeding emotions. 
Open hands 
Stained red, and brown. 
Three breaks a day, scarring his 
Broken knuckles, they paint the walls. 

Code Smoking Gun, 
Code Smoking Green, 
Manic man, loading his shoulders with his 
Father’s burden, too big for Atlas’s arms, 
Or his mother’s shunning palms. 

Three breaks a day, 
Knee, shoulder, hip. 
The coffee’s decaf 
But your calves? Well, 
They’re just sore. 

They dish the brick every 
Other evening. But living, for 
No light, only serves to lessen your 
Love of life and make you 
Light-headed.

Broken beds with rock-solid
Pillows. Three breaks a day to
Remind you of your regression. We
Want you here as much.
Why’re you whining?

Busy doctors bust the doors, thank 
God for the freedom, the 
Fluorescent finish to your odyssey. The 
Flowers and grass greet you in 
Shades of pink and green your 
Greedy eyes hadn’t seen. 
Exhale. Ghost out your grieving.
Spent a bit of time "healing" in a "hospital."
mandy rigby Oct 2014
please give to me a proper job
otherwise I'm on the rob
me tummy hearts n me eyes are poppin
as around the shop i go hoppin
gonna steal new shoes, leave the old ones behind
security .... I'll blow ya mind
aberdeen angus, 21 day steak
come on tesco's give me a break
gonna nick whiskey, and fine wine
I'll be popular come tea time
gonna get the dress of my dreams
a vivien westwood, with tailored seams
lingerie, make up, and perfume
i'll get some attention .. in my living room

(c) msrigs 07/10/2014
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2022
precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.
Hazel Connelly Aug 2012
I was fit and feisty at fifty
It was no big deal,
Because that's how half a century
Is supposed to feel.

In my sixties I'll take stock
Start making great plans,
Ignoring all the "you cant's"
And embracing all the "I cans".

Can I be **** at sixty?
And try all the fashions and fads,
Wear stockings and suspenders
And Joan Collins shoulder pads.

I can deal with **** at sixty
And wear Vivienne Westwood clothes,
Dress up and go out on the town
Wearing all my buttons and bows.

I'mgoing to be **** at sixty
I'll wear Gok Wan lingerie
Find myself a Toy Boy
Then maybe lead him astray.

Swift and **** at sixty
When I get my Jimmy Choos,
Dancing the night away
To the sound of rhythm and blues.

Oh! I want to be **** at sixty
'cause age is a state of mind,
I'm preparing my body at keep fit
So as not to be left behind.

But, first I have to deal with
Old Skin, Bad Teeth and Grey Hair,
Then remove the unwanted growths
From just about everywhere.

Then I'll definitely be **** at sixty
And undoubtedly done it all,
The only problem is that most
of it I simply won't recall...

© Hazel
A Mareship Aug 2014
A boy in jeans,
A boy in trousers,
A boy in braces,
A boy in blouses,
A girl who smells like summer sweat,
A girl whose makeup hasn’t set,
A boy who swears,
A boy who doesn’t,
A girl’s shoulder,
A second cousin,
A girl who smells of **** and beer,
A tattooed boy with a silver sneer,
A skinny girl who’s got T.B,
A boy who daintily sips his tea,
A girl’s left leg – bare or stockinged,
A boy so cold his knees are knocking,
A nasty ****,
A suede-head killer,
Kate Moss,
Sienna Miller,
Vivienne Westwood’s crazy teeth,
Bow-legged loons on Hampstead Heath,
Blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green,
Cold eyes, big eyes, sad eyes, mean,
Darling sweethearts in flirty skirts,
City-Boy ******* in well-pressed shirts,
Elbows, throat, wrists, knees,
A consumptive girl’s chainsmoking wheeze,
Blonde girls with their hair in plaits,
Skinny boys, short boys, muscular, fat –
Girls with pink lipstick like strawberry frosting,
I’m telling you man,
It’s ******* exhausting.
an oldie
Katie Lindsey Jul 2012
Yesterday
Last night
And today
I recognized your face
fully for the first time.
I saw who you were
and you are beautiful.
You are a true soul
gravitating to all that is Good
all that is Pure.
Pulling me towards you
I become Good
I become Pure.
I am where I should be.

Happiness enters
me as I gravitate up to
You.

I am in awe of your face
I am falling for your hands
I am breathing you in forever.

and although this train selfishly slices through this humid July night and the long, tired miles that now separate us,
I  smile--for I know the rocking of this train is nothing but you with your arms around me.
You will always be around me.
judy smith Nov 2016
Before the hordes of his extended fashion family descended on Somerset House last night, Sam McKnight was pacing through the two floors of an exhibition of his life as one of the great sessions hairstylists. He stopped in front of a formal British Vogue portrait of Princess Diana, taken by Patrick Demarchelier in 1990. “I put on the tiara and had to make her hair big for it,” he remembered. “But, oh, God, then we had such an amazing day afterward. We were chatting and she suddenly asked, ‘If you could do anything, what would you do?’ And I said, ‘I’d cut it off!’ And she said, ‘Well, let’s do it now!’”

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

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

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

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

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

There are the moments when McKnight changed models’ fates with short, blonde crops—Jeny Howorth’s in the ’80s and Agyness Deyn’s in the aughts. We see his process, with the hairpieces, wigs, and frizzing techniques integral to creating Westwood and Chanel shows, in both videos and installations masterfully laid out by Michael Howells. Right at the end, there’s a room Howells describes as “Sam the Man,” the walls checkerboarded with pictures of flowers from his garden and the ridiculous varieties of wigs he poses in on his Instagram feed these days. It’s testament to the energy and humor of a talent happily adapted to an industry that is constantly working on the new, in the now; an inspirational treat for all those who remember and for all the many thousands of young eyes that will be opened for the first time by this extravagant journey through one man’s career.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses
judy smith Feb 2016
Fashion rarely looks to the Brit awards for style inspiration but somehow fashion finds its way, in dribs and drabs, to its red carpet. These awards are the unwanted stepchild of the red carpet and generally, this means it’s a bric-a-brac of high-end and high street looks. For every Rihanna in couture you have a Little Mix in Asos.

Such is life, though, and there were legitimate trends, aside from the James Bay/Kylie double hatter. First, in the spirit of Angelina Jolie’s 2012 viral, there was a Right Leg – as flashed by model Lily Donaldson and singer Lana Del Rey. Nightwear came in a rather lavish Miss Havisham-esque form via Florence Welch (cream slip, eiderdown wrap, bed-hair) and Rihanna (a lilac slipdress covered with seashell patterns), and which unexpectedly preceded Alexander McQueen’s autumn/winter 2016 collection. Finally, there was a definite nod to The Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City via Jess Glynn’s sparkling green jacquard suit, Kylie’s backless heels and Jack Garratt’s toned down double-breasted suit.

There were the half-successes, too: Adele’s cascading liver-red dress and matching lipstick was grownup, but compared to her memorable 2013 Valentino hit at the Grammy’s, it felt par-cooked. Singer Charli XCX has been a frow regular at this year’s London fashion week, so she went predictably designer in pale green Vivienne Westwood. But she was let down with her slicked-back hair, a styling addendum that somehow overegged the overall effect. She also looked stiff and uneasy, probably because, at 23, she was too young to pull it off.

The menswear was far more experimental. To wit: Labrinth in a blue and pink orchid-print suit which, unaccessorised, had just enough humour to work (it looked like a box of Cadburys Roses). Mark Ronson did his usual trick of pepping a cleanly cut suit with the odd flourish. This time it was a monochrome dogstooth suit covered with a static print. Even JLS’s Marvin Humes, in a Yves Saint Laurent bomber jacket, epitomised the modern man. And what Carl Barât lacked in pizzazz he made up for by wearing a Hedi Slimane suit (although less said about the James Bay hat, the better).

The misses, of course, were plentiful. The mullet dress is the trend that refuses to die (see Cheryl Fernandez-Versini and half of Little Mix in various synthetic horrors). Alexa Chung rarely puts a brogue wrong, but here in a velvet bustier dress, was fairly forgettable (lesson: don’t step out of your style lane). Then, of course, there was Keith Lemon, who pillaged the misses of awards seasons gone (the Pharrell hat, the pseudo-Gucci blazer … everything really). What did you expect from Keith Lemon? The Brits then: a series of blind taste tests on the red carpet, none of which gets full marks.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com | www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses
Pea Jul 2014
I will be dead
and become posthumously insane

and I will remember Suzanne Vega
every time I hear your name

I will take that look
of Vivienne Westwood's

and I will sing and sing and sing
and sink and sink and sink

and I will not think
of the appropriate things

Because I will be dead
and become posthumously insane

Even though long scarf does not suit this neck
and gas oven does not fit this head

and .38 caliber revolver is not
something a 17 year old girl would own

there is no need to worry
because now I know what loves me

It is not the explosion, not the oxygen
Not the carbondioxide, not the cyanide

It is the water, any kind of water
the tears, the saliva, the seawater

And I learnt from Haruki Murakami
that even a plastic bag would do

Mimicking the deepest sea
The sensation is true, is true ----

I remember; you liked a lot the word drown
You liked a lot the word drown
I was drowning in love with you
But now no can do
Gerard M May 2021
Ever since I started highschool music was and is my lifeline

It's what helped me get though it and manage life but with out Her music

I wouldn't be able to write poetry or even share it with people in my life

I didn't start writing poetry about my mental health until late one night

That almost fateful night that was until I couldn't get myself to almost be Hum Hallelujah

That night I was sitting on the floor listening to music

Then decided to listen to Her album Patient 139 and Her song Westwood on repeat

That's when I realized that I have can't give up on life now and not have a future

The one that saved my life is Tess Stevens and the song was Westwood
The line in Tess Stevens' song Westwood that got me to write poetry about my mental health is "stick your pen right up your story"
judy smith Mar 2017
The streets of Paris were clogged by rallies and demonstrations on the Sunday of fashion week. At the Trocadero, a pro-rally for embattled French conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, blocking the route between the Valentino and Akris shows; at Bastille, an anti-Fillon demonstration.

The French elections — and ever-increasing security — were providing a tense backdrop to the autumn-winter collections, much like Donald Trump, Brexit and Matteo Renzi did on the fashion circuit of New York, London and Milan this season. Politics and the changing of the guard, women’s rights and diversity may make fashion seem irrelevant until you add up the value of the industry to the world economy. In Britain it is £28 billion ($45bn) — and that is small fry next to France and Italy.

Perhaps politics and social change have influenced the French designers for there was much less street style this season and a lot more tailored, working clothes on the catwalk. They used mostly masculine fabrics but worked in such a graceful way. You need only look at Haider ­Ackermann, Chanel, Alexander McQueen, Christian Dior, Lanvin, Akris and Ellery to see this — lots of great wearable clothes.

Karl Lagerfeld wanted to fly us to other worlds (to abandon the mess here perhaps) in his Chanel space rocket. There were checks, cream, silvery white and grey tweeds, for suits and shorts and dark side of the moon print dresses that cleverly avoided the 60s’ ­futuristic cliches. Silver moon boots, space blanket stoles and rocket-shaped handbags were as space-age-y as it got. There was quiet, seductive tailoring at Haider Ackermann — tapered silhouettes in black wool and leather softened with a knit or the fluff of Mongolian lamb for a blouson or skirt. At McQueen the asymmetric lines of a black coat or pantsuit were ­inspired by the fluid lines of ­Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures, whereas David Koma reclaimed the soaring shoulderline of Mugler’s 80s silhouette for pantsuits and mini-dresses for the brand.

Christian Dior’s uniform-inspired daywear was produced in tones of navy blue with 50s-style navy belted skirts suits, long pleated skirts and some denim workwear. “I wanted my collection to express a woman’s personality, but with all the protection of a ­uniform,” explained Maria Grazia Chiuri before the show.

There was more suiting at ­Martin Grant with voluminous trousers, cummerbunds and men’s shirting. The cut was more mannish at Ellery and Celine with ­Ellery balancing her masculine oversized jacket looks with feminine bustier tops with giant puff sleeves. The mannish look at ­Celine was styled with sharp ­lapels, slim-cut trousers under crushed textured raincoats, whereas ­double-breasted jackets (a trend) and peacoats over loose-cut trousers appeared at John Galliano.

Checks jazzed up the tailoring at Akris where there were more sophisticated double-breasted jackets and swing coats, and at ­Giambattista Valli from among the flirty embroidered dresses a dogtooth coat emerged with a waspie belt and a suit with a peplum skirt.

Stella McCartney displayed her Savile Row skills in heritage checks for her equestrian-themed show. Of course, she is crazy about riding and her prints featured a famous painting by George Stubbs, Horse Frightened by a Lion. It turns out Stubbs was another Liverpudlian, like her dad Sir Paul.

Of course Hermes’s vocabulary started with the horse and there were leather-trimmed capes and coats that fitted an equestrian, or at least country theme worn with woollen beanies and big sweaters, offering a different way of tailoring, in an easier silhouette with a soft colour palette.

The highlight of the week for Natalie Kingham, buying director at MatchesFashion.com was ­Balenciaga. “Great accessories, great coats and great execution of ideas,” she says of Demna Gvasalia’s off-kilter buttoned coats, stocking boot and finale of nine spectacular Balenciaga couture gowns reinterpreted in a contemporary way. “It was wearable, modern and the must-see show of the week.” It was also, she pointed out “the must-have label off the runway with every other person on the front row decked out in the spring collection”.

Although tailoring worked its subtle charms on the catwalk, there were flashes of brightness, graceful beauty and singularity. Particularly bright were Miu Miu’s psychedelic prints, feathered and jewelled lingerie dresses and colourful fun fur coats with furry baker boy hats. Then there was the singular look evoked by Austrian-born Andreas Kronthaler in his homage to his roots, with alpine flowers, Klimt-style artist smocks and bourgeois chintz florals worked in asymmetric and padded silhouettes for Vivienne Westwood — some of it modelled by the Dame herself.

Pagan beauty, the wilds of Cornwall, ancient traditions such as the mystical “Cloutie” wishing tree led to Sarah Burton’s enchanting Alexander McQueen show, which was another of Kingham’s favourites with its unfinished embroideries inspired by old church kneelers and spiritual motifs. “I loved the artisanal threadwork and the spiritual message that was woven throughout,” she says. The artisanal and spiritual she considers an emerging trend around the shows. “It had a slight winter boho vibe but much more elevated.”

Chitose Abe shared that mood for undone beauty with her Sacai collection of hybrid combinations of tweed and nylon for an anorak, and deconstructed lace for a parka, and puffers with denim re-worked with floral lace for evening.

There was more seductiveness at Valentino and Issey Miyake. The latter’s collection shown in the magnificent interiors of Paris’s Hotel de Ville, shimmered with the colours of the aurora borealis and used extraordinary fabric technology to create rippling movement as the models walked.

Valentino was a high point. On a rainswept Sunday Pierpaolo Piccioli cheered us with high-neck Victoriana silhouettes and long swingy dresses in potentially (but not actually) clashing combinations of pink and red in jazzy patterns of mystical motifs and numerology inspired by the Memphis Group of Pop Art. The sheer loveliness of the collection was enough to drown out the world of politics only a few blocks away.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/short-formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/blue-formal-dresses
Cloud Giante Oct 2020
Once was extro
But now I’m intro
And trying to invert it
Word is , I’m not perfect
Bordering being worthless
Born without purpose
But you make me a better person
I wrote this while lamenting how awkward I am, the one person who was helping me be less awkward stopped replying, and now I’m back to square one it seems.
Leaving well enough alone
I go home
where only your words serve to burn me
remind me to learn that to be free
is to be one with
oneself
And alone very selfishly I turn over another leaf.

Oh thief, come then and take me
and let us not tarry
marry me into your night.

Out of sight out of mind
the wallpaper lines the drawers in the wardrobe
and mothballs like meteors
flash warnings to creatures
do not enter
and the scent of her lingers
I lick my fingers as if I could taste her
as if I could paste her to the walls.

On the inside of life where I fall into tomorrow
where yesterday lives in the crook of the hollow
below my cheeks and today sneaks a peek but decides to return
to a place I would spurn
Oh if only I could.

She is still here or there
somewhere in the recess wearing that Westwood creation
I station and anchor myself to this point
and at the point of a pin
where the needle grows thin
I jab it into and under my skin and I blunder
along wildly
in panic, but that's nothing new
to a fool who would do such strange things.

Eventually relenting
and I on repenting she brings me to her
here or somewhere each place names the same as the last
and each one disappears as fast as it came.

This is a round about big dipper,dip for a duck
childhood fair ground game that we play
we all want a coconut
but some don't want to pay.

She comes to me to say
'it's okay it'll be fine'
and each time I believe
until the mothballs remind me she leaves and I grieve
And the drawers remain shut
the wardrobe is but another reminder
a laughter at me
one day I will find her
again.
Rollie Rathburn Mar 2016
I met her in an alley
behind an alley
a sub-alley if you will
down the street from my apartment on Westwood
and 6th street. Unusually cool for spring, asphalt glowing green
beneath lamplights.

She was digging through piles of broken bottles,
discarded kitchenware, and palm fronds.
Her attention shifted suddenly, as if I were the prize.
Grasped my hand
her skin drawn taut exposing raw bone beneath
“Why? Why is it so far away?
truck drivers, the bed where I watched my father die
report cards, Here. why?”

“Sometimes things just aren’t as beautiful as they should be.”

We sat down on the curb,
amongst the grasshoppers
and did not speak for quite some time.
Julian Sep 2020
Loony warbles creeping like a shark bite tucked into the night
I saute the solution of aghast has-been epigones filibustered brunt and brittle by hemlock aspirations of curated fright
Temulentia recognizes the sane from the inane and tragedy from travesty
Flowder imaginary crackjaw Samson skulls of donkeys dissuaded by varnished agony
Skipping through punctuated times the sheepish will profane me with beleaguered notions of time
Blind to the orbit of the eccentric zeitgeist of hopscotch chockablock cohorts deliverance finds no crime
Goose noose Howard Hughes wooden stilts of the gargantuan swerve
Only the alpenglow of hijacked jujitsu spar against redintegration of adversaries with penniless nerve
Sifting through the silt
I barnstorm the ire of glistened tribunes plagued with insipid promenades of set-up still-frame guilt
Enemies became friends deranged like roosters fleecing hens of henpecked anomaly grafted and built
The wasms of moribund prose absconding with latticework of lacrosse in vogue
Temperatures sweltering the quaky schleps of Maverick moons never more rogue
Flashbang grimace parched with slivers of an acclimated post-modern ******
Intimates the intimacy of the flock decorates bolted balderdash too winsome to deprive an earnest plea for peace and please
I conquer the wallbaggers of novantique with the temulentia of mystique
Rarely remanded by the cul-de-sacs of Giants demolishing social rust with a deteriorated sweep
Trip the jostled rhymes of confluency of rhapsody and rapture consummated by nickel gambols by design
Ridiculing the contumely of ragged turgid Reservoir Dogs canine to the itch of foggy moonshine
Yet I dance to the rhythm of a jockey mechanical when devoured by incarceration flimsy with attrition
Lurid livid welters sparkle in damsel jokes of remission against Back to Mine sequence counting Dracula by division
Outtatime in this march of Thriller sublime
Cornered by the otiose Chipotle of musty mangers of egalitarian grime
Blandished by shattered paradigm parallax in circumlocution by mirrored irony
Livid are tepid latticeworks of rax and sedition frozen by limpid “Teachers” piracy
Never was once forever in the dormant daydream
Seamstresses waltzed in autumn woods knowing Hoffa firebrands of wasted Scream
Bloodshot swank is a rackrent of cineaste rakes of dominions of half-baked dishes of disco zenkidu double-take
Limbering languidly through the procession of sectarians seceding from agitprop monopoly
Boarding the Ticket to Ride train authentic never squirmy with illusions of the fake
Slackened Eels slapstick the brackish bracket of appeasement in appeals
Confluence of formula endangered by euphoria that Limerick question is a grubbed dicey deal
Fortunate summit dreaded nadir
All that resides in throbbing hearts tethered like Four Squares littered with boondoggles of fear
Showcase the Shakespeare flown through rickets of balderdash as Bald Eagles the mascot of frisk and wretch
Time to own the Pony Show charade of a mimicry of dilettantes brave in the cradles of antiquity knowing rarely the mummification of symbolism of thirty years of slavery to hallow one veranda upon a kissed by an ***** rose starvation grave
Looted by the pernicious bootstraps of those computed
We ring true the epitaphs of Pine City Stage on the rundles of the marginalia that overflows with Ire refuted embarked on solid cremation for sagacity in tatters of rage denuded
Punctilious liars edgy in facetious gambols in Joker menace flushing hygiene for starlet screen
Malingering on quaffs of sedate aplomb yet to preen
Scrabble superlunary bastions of gabble and garb
The gawsy preternatural séance rather nimble to Duck the Badgers weaponized barb
Fustilugs congregate around ashen rot of cacophony marveling at temerity in contortion for epiphany
Episodic marvel of two lynched paragons of sweltered margins ribald at witwanton persiflage in a campaign for suffrage.
Defected fire crackling with the joy of cacophony
Relishing every maskirovka pedigree of rackrent sovereignty
Slipshod fustilugs burrow bilkey in doctored Hubbard hubs smoking gun for dwarfed sins of blinded light staring Poison Ivy Appetite for Destruction mainlined by profligate amphigory a splintered shard
Complexion fulminates AIM with scourges of backtrack upon backwater miracles of Lake Placid confusion
Envoys to scuttled aliens marauding like they own my street in distinct slender confection even as the odd berates my diffuse dissuaded cineaste direction
I slummock with the slurvian alveolate bonism of prized poverty for Pine City Stages a delope of antelopes torn asunder by the athletes of formidable retention
Minute Mayday MaiDEN curls the forelock of a tucked hedged blush of no greater stupidity than a furrow of piglets in the pews of lyrical surgery
Slowpoke in acerbic flavor I countermand the denizens of urged regency decapitated by orbit if not by ******
Consummated on every brain that God himself believes that liberation can entrust
Enthusiastic chameleon of Mojo Grooves for the languid auditorium of a Revered time behooved to the gallops of threshed figurative sloppy slush
Funded by killjoys emaciated by slippery lies on craven deposits of sedimentary inertia quelled by amusement, grounded into Orange Crush
Urbacity is the usucaption of illegitimate ******* filigrees Armed to the Teeth but respecting the Tree
Winsome is obligatory for a Winslet flippant elder quorums contemn as a malapropism for syndicated armory in chuckling White Broncos evading a Houston test in the gricers of Autumn Heaven lingering with germane plight only reserved for luxury at its best
Aborning sidereal alpine brevity is a scry of evidentiary might of totemic dissolution alchemy so bright
That the chalkboard erasure is a confabulation against simultagnosia in acidic Phuture Bound sight
Because Mission Impossible cavorts with the exotic frictions of the nefarious Biocyte
Trailblazing heydays memorializing an Alpha Bet for September 2004 maydays
Of the scriptural series of mishaps and misadventures for barley grain in deadstock Indiana Jones wayward wayspays
Time to count the Dracula of venom drenched from the aceldama of gritty Gurley lies of a city yet loved because too many oases are despised
But Westwood becomes Eastwood with ******* Grotto as the centripetal but monogamous prize
Hot Tub Time Machine soaring among the cognoscenti of burlesque organized ***** crimes of lullaby Manzarek disguise
So toast to the dead captain of the psychedelic fountain pen of revolution Lorraine Baines fields arise
Time is an adventure that blinks only secondary of truce rather than guarded sheepish mustache of panmixia in genocide widely guillotined without scruple for newsy folksy prejudice on gallywow pride
Yet the sentinels of dirigisme anoint the Caesar of Nostradamus infamy of a Deep Impact symphony
Heard by asteroids and asterisks lurking with Thriller to the end of time known only as enumerated infinity
But enough petty battles squandered on sinking U-Boats torpedoed like ransacked crambazzles from Tucker belligerent with a “War” burnt heated calentures of scorching torches of rigged Scarface cockroach
Because there is no elementary Zion that is chosen to emerge in the barnstorm of flukenhague fluke
Time to rest my laurels on the depredation of safety
Reminding with a glower that saving our city is not an Autopilot of Buccaneer Brady
For the Grand Master Architect is princely in Jerusalem but heralded in Mecca because for too many storks all they want is another baby.
And my answer is that my Terrier Bonds are shaken and stirred by many a yes, probably and maybe in that order of illusion shaken into cocktails of cobblestone gravy
The Soy Sauce livid on mistake exerts a dementia on attrition to enthuse Kansas City joy all too crazy
Swimming in an ocean of Carly Ray Jepsen "Calling Your Name" Queen of Highways' Titanic fortress of Armada music beating the Village People silly over their gabbles against Navy
Born and Raised in a Colorado Springs cage I am snake eyes without crafty disguise  in authenticity to a Patriot Point Break Heist  of the probable doubt of the Zany Billy Zane entrapment of prestige gone madcap with Raiders of never the ambitious but always the lazy
So meditate on my word crimes as I elude detection as Hawthorne Nevada alights with 200 earthquakes in two days in Gray design
Wow what a marvel it is to always know that  you are always Stayin' Alive as the splinter of time capitalizing on sensual crestfallen vibes of a pendulum tsunami "Us and Them" saw wavy
And to the 1776 practical joke that gouges Samson even when thousands of Philistines get crushed in delope
Consider this a declaration of war against your pathetic screwball maze of fog to make a sane man livid with a blushed bravery too fraternal to old craven owls of cruelty beyond the maze of convolution of Istanbul collectively shrouded by lies no stomached demise would appreciate for being gatekeepers of terminus exorbitantly hazy
Aa Harvey Oct 2018
Girls Names


Hope stands eternal.
Faith is still lost.
Charity helps the needy.
El Liberte counts the cost.


Sophia my darling, you are simply charming;
Whilst Vivienne Westwood, is rather alarming.
Ruby Tuesday; Have you met Wednesday?
*****-Anne’s Mary Jane is of the highest quality.


Victoria Skinny; isn’t she a funny yummy mummy.
Posh?  Oh gosh!  No she’s not.  She’s just interested in money.
Rosie! Oh **** you!  This was brand new!
Now I’ll have to go and get changed thanks to Little Blue.


Pixie, Poppy, Penny and Missy,
Every single one of them a Jane Doe – Missing.
Serial Killer Cathy waits…
For Rachel and her friends, to bring Uma to their graves.


Charlotte is a harlot;
Emmanuelle has blown a pilot.
Suki *****, while Pamela just likes to ****.
Demi is more than beautiful.
Holly is the curse of Christmas.
Go be jolly good Sally-Anne; get drunk and do a striptease.


Betty drives a Ford; insured of course.
While Jade is being a pain in the ******* ****!
Veronica of ****** and Marilyn are snorting coke.
Senorita Angelina knows how to satisfy a bloke.


Dannii, Kylie; Kylie, Dannii.
Whichever way you say it; it still equals ****.
Britney hit me, Christina slapped me
And I’m not telling you what Jennifer Low did.


Amy’s a drunk, she loves to whine.
Courtney’s a punk, like Skin Anansie.
To all the Girls who like to get high…
This is your final line…  It’s simply Divine.


(C)2011 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
judy smith Jan 2017
Women on the march was the story of the weekend. And so it was with perfect timing that 23 years after he diversified into designing for women, Sir Paul Smith included clothes for women on his Paris catwalk during menswear fashion week for the first time. The designer has scrapped his slot showing womenswear during London fashion week in favour of a blockbuster Paris show in which clothes for both genders are shown together.

There is an industry-wide trend toward unisex catwalks, but the move felt organic for Paul Smith, whose womenswear has its roots in men’s tailoring. First on the catwalk was a woman in a trousersuit in the black-and-green check of Black Watch tartan, alongside a man wearing a tailored coat in the same fabric over beige trousers.

Backstage, the designer said putting the show together has reminded him why he started designing for women in the first place. “Grace Coddington and Liz Tilberis, all these incredible women, were dressing supermodels like Linda Evangelista in my clothes for men,” he recalled.

But one of the secrets of Paul Smith’s cheery, straight-talking brand is that it is more sophisticated than it lets on. The womenswear on the catwalk was not simply borrowed-from-the-boys, but fine-tuned for the female body. The attitude and fabrics are taken from menswear, but the tailoring – a higher and more defined waist, a longer jacket, a strong shoulder – is calibrated to flatter the female form.

A dandy aesthetic running through the men’s velvet suits and fitted waistcoats was adapted for women with colourful Fair Isle-knit sweater dresses, and silk blouses with a painterly feather print.

The show was staged under the glass roof of the grand École Des Beaux-Arts, just a few streets from where Sir Paul Smith staged his very first fashion show in a friend’s apartment on the rue de Vaugirard, that time to an audience of 35 people, with friends as models and a soundtrack he had compiled on a cassette.

But it was very British, not just stylistically but in the emphasis on British-made fabrics – in many cases modern, lightweight versions of fabrics Smith first used in the 1970s. The brightly coloured feathers, which appeared on men’s suit linings as well as silk womenswear, were inspired by an illustrated 18th-century book of British birds.

In the face of the unstoppable rise of a sports aesthetic in menswear, Smith remains a staunch defender of the suit. “People think that suits are stuffy, or that you can’t move in them,” he said backstage. “But it’s not true.” Soft, narrow suits were styled for life outside the office, worn with trainers and with poloneck knits.

The Paul Smith show was followed by Kenzo, also showing men’s and women’s collections together for the first time. In London, Burberry and Vivienne Westwood have both recently merged their collections for men and women. The trend for unisex catwalks, which is driven both by the rise of a genderless, sports-influenced aesthetic and a social media appetite for catwalks that are newsworthy moments, appears unstoppable.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/bridesmaid-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses
Soumyadeb biswas Jun 2018
6 feet under,even I'm breathing
With your memories to long,
In midst of death in this hell
Haven is where my dreams belong

Emptiness of light in my eyes
I can see clearly the twilight
Beneath the earth,my body lives
Dark death,what my soul writes

I can feel the creep of dark
Feel the hallow of solitude,
My organs are melting in soil
In the cemetery of Westwood

My foots are so numb
And my hands left my grip
Bullet holes in my chest
But now I can't even shriek

But the dark is lovely
So lovely to love,
My soul is being fade
With the song of white dove.
Matthew Roe Nov 2019
It’s been a year since I typed some lines,
probably cuz it’s stuff like this,
I want to get laid
and i want to get ******
but instead all I feel is sick
Kedgeree thats tumbled dried
from 38 minutes of bad Elvis hips,
while legs pop like rockets
my eyes sink in my sockets
saliva swells in my cheeks
as I drift in disappointment
swimming in icy air to catch my confidence lost at sea
but its too far gone, so i just stare
at a laptops glare
thinking about my spots
my unstyled bramble of hair
my polo, too garish?
MY SPACK BRAIN!
too confident in thinking I looked smart?
as i wish for another heart
one thing sticks in my mind
a girl, or was it a boy,
looking like Johnny Rotten,
in Westwood striped dungarees and flames of hair
flashes of the Public Image, King Krule and all that in my headphones.
Words that are all in my head
as my stomach is sick
oh yeah, they played the killers
I like them
now my head is bleak like Mike Skinner
I wish I’d chosen earlier to have my dinner
another music reference lost on you
but stuck in my mind in bed
as I picture a red head
oh my.
Why am I so bad at socialising?
a name Aug 2021
"𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒔
𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒖𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓
𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒊𝒔"

...𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵, "𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘭"? 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦...

she left work early to venture out on the last day of the month.
she told her manager she had plans with family, but that was nowhere near the truth; she had a dinner plan with someone far from anywhere related to her.

she took her pay and went off.

the afternoon looked grim. the road looked grimmer. the sun looked tired and the world looked tiring. for her it was not a particularly good day to exist.
neither will the night be any different, she presumes. at least she was paid.

𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵. 𝘪 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘬, she thought.

the bus she boarded had rusty railings and handles ready to fall off.
it was still early so there weren't much passengers. there were three, she counted, not including the driver and the conductor. she took her seat in the back so she could watch their heads.

"𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒂 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒆
𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒔𝒖𝒏𝒔𝒆𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒊𝒓
𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆... 𝒖𝒉...... uhhhh..."

she lost focus. it started to rain, and she remembered she didn't bring an umbrella. the dilapidated bus windows won't close.

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘶𝘺'𝘴 𝘭𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘺 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘵. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘺𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩, 𝘴𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘻 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳. 𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨...?

the guy (or girl?) was wearing something unusual; it looked like it was made from plastic and resembled a waxed salad bowl. she spent her entire bus ride thinking about the peculiar headpiece and being bothered by the splash of the rain.

𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘺𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴?

she took her stop and quickly went into her building. the garbage bags she put outside weren't picked up by the trucks. she stopped and stared for a moment to ponder.

𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘺. 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴𝘯'𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭.

her apartment was cold and grey as well. she grabbed her watering pail as she entered and went straight to her plants. she feels suffocated. she had half hoped that the plants she bought would make her place look a little brighter and make the air a little fresher.  
instead the pots cramped her place a bit more and attracted ants to live in the soil.

afterwards she set a kettle to boil and went to pass out on her couch. the day was still grim. it seemed its only been grim all these days. she thought of how long it's been since she was in a cheerful mood.

𝘮𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘪 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢. 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘦 𝘪 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘵. 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘺 𝘥𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘺.

𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘰...

she stared at the scene in front of her. the steam from the kettle, the array of unwashed dishes, the shadow of the rain streaming on her kitchen floor.

she sat upright and opened her notebook on the coffee table.

"𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒇𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔
𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒘𝒐 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔...

-𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯? 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦... 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘩 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴...

...𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒘𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒖𝒍- 𝒖𝒉....

-𝘯𝘰, 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘴𝘺𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴...

...𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒐...

-𝘩𝘮𝘮𝘮..."

she closed her notebook and threw her pen at the clothes bin. she stood and went to the bathroom, and splashed her face.

𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘪 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘰 𝘣𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴. 𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺. 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨.

𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨.

𝘩𝘦𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘢 𝘳𝘩𝘺𝘮𝘦𝘥...

she wiped herself with a towel and stared at her face. her eyes were starting to grow bags. her makeup wore off and a zit revealed itself on her chin.

𝘪 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘪'𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭...

𝘨𝘰𝘥 𝘪 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘵.

𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘸𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥. 𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦.

𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩. 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 𝘩𝘦'𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴.

she took one last look at herself. she passed a comb through her hair once and decided it was enough. she went to fix herself some tea and gave up halfway. she decided to sleep until she has to go.

laying down, she meandered through her thoughts.

𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨? 𝘪 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘪 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪'𝘮 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩. 𝘪 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦.

𝘪 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭, 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳. 𝘪 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘪'𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦.

𝘪 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨'𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘱 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸. 𝘪 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵. 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺. 𝘪 𝘢𝘮 𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘥.

she slept for an hour and a half.

...

the alarm was deafened by her pillow. she woke up startled to the blue of dusk. the rain had stopped.

𝘰𝘩, 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘱

she stood quickly and fixed herself up. she had thirty minutes to her appointment, and there was no time to fix anything else. she grabbed her bag and left the apartment.

the trash left outside was torn apart by some street animal. it made a stench while she waited for a taxi.

"Italliani's, please. Near Westwood."

the place was a twenty minute ride from her apartment. the series of avenues around it was her favorite to sightsee from a car. high rise buildings and bright signs from old shops. but all the nighttime scenery wasn't quite ready yet, and all was awash in the blue of dusk.

she hated dusk. for her it was a dim and dull sight that remains of sunset, and nowhere near the shine and glory of the afternoon. she hated night more, and dreaded the idea that she would have to commute after dinner, provided that her date goes awry.

her date was waiting for her on the sidewalk. he had a paper bag on his left.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I was busy at work."

"You were from work? Are those your work clothes?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry. Rain didn't help either. Are we... ready?"

...
F Dec 2020
two white beaches lie asunder;
a temporal numbness foregoes
the crash of red endorphins tidal-waving between parted skin.
fabric-flesh torn
and measured upon a pulsing
living
purple bed of weedlike nerves.

kubrick westwood.
each micronanosecond framed by
ruler and rolling arriflex,
memory designed and inserted.

moses returns with
tablets gripped white-knuckled beneath soiled robes.
skyblue needles repairing a crimson chasm.
autofleshpots of salvation;
each skinly knot weaved unto one
vile tapestry of red

and red and red and red.
eternal beyaux sans story.
those shanks that play no myth
nor legend.
no pierced eye nor
striking cleric nor
sailing comet appear upon your ghastly skin.

you're merely scarred
and nothing more.

— The End —