Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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.
IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

Blanket city run along soaked in rain. Idiot Boy wastes his time visiting a passing crush at the other end of town. Slips between two houses and a metal sheet, communal refrigerator in the middle of the road filed with half-empty soy bottles.

Dead bell stop, mocking red blink of the operator. Father arrives, a mess of wiry muscles and hair.

“Hey. Is Coffin Cat here?”

“Who?” Father squints at Idiot Boy’s cap. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact.

“Um.”

Recessed in the blackness behind Father, a Figure says, “You looking for Coffin Cat?”

Idiot Boy nods.

The Recessed Figure turns. “I’ll go get her.”

Father returns to his parched body on the couch, content.

Indistinguishable forms move back and forth in the kitchen to the right. They stop their pacing and glance at Idiot Boy as he passes. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact and slips into the left-bound arterial vessel.

“So this is the heart chamber I’ve been living in,” Coffin Cat says as Idiot Boy enters her room. There is music gear. “It’s pretty comfy.”

“Oh, sick mic,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at the mic behind Coffin Cat’s head.

“I feel like a ghost,” Coffin Cat replies, falling on her bed.

Idiot Boy settles next to her. Animal distance. Intensely aware of his rain-soaked right shoe. “Same.”

Nothing comes out right, intersubjectivity a false God to mediate the impossible kernel of being, nobody can find nor express. Idiot Boy searches for connection. He glances around the heart chamber, at the music gear, but nothing grips. Four pears sit on a table by the window, their skins garish green in the harsh grey light.

Coffin Cat moves from the bed to the floor. She opens a virtual aquarium on her computer; fish eat pellets dropped from the sky to **** out coins to buy more fish to **** out coins to buy more fish. Capitalist investment and accumulation. Every few minutes a rocket-spewing robot teleports into the aquarium to attack the fish. Ruthless competition in the global marketplace.

“No! Why would you swim there, you ******* fish?” Coffin Cat yells as one if her fish is eaten by the nomadic war machine. “So dumb. ****. Why did it eat my fish?”

A knock at the door. The Recessed Figure from earlier enters the room. “Hey, mind if I join?” Their arms dangle like fine threads of hair.

“I like your music gear,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at nothing in particular.

“Idiot Boy also makes music,” Coffin Cat adds from the floor.

The Recessed Figure does not respond. They are enthralled by their phone, streak of dead pixels along a digital chessboard, minute reflection of their own gaunt face in the glass. After an extended period, they decide to move none of their pieces. A gaping coffee grinder rises out of the rubble at their feet. They begin filling it with tobacco from broken cigarettes.

“I’m surprised you’re still playing this,” Idiot Boy says to Coffin Cat. “I swear this is one of those games designed to ruin your life. Get addicted, stop going to work, become a hikik weaboo.”

“Already there, man,” Coffin Cat laughs. “Nah, this is my new job. I’m going to be a professional gamer.”

“Stream only PopCap games.”

Another knock at the door. Tired squander in an endless pacing of flesh. Strawman enters and nods at the Recessed Figure. “Hey bro.”

“Good to see you, man.” The Recessed Figure plugs the coffee grinder into the wall. “You got any ciggys?”

Idiot Boy points under the table and says “Ahh” with his mouth.

The Recessed Figure empties it into the coffee grinder. The device whirs into motion, creating a centrifugal blur, a mechanical and headless hypnotic repeat.

Idiot Boy and Coffin Cat look for horror movies to watch. The Recessed Figure empties the contents of the coffee grinder onto a metal tray. Strawman repacks it into a ****. White smoke fills the empty column, moves in slow motion like an oceanic rip a mile off coast, surface seething with quiet, impenetrable violence.

Idiot Boy refuses the first round. It’s never done him any good. Face turned to smoke and the wretched weight of a tongue that refuses to speak. Headless carry-on as time ticks through the clock face.

The door bursts open. Everybody turns as Manic Refusal or the Loud Person saunters in.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off!” the Loud Person says in exasperation. “First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

“What? What’s happened?” Strawman asks.

“Some rich ****** in Australia has bought me as his wife. I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!” the Loud Person laughs bitterly, before hitting the ****.

“Oomph, that’s rough,” Coffin Cat quips from the side.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold to off some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“But like, who is this guy?” Strawman asks, pointing.

“And he’s been reading all my profiles. He has access to all my information. I don’t even have control over my Facebook profile. Grand Larson’s logged in as me, posting for me,” the Loud Person continues. “I met him once in Australia, clubbing, and now he’s tracked and bought me.”

“That’s creepy as ****,” Idiot Boy says.

“So he’s not a complete stranger?” Strawman asks.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. First time back in five years and I’m being sold off!”

Idiot Boy decides one hit from the **** wouldn’t be so bad. He packs the cone with chop, lights and inhales. Smoke rushes through the glass channel, a swirl of white ether, more than he’d expected. He quickly passes the **** to Coffin Cat, before collapsing onto the bed, eyes closed. A suffocating sensation fills his body. He sinks into the chasm of himself, further and further into an impossible, infinite depth.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

Idiot Boy doesn’t know what’s going on. He feels sick and tries to get Coffin Cat’s attention, but cannot move his body.

“Come on. Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

A strange silence stretches like an artificial dusk, a liminal duration, the hollow click of a tape set back into place in reverse. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off! First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

The Recessed Figure makes a noncommittal noise.

“I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!”

Coffin Cat laughs quietly.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold off to some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“How about this fella? He doing okay?” Strawman asks, pointing. Everyone turns to Idiot Boy and laughs affectionately.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

“Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

Idiot Boy slowly opens his eyes and stares out the window. The same grey light as before. He moves his arm further towards Coffin Cat, but is still too weak to get her attention. The same strange silence stretches. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. . . .”

As the conversation repeats over and again, Idiot Boy begins to think he has become psychotic, or perhaps entered into a psychotic space. He thinks of computer algorithms, input-output, loops without variables, endless regurgitations of the same result. Human machines trapped in their own stupid loop. Drug-****** neuronal networks incapable of making new connections, forever traversing old ones. Short-term memory loss, every repeat a new conversation of what has already been. The same grey light painted upon four pears by the window.

He’s not sure if Coffin Cat’s laugh is getting weaker with each repeat.

Signal-response. The exterior world oversaturated with variables: roadways, rivers, forests, wildlife — an ever changing scene to respond to — the illusion of depth. Automatic response mechanisms reorient to new stimuli. The soul rises like surfactant, objectified fractal diffusion. A becoming without end.

But within the border of this interior world, the light stays grey. No input, no change; the same dead repeat, over and over, until sundown triggers a hunger response. Lined all along the street, a black box ceremony of repeating machines, trapped in their idiot cults, walls of clay and blood.

Idiot Boy finally gets Coffin Cat’s attention. She helps him through the house’s arteries to reach rain and wet stone, overcast skies. As he shakes in shock, Coffin Cat mumbles, “It’s cold.”

Idiot Boy sits silent on the ride home. Travels through himself. Tunnel through the body or Mariana Trench. Loses his footing before a traumatic void. Leaves the car and pukes.

She wears t-shirts of the Beatles

And she loves the Rolling Stones

She wakes up to David Bowie

And she dreams of the Ramones

She goes out to dance clubs nightly

Till her ear drums both get blown

But, she has a deep dark secret

That her friends will never know



At night when she is by herself

When the room is nice and dark

She slips beneath the covers

With Johann Sebastian Bach

She's a closet classic ******

And her name is Amber Clark

She just loves orchestral music

The rock and roll is just a lark

Her friends think something classical

Is something for your folks

They cannot play an instrument

They cannot read the notes

They think that  chamber music is

What people play on boats

But she has a deep dark secret

She loves the stuff that Chopin wrote

At night when she is by herself

And her friends have gotten ******

She slips beneath the covers

And she listens to some Liszt

She listens to it many times

In case there's things she's missed

She's a closet classic ******

She has "Baroque" upon her wrist

She listens to the music

That her friends like to be cool

If she told them what she listens to

They'd laugh her out of school

So, when they go out  clubbing

She will join them as a rule

But...ah that deep dark secret

This girl is no ones fool

She listens to Beethoven

And she knows each piece by heart

She knows where one bar ends

And another one will start

She can play most every instrument

And she knows most every part

She's a classic closet ******

But she still knows Boyce and Hart

She has cds in her library

And most sit there untouched

When her friends are gone they don't get played

She doesn't like them much

She would rather hear a symphony

By a composter who was Dutch

But there's that deep dark secret

And she won't use it a crutch

At night when she is warm in bed

She listens to Mozart

She needs a little Nacht Musique

To open up her heart

It's a piece that sets her mind a blaze

It hits her like a dart

She's a closet classic ******

And she keeps her worlds apart

By day she sings Bruce Springsteen

At night she listens to

Composers that her friends don't know

They're so old they're new

So she keeps her world a secret

For she knows what they would do

If they found she didn't know

Where were you in sixty two

But at night she is a ******

And she listens to Mozart

She needs that piece of music

To shoot an arrow through her heart

Eine Kleine Nachmusic

She conducts every part

She's our Closet Classic ******

shhh.....the song's about to start...

It's like a jungle sometimes it make me wonder 
It's like a Forrest sometimes it help me flourish 
It's like a desert sometimes I find myself exerted 
I don't know how to word it, so I gather up a excerpt 
My momma always used to blurt it but since I always heard it , Things didn't make sense until it hurted 
Unjust situations did a service , I can't remember the last time when I was nervous
I tried my hardest not to become heartless 
In poverty stricken and drug infested apartments 
They raised us in the slums 
So we raisins in the sun 
Get to the league then our fathers come and try to bake us when we're done 
Already came from out the oven 
Already clubbing and already loving
Been making mistakes 
Got seasoned without his marinade
He never made us a plate 
Forced to be a renegade 
He never made us feel safe 
We're out running from everything 
Then don't know what to do when we make it on base 
Flour for the chicken
Flowers in the vase 
Gun powder in the smith &
Baking soda for the base 
I can't stand the rain coming through my window and we never had drapes 
Slim fast was our ******* so fiends never got in shape
Rent was only $50
So we never had space 
Halloween we had the mask but we Couldn't afford the cape 
So it was only fly if you sold super weight 
God's gate or cell 5 gate
Was our only escape
No DNA 
But we had to share a sub sandwich 
Waterfall a club soda
That's why we relate 
Dozens of "cousins" 
Saw each other everyday so that's why we debate 
It's like a ocean sometimes it makes me hopeless 
Marco Polo never get played, it's real
We dying by waves of violence 
It's like a battle field sometimes it keeps us crying 
Retaliation celebration 
10 years of frequent, but temporary triumph 
It's like a jungle that's why today I'm humbled 
Try to stay away from trouble 
Lost a lot of brothers, so the ones thats left I muffle 
It's like a jungle with tigers, apes, and snakes 
We pray everyday not to become prey 
It's like a jungle 
Only enlightened by thunder 
The trees help us breathe 
The trees bring a breeze 
But the trees is like a tease 
Disable us to follow our dreams 
We can't see the nearest sea 
So we just hunch by the tree stomp 
It's like a jungle 
At times it keep me thinking how do I keep from sinking 
It's like a jungle sometimes it makes us a believer that we gotta have fever just to meet our diva 
It's like a jungle sometimes it make me crumble because the crumbs feed the hunger 
It's like a agglomerate sometimes I forget when the last time I ate 
It's like a collage eventually I can't picture if I have a future 
It's like a jungle where
Lumberjacks never stumble 
Allow our dense vegetation 
To cloud our inspirations 
We come from jungles 
Get older and just want a happy huddle 
And a warm cuddle 
And finances to bundle 
When we make it through our rubble 
From a jungle 
We wonder 
That's all we can do is wander 
That's all we can do is juggle
That's all we can do; is hustle?

I’m never quite sure which activity I prefer at a fashion show - spending time backstage or watching the actual show.

Watching a beautiful show is a wonderful, sometimes even uplifting experience but being where all the action is, being able to get up close and personal with all the looks and different pieces, it really does get my adrenaline juices flowing.

At Paris Men’s Fashion Week, I was invited backstage by Mac Cosmetics to two brilliant and colourful shows - Kenzo and Paul Smith.

At Kenzo, both women and men collections were presented, the men’s was the standard spring/summer 2017 collection whilst the women’s was the pre-collection.

The general feel of both collections was a 90s throwback nightlife experience with lots of colourful, eclectic designs. The vibe really did hark back to those 90s clubbing days - the same style of clothes one wore out partying with their friends back then.

Think windbreakers, hoodies, biker jackets, baggy pants and visible male underwear pieces all mixed in with some super bright details. The palette as a general theme was bright but not overly bright - it was a mix of bright blues and greens mixed in with greys and whites and acid yellow but then there were bright details.

There were, for instance, glittery bright pink platform boots and matching little bags which were definite eye catchers. Eye motifs have become an iconic symbol of Kenzo and in fact eyes were once again worked into these pieces - a long-lashed version.

The makeup look for the men by Mac Cosmetics was kept clean and **** but with some shine used to exemplify the out-all-night partying vibe.

The women’s look was an ultra bright look with one look based around bright green and the other bright cyan blue. Again, the party-all-night vibe was present here too.

At Paul Smith, true to his nature, bright colours reigned supreme in his collection which felt like a harmony of retro and bohemian inspirations. Clubbing was a source of inspiration here too but this time the 1960s decade.

Candy stripe shirts, sportswear-themed bright tops and bright striped socks and shoes were all there. This was mixed perfectly with some more conservative, tailored suits.

Backstage, the happy mood was infectious with models dancing along to Bob Marley and the entire team carrying a big smile on their faces as they prepared for the show.

The makeup team again by Mac Cosmetics had an energetic and happy team whose main focus was on getting the male models catwalk and camera ready but without the makeup being in any way obvious.

As one of the makeup artists mentioned, it takes skill to make makeup appear invisible. There was also quite a range of different skin tones present across the different models although curly hair seemed to have been quite a priority during the model selection process.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses

Walked out on it all, mid-life crisis taken hold,
Done nothing but work, pay tax, time to be bold.
Dyed hair, had an affair, went clubbing once more,
Tried *** in a Maserati but got it caught in the door.
Didn’t think it through.

Did all but one thing on my bucket list,
Travelled, explored and got endlessly ******.
No happier, alone, one half of a whole,
Ruined it all by having no self-control.
Didn’t think it through.

Revenge on her mind she accepted me back,
Wife threatened me with “back, sack and crack”,
Totally livid, intent on harmful litigation,
In the end made me pay for her breast augmentation.
She didn’t think it through.

party zone with johnny brown



johnny’ hi dudes and welcome to another party zone

and we did well last week for our celebration to jon english

and tonight we are just being normal and here is olly with his

haiku poems

olly’  we are partying

in and out of cool nite clubs

drink heaps of bourbon



i really like beer

it gets me drunk all the time

i am really blind



johnny’  thanks olly for those poems and now here is robert with his jingle


let’s party right till the end

driving the oldies round the bend

making them really sick of us

you should take them for a ride on the moonlight bus

we sing rock and roll music

if you wanna party like you want to use it

swing your hips babe right to the end, dudes

partying is so much fun

except if your at your parents house

as they play taxi driver because they are drunk

ahhhhhh!  i want to party at every party event

whether it’s out on the lake or beach

to friday night in this classy club

johnny’  thanks robert and i want to party to,,how about tomorrow night at sky fire

robert’  i will be there with my picnic lunch, dude

johnny’   ok here here is fred with haiku about sky fire



sitting in the park

waiting for the fireworks

loud and wonderful


johnny’   thanks fred that was a great haiku poem and now here is roslyn with her jingle


roslyn’   hey, oh hey baby ooh aah ooh aah i want to party with you here every night

you see on my way to this niteclub yeah

i see a lot of people say

hey you cutie, you look so fine

my friends didn’t show up for dinner  and said do you wanna dine

i want to tickle yo baby team oh yeah dude

come on people the nite club is over there and there is no line

he said he wasn’t into clubbing and i called him a yuppee

and then i head straight to the club and i heard this voice

and it was coming from the fire man

i yelled out how much fire can you put in your mouth

he said 15, oops where is my manners, my name is ralph

i said my name was roslyn and then said come to this niteclub

after you finish

he said i won’t finish till 5 in the morning

i said what a shame and went into the nite club to dance pretty wild dance moves

and i feel cool man, cool you

roslyn’  before i go, i have a haiku

johnny’  ok tell us


roslyn’  


walking through civic

people partying in there

get down get down bop


johnny’  ok thanks roslyn and now here harry with his jingle


harry’   once a jolly party dude was going to the club yeah

buying beer and heaps of spirits

then he will show his moves on the dance floor

the foxtrot and disco and rock and roll

mrs fran belle said i love you to bits

i think you are the sexiest man

i said yeah i am fran and would you like to take me by the ****** hand

partying in civic partying in civic

getting heaps of alcohol down ya dude

partying in civic in the nite club

after having a slap up meal

in came the bouncer to see if we are behaving

one person isn’t and out he goes

he said, i didn’t mean it, please let me stay

the bouncer said no and threw him out

as we go

partying in civic partying in civic

getting heaps of alcohol down ya dude

partying in civic with the chicks yeah

every song is played with a good sound

it’s 4 am and last drinks were called

and you have collapsed near the dance floor

the girls say, just one thing to me that really makes sense

and that was come over to our house and sleep it off

as we go

partying in civic partying in civic

just from 11 to 4 am

partying in civic after drinking endless alcohol

now off to your mates house to sleep it off

johnny’ thank you harry that was a great party song, and i hope the copyrighters

don’t zoo you

harry’  they won’t, i hope

johnny’  ok that is it from party zone we will see you here next friday night

but i am going to sky fire tomorrow night, where we can have a lot of fun

CATCH YA LATER DUDES

Blinded by the sunlight that shines so brightly,
it proceeds to massage my spectacles,
rinsing the grime away from my eyes,
there lived mankind, buildings, plants, and animals,
but where was I, unaware of the planet I saunter,
I look in amazement, unborn to what to forecast,
but then I distinguished the dark side, somber and bleak,
impoverished skeletons walking hunchbacked, desperately
scrambling for silver, as so to purchase a bottle of liquor and a burger to indulge his vacancy that absents him,
as I trek my way further into this metropolis,
I hear a sudden commotion arising from the right direction,
it begins to steer me that way, luring me in deeply there was a mass of onlookers chanting on, of what seemed to be two individuals pummeling one another into a bloodbath, but then it escalated, the crowd began to all partake in the beating and it caused a mayhem, that was uncontrolled, I bolted the scene, protecting my mask from getting dismantled, as suddenly I hear a very deafening noise, it was a four wheeler wagon, that speedily amtrac it's way towards the locus in which we was in, everyone scattered the scene, as the people who dressed in uniform annihilated the scene, putting an outright stop to the madness that occurred, forestalling future procreation from the participants, my heart shriveled and I gasped for air, I ran aimlessly into a town that was lively and sunny, as I saw mankind playing sports, clubbing, riding nice convertibles, homes were futuristic, plants were vegetated, smiles and giggles were infectious, everyone was cheerful and amused enjoying this utopian I discovered, it was care-free, as folks walked in suit and ties, formal dresses, luggages entering and exiting, dialect as clear as caribbean sea, friendly animals chaperoned by their owner, "where am I?", "what was this strange but yet interesting soil I embark on?", ..... I don't know, but it closes me in like a maze and I'm forced to live as they.

******* -
thoughts sought, taught and wrought,
aggressive games.
Fighting clubbing sick,
Afghanistan camouflage.


.

...and there’s no one there to hear it,
does it make a sound?
_______

My poetry performed—
before a crowd of johnny-jump-ups
Their faces toward me in unison—
they listen
Intense, motionless energy
Velvet applause of purple and
Yellow yelling!

Encore
of performing in the perfume
with a troop of lilacs
They will remember me
While I— await their return to May
through billowing miles
of drowsing sachet
breathing euphorias
between the lingerie of clouds

What happens after ecstasy?

Grieving in life’s presence?
Loss of mind to self-possession?
____

...and when my sense of smell gives out
I will hold on for a while
to the walker of hearing
trying not to stumble past
the song of thrush
beyond me in the blurring leaves
once so clearly—
crinkled, shiny, and infant green….
___

As a child I held on to nothing
for dear life
I could cup a storm in my hands!
Could run with the rhythm of a horse!
I could fly in my mind’s eye
if the ferns I used were only wings!
If I pretended hard enough
I could eat my own home-baked mud pies!

If only I could be—

more than a fledgling of eight
so earthbound, clumsy  
___

But while the lilacs were out of town
thunder met the flash
and gutted summer!

I ran for dear life!
from the amazing distance of its echoes
pelted by its gentle gift
Snagged by growing things—
the clinging prattle
of their momentous tendrils....  
____

Lovers run off the path
past water lilies
along the swollen veins to the river
toward a grave and pounding heart

The Ancient Flood was jealous....

Now when the wind softens
and rain is tossed
last, and only from the leaves
may their encore be cupped in the hands
of some passer-by
Remembering—
that either because of a trifling wind
or the weight of time...

a tree fell here
clubbing the river’s bank senseless

I'm the type of person who can either sit by herself under a weeping willow
Reading quietly or writing poetry about life being an inside inferno,
Or who can go clubbing with her friends, get drunk and show up at 5 in the morning.
That's me, I either spend my day being in an immense joy, or spend it mourning.

I'm the type of person who is everything and its contrary,
I can fall in love with the same person whom I hated yesterday,
I can forgive in two seconds someone at whom I've been angry
I can be strongly willing to leave, and then I suddenly decide to stay.

Once I realised I wasn't in love with the person I had been waiting for, two years after
And realised at the same second that I wanted the person I had just lost.
My brain and heart didn't quite agree with each other,
But now it's to late to get back the girl I love the most.

One minute someone's my best friend, then she gets on my nerves
One minute I really want something, then I just change my mind,
One minute I find myself pretty, then I suddenly hate my curves
One minute I wanna open my eyes to the reality of the world, then I wish I was blind.

I suddenly realise why some people can't see me,
I'm so hard to live with, too difficult to stand,
I'm actually working on myself to be the person I want to be,
Because if I don't react, she's not coming back, ya'll understand ?

To all the Lost souls wandering around the Earth,
If you have problems, believe me they all come from you.
You'll have to give your life another chance, a rebirth,
Otherwise you'll be the person you never wanted to.

I. Summer pictures litter her walls
Glitter infestations
Second grade yearbook
And a signed portrait of that one indie celebrity.
What’s his name?
Jimi Hendrix?
Or Rob the Bone Crusher?
Was it that guy from New England?
With the Iced Tea, and the apartment?
You know that really, really big condo.

II. in 1995 you were all hot and heavy
******* and bumping in the clubs
Sinking your teeth into whatever
Or whoever you could find
Like ****** and some of that crystal ****
You said you liked the way it felt
When it ran down your veins

III. I remember the nights you cried
You said you’d feel this way forever
And I said well…probably.

IV. 7 AM, you’re still out clubbing.
Out on the streets like a little hoodlum
Looking for your fix in the alleys
Of a suburb of your suburb of Minneapolis.
Anything you can shoot, smoke, snort or swallow
You’re down.