Prompt Six — “Brain Candy,” based on Episode 406 of Project Runway, in which the designers were taken to the Hershey’s flagship store in Times Square and were told that they had five minutes to grab whatever they could as raw materials — from Twizzlers to Hershey’s syrup, from Hershey’s pillows to economy-sized bags of peanut butter cups — to use to create an outfit of fashion.
The poet will construct a poem consisting of fifty (50) lines. Each line must include one (1) of the candies, sweets, or delectable treats* found in the Spreadsheet of Fashion below, which lists ninety (90) fashionably edible sweets (the large version of the Spreadsheet of Fashion can be found by clicking here, or by simply clicking on the image below).
The poet may incorporate the products any way she chooses. For example, the poet could have actual Rolos in a line. Or, to incorporate a Peppermint Pattie into a line of her poem, the poet could include the words “pepper,” “mint,” “pat,” and “tie” in the line.
*yes, I am quite aware that the rhyming here is absolutely horrendous
The following Poem Prompt of Fashion should give you, Dear Reader, another clue as to what The Hyacinth Girls are planning for the month of June. It will be most fun! It will be most fashionable!
Prompt Five — “A Fashionable Diet / A Diet of Fashion,” based on Episode 405 of Project Runway, in which the designers are asked to re-style the outfits of twelve women, all of whom have lost a significant amount of weight.
The poet will select another poet’s published poem, such as Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning” or Anne Sexton’s “For My Lover, Returning to His Wife.” The poet will create a poem one of two ways:
1) The poet will remove exactly half of the poem’s line (in no particular order) to construct a new poem.
2) The poet will remove exactly half of the poem’s words (in no particular order) to construct a new poem.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen of fashion. The Hyacinth Girls have planned a new project, and will be back in full force in June. What’s the new fashionable project/project of fashion, you wonder? A lady never reveals her secrets. You’ll just have to tingle with anticipation until the beginning of June.
It is late, late, late. It is very, very late, and the Very Bad Band across the street is playing a Beatles song, and somehow I find that fitting.
Most Fashionable Reader! This is my last post for NaPoWriMoFa (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion)! There will be tears after this. Trust me. Whatever shall I do now? What will I do without my late night calls to Our Most Fashionable Vivienne, which always began with “O MY GOD I HAVEN’T FINISHED MY POEM YET THERE IS NO WAY I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS POEM”?
But there will be things to do. There will be an apartment to clean. There will be poems to revise at a much more leisurely pace. There will be books of poetry to read. There will be the brand new pool behind the brand new vacation home behind my apartment to sneak into at night. There will be Slash: The Autobiography to read. There will be new episodes of House to watch. There will be a shore and an ocean to enjoy in person. There will be new blogs posted by Brenda Dickson to read. And there will, at long, long last, be laughter! Yes, there will be laughter.
What there will be less of. There will be many less cartons of cigarettes purchased. There will be many less bowls of Honey Oat Medley, the poor woman’s Honey Bunches of Oats, consumed while in front of the computer at 11.30 PM. There will be less glasses-wearing pony-tailing mornings. There will be less eyestrain.
But there will still be late nights in front of the computer.
But. Most importantly: THERE WILL STILL BE THE HYACINTH GIRLS! Yes! As Vivienne so fashionably mentioned below, the Hyacinth Girls shall return! We will take a brief sabbatical, of course, to regroup and make ourselves fashionable again. But there is no fashion without the Hyacinth Girls! There is no Zelda without Vivienne! My Dearest, Most Fashionable Vivienne! My Dearest, Most Fashionable Vivienne who has so selflessly pulled me through this month! My Dearest, Most Fashionable Vivienne who has so selflessly pulled me through many, many, many months before this month! And this is for you, Vivienne:
It is the Most Fashionable and Most Famous Blue Heart Diamond. It is over 30 carats. I shall somehow persuade someone at the Smithsonian, where it is currently displayed, to let me have it, and I shall have the Most Fashionable of All Fashionable Diamond Heart Necklaces made for you. Thank you, Vivienne. Thank you.
And now. The last poem of the NaPoWriMoFa (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion) of 2008:
Consequence
Whenever I think of you, I remember all
the people in this world who never kept me
warm. I don’t mince words; they’re all
I have, my gestures being
broken, unsuccessful. Nothing. Again: nothing
parceled out from nothing, fear from a handful
of dust, something gorgeous for the camera’s
flash. A knock on the door, a game of chess
I’m forbidden to see, wholesome goodness
portioned out like poker chips. O
the sounds crackling from beneath
the stone! O you who were with me,
your heart a tangible matter of infinite hope!
The mute board you carried on your back,
waiting for intimate revelations that were
forgotten by first snow. I was deeply saddened.
Your secret griefs changed me,
my confidence turning
to wildness, a perpetual state of unknowing,
a hostile levity of tongue pressing against
the pills I took. The wildness I could never rein.
Here it is, Most Fashionable Reader: the penultimate NaPoWriMoFa (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion) poem! [I missed a day, and after this post, I am posting the final NaPoWriMoFa poem] And it is a Poem of Fashion! Not a Fashionable Poem, mind you. But — quite literally — a Poem of Fashion. It is inspired by none other than Our First Lady of Fashion / Our Most Fashionable First Lady, Brenda Dickson. Whom you can see in the video below. And, Most Fashionable Reader, you absolutely must must must watch the video below. And when you watch the video below, you will hear many of the lines in the poem below. And when you watch the video below, you will be complete. You will be fashionable.
And that is all for this poemlogue, for Brenda Dickson is really all you need.
One more thing! I must confess that I have appropriated Most Fashionable Vivienne’s Most Fashionable Word “Char” in this poem. But it is used quite unfashionably.
It sounds pretty bad, but you can get used to it, and once you acquire a taste for it, you won’t want anything else.
Start with a clean face, a steel face, a face
so still the breeze won’t know it’s coming.
This is the best advice I could give any woman.
This will be the answer to all your problems.
You’ll need lips, sealed lips, blood
tinted lips, lips glossed with sheered magenta.
They’re used in movies, and they work
well with your blank slate of face. Your eyes
should be traced with flecks of your heart’s
char, rimmed with hallowed ash, kohled
with the cold calm of the righteously wicked.
It may sound commercial, but it makes you
better. It’s a great look.
It’s really all you need when you want.
Another poem inspired by our Most Fashionable Heroine/Heroine of Fashion.
Adore her fashion.
ADORE IT!
A Self-Help Guide to a Diamond Heart Necklace
Be beautiful.
Be acquired.
Be male or female.
Be fashionable.
Be very fashionable.
Be drawn to the things you like.
Be a very special part.
Be the answer to all your problems.
Be three days a week.
Be careful - read your labels!
Best on your skin.
Best to choose fingernail.
Best thing you can eat: predigested.
Best advice I could give any woman: keep her figure.
Try and cut down what you’re eating.
Try and cut the fat out.
Try to keep away from any fat at all.
Remember: if you don’t eat fat, you don’t.
Remember the advice given to you, vegetables, fruit, and grain.
Remember: no milk.
Do something about a great deal.
Do with feeling.
Do five minutes again.
Do it watching television so you won’t get bored.
Do stick colors with your wardrobe.
Do your eyebrow pencil.
Do take out your eyes.
… we, being Zelda and myself, refuse to do it. We will not leave you, blog! We will not leave you, blog readers! We will not leave each other, being hyacinth girl BFF/BFF (Best Fashion Friends/Best Friends of Fashion) Forever! There will, of course, be a necessary break. There will, of course, be my oversleeping tomorrow, and rushing around so due to the oversleeping that I forget it is May first. There will be my writing the letter “R” on my hand to remind myself to not only pay the rent but to begin the morning by saying “Rabbit Rabbit” and not “Damn cat! Get off of my face!” for good luck. There will be the moment when I realize in an obscene foam of panic that I have not yet written a poem for the day, and there will be my flipping through various cable channels or the pages of Us Weekly to find some kind of angst for inspiration. There will be the moment when I realize it is May, May, and NaPoWriMo is over, and there is no poem, and there will be dancing, though it will be dancing laced with the bitter taste of disappointment and let-down. But there will be more Hyacinth Girls to come. O, and there will be fashion, and there will be rock bandannas, and all will be heart-shaped and diamond-encrusted.
Before posting this poem, one of two poems for the evening, I must give a shout-out to my Fashionable NaPoWriMo Partner/NaPoWriMo Partner of Fashion and Most Fashionable Friend of All Time, Zelda, without whom I wouldn’t have made it this month, or, really, any month in the past two years. Zelda, I am choking back tears, Academy Awards-style, and fashionably. Zelda, the world cannot produce all of the diamond heart necklaces that you deserve. You are a beautiful person.
Turn the Wheel and Look Windward
Whenever we feel, we remember
that the world hasn’t kept us
in forgetful snow. You who were
inclined to nothing, nothing, a habit
attached to the pills I took, to get it
off, and so, and privy to the secret
wild, unknown men. Most of these
are you, pressing, lidless, waiting for
preoccupation. or hostile revelation.
I’m glad it’s over. The intimate
young are usually marred, fragments
I have shored under the firelight, under
the brush, under infinite hope. We are still
a little afraid of the blank
something forbidden, a sense of nothing,
nothing. At birth, I didn’t mince
my words, an unbroken series
of gestures. A gorgeous handful
of dust, the promises of life.
We, looking into the heart,
are intricate machines, register
earthquakes, falling towers, Jerusalem,
Athens, Alexandria, dignified
under the name of daring.
Most fashionable reader! Is NaPoWriMoFa/ FaNaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion/Fashionable National Poetry Writing Month) finally coming to a close? Is it? I must confess that, instead of diligently working on a poemlogue for tonight’s NaPoWriMoFa/ FaNaPoWriMo installment, I one) worked diligently on the .gif file of Bret Michaels in All His Fashionable Glory found in my previous post; and two) read about a national gang of killers that leaves smiley faces as calling cards and may be responsible for over 40 deaths in 11 states. Yikes! Even though I outgrew my serial killer obsession at the tender age of twelve or so (and yes, this is true, and yes, I fully realize that the truthiness of that statement will cause many of you to cringe in horror), this story interests me because of the smiley faces. They are EXACTLY like the Smileys in the highly controversial (yet incredibly boring, in my humble opinion) PS2 game Manhunt. And that freaks me out a little. They’re not connected, of course — these killings began about 11 years ago, and Manhunt was first released in 2003 — but the idea that an evilly twisted collective unconscious exists is a bit disconcerting.
Smiley faces in random places scare the bejesus out of me, but not as much as dolls do. My fear of dolls is a direct result of an episode of The Waltons (yes I watched The Waltons! do not judge me!) I saw when I was very, very young. The episode was “The Changling,” and in it, Elizabeth — perhaps experiencing teenage angst for the very first time — realizes that whenever she gets angry or upset, things start to move around the house. There was one scene (that is giving me chillbumps as I’m typing this. seriously.) where Elizabeth was in bed on a dark stormy night. She looks across her room at her WRETCHED WRETCHED RAGGEDY ANN DOLL when the lightning flashes. When the lightning flashes once more, Elizabeth sees that her WRETCHED WICKED EVIL RAGGEDY ANN DOLL HAS CHANGED LOCATIONS!!! How could this have happened, most fashionable reader? HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED???!!!
Look: have you seen the Miley Cyrus photographs? Have you seen them? Seriously. SERIOUSLY. Look. I’m not going to post them here, because they are too disturbing. The girl is fifteen! Fifteen! I was disturbed enough when she said she wanted to write her memoirs (because doesn’t that imply something naughty? I mean, let’s be honest, creative nonfiction people. You say “memoir” when you want to write about how great you are at the indoor sports, even if that’s the creative part), but when she took these borderline porn photographs with obvious sexual context and connotation? No. No, no, no. Here is my plea to Miley Cyrus’ parents: please, guys. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. Look.
This is too disturbing. It’s making my nerves bad tonight. Yes, bad. Here is a photograph of Courtney Love to calm my nerves. Nobody, not even the rain, has more cake.
In the below poem, I satisfy two requests: one, from my dear friend of fashion/fashionable friend, who requested a Miley poem. Two, from Zelda’s prompt of fashion/fashionable prompt, the menswear one, requiring us to write in a form we’ve never tried before. Oh, it’s the end of NaPoWriMoFa/FaNaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion/Fashionable National Poetry Writing Month). Oh, yes it is.
On the Occasion of Miley Cyrus’ Vanity Fair Photo Shoot
Now, I admit: it’s not as easy to defend the opinion that Bret Michaels is the Hottness as it is to defend Slash’s Hottness. Talent-wise, at least. I mean, I think we all agree that Slash has talent. Not talent like, oh, Shawn Lane had, but — in all honesty — I’d rather have Slash blaring from the speakers of my car rather than Shawn Lane as I’m gnashing my teeth on the angst and general malaise and incredible rage that comes with Being a Poet.
Now, Bret Michaels does have the ability to play the guitar. He can play it just as well as your Unspeakably Cool Cousin plays it outside on the porch when he visits during the holidays after his parents and your parents and all of the other grown-ups have gone to bed, and your Unspeakably Cool Cousin plays and talks about Jimmy Page, whom you secretly despise, but you respond to your cousin’s blatherings about Jimmy Page the same way you respond to blatherings on Ernest Hemingway (whom you also secretly despise), and that is by saying, “Yes, [insert man name here] is a man who worked extremely hard on his craft, and no one can deny him that,” and you are happy with your statement, for it is neither negative nor positive, so you do not feel as if you’re lying and pretending to be someone other than yourself, but — and this is purely hypothetical — if you were yearning to be someone other than yourself, you’d be yearning to be someone one tenth of one percent as cool as your Unspeakably Cool Cousin, because, even though both of you turn thirty this year, and now that your clothing screams FASHION! and your wit is as sharp as a brand-new switchblade and you have read every single thing Dave Eggers has ever thought of writing and can discuss it for great lengths of time with great enthusiasm, you still feel like Super Dork of the Universe when beside your Unspeakably Cool Cousin, who has now moved from talking about Jimmy Page to talking about the prison fight that almost kept him from being released last week, and you listen with wondrously rapt attention because, even though you are fully aware that you will never be able to touch the coolness that is your Unspeakably Cool Cousin, you enjoy being given the opportunity to look right into the Glorious Face of Great Coolness once or twice a year because it is so much better than never being able to be in its presence at all.
Whew! That was exhausting! Back to Bret Michaels. So I cannot defend the hottness factor of Bret Michaels by speaking of his musical talent. I can, however, defend Mr. Michaels’s hottness by saying that, even though he may not be king of the guitar, he is most, most certainly the King of Fashion. Our Lady of the Most Fashionably Fashionable Fashion Brenda Dickson tells us: Fashion is something that is acquired by looking at a lot of different fashions. Mr. Michaels takes this wondrous quote and makes it his own, which is this: Fashion is something that is acquired by trying out a lot of different fashions. Some fashions are, understandably, a lot more fashionable than others. See the Metamorphosis of Bret Michaels’s Fashion below. Note the photos in which Mr. Michaels bears an uncanny resemblance to a) a Raw Eddie Murphy and b) Kid Rock (those being examples of Bret’s unfashionable moments).
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FASHION
OF THE HOTTNESS THAT IS BRET MICHAELS
Well hello!
Are you looking for poems?
Are you looking for fashion?
Are you looking for fashionable poems and poems of fashion?
Are you looking for poems, fashion, fashionable poems, poems of fashion, Courtney Love, Bret Michaels, Slash, and Brenda Dickson?
Then you've come to the right place!
The Hyacinth Girls welcome you to their blog.
It's very dramatic.
Prompt Six — “Brain Candy,” based on Episode 406 of Project Runway, in which the designers were taken to the Hershey’s flagship store in Times Square and were told that they had five minutes to grab whatever they could as raw materials — from Twizzlers to Hershey’s syrup, from Hershey’s pillows to economy-sized bags of peanut butter cups — to use to create an outfit of fashion.
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Fashionable Poem Prompts of Fashion, I heart Johnny Depp, The girl with the most cake, Tom Colicchio Is The Hotness, Unmentionable Lusts, Yes Zel Regularly Consumes Massive Quantities of Sugar | Tagged: big league chew, cadbury eggs, candy, chocolate, cow tales, jujyfruits, junior mints, mambas, Poem Prompt, poems about chocolate, poems about food, storck chocolate riesen, sugar babies | 
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Posted by zeldafitzgerald
But there will be things to do. There will be an apartment to clean. There will be poems to revise at a much more leisurely pace. There will be books of poetry to read. There will be the brand new pool behind the brand new vacation home behind my apartment to sneak into at night. There will be Slash: The Autobiography to read. There will be new episodes of House to watch. There will be a shore and an ocean to enjoy in person. There will be new blogs posted by Brenda Dickson to read. And there will, at long, long last, be laughter! Yes, there will be laughter.
Here it is, Most Fashionable Reader: the penultimate NaPoWriMoFa (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion) poem! [I missed a day, and after this post, I am posting the final NaPoWriMoFa poem] And it is a Poem of Fashion! Not a Fashionable Poem, mind you. But — quite literally — a Poem of Fashion. It is inspired by none other than Our First Lady of Fashion / Our Most Fashionable First Lady, Brenda Dickson. Whom you can see in the video below. And, Most Fashionable Reader, you absolutely must must must watch the video below. And when you watch the video below, you will hear many of the lines in the poem below. And when you watch the video below, you will be complete. You will be fashionable.
when I realize in an obscene foam of panic that I have not yet written a poem for the day, and there will be my flipping through various cable channels or the pages of Us Weekly to find some kind of angst for inspiration. There will be the moment when I realize it is May, May, and NaPoWriMo is over, and there is no poem, and there will be dancing, though it will be dancing laced with the bitter taste of disappointment and let-down. But there will be more Hyacinth Girls to come. O, and there will be fashion, and there will be rock bandannas, and all will be heart-shaped and diamond-encrusted.
Smiley faces in random places scare the bejesus out of me, but not as much as dolls do. My fear of dolls is a direct result of an episode of The Waltons (yes I watched The Waltons! do not judge me!) I saw when I was very, very young. The episode was “
calm my nerves. Nobody, not even the rain, has more cake.
Now, Bret Michaels does have the ability to play the guitar. He can play it just as well as your Unspeakably Cool Cousin plays it outside on the porch when he visits during the holidays after his parents and your parents and all of the other grown-ups have gone to bed, and your Unspeakably Cool Cousin plays and talks about Jimmy Page, whom you secretly despise, but you respond to your cousin’s blatherings about Jimmy Page the same way you respond to blatherings on Ernest Hemingway (whom you also secretly despise), and that is by saying, “Yes, [insert man name here] is a man who worked extremely hard on his craft, and no one can deny him that,” and you are happy with your statement, for it is neither negative nor positive, so you do not feel as if you’re lying and pretending to be someone other than yourself, but — and this is purely hypothetical — if you were 
yearning to be someone other than yourself, you’d be yearning to be someone one tenth of one percent as cool as your Unspeakably Cool Cousin, because, even though both of you turn thirty this year, and now that your clothing screams FASHION! and your wit is as sharp as a brand-new switchblade and you have read every single thing Dave Eggers has ever thought of writing and can discuss it for great lengths of time with great enthusiasm, you still feel like Super Dork of the Universe when beside your Unspeakably Cool Cousin, who has now moved from talking about Jimmy Page to talking about the prison fight that almost kept him from being released last week, and you listen with wondrously rapt attention because, even though you are fully aware that you will never be able to touch the coolness that is your Unspeakably Cool Cousin, you enjoy being given the opportunity to look right into the Glorious Face of Great Coolness once or twice a year because it is so much better than never being able to be in its presence at all.
hat was exhausting! Back to Bret Michaels. So I cannot defend the hottness factor of Bret Michaels by speaking of his musical talent. I can, however, defend Mr. Michaels’s hottness by saying that, even though he may not be king of the guitar, he is most, most certainly the King of Fashion. Our Lady of the Most Fashionably Fashionable Fashion Brenda Dickson tells us: Fashion is something that is acquired by looking at a lot of different fashions. Mr. Michaels takes this wondrous quote and makes it his own, which is this: Fashion is something that is acquired by trying out a lot of different fashions. Some fashions are, understandably, a lot more fashionable than others. See the Metamorphosis of Bret Michaels’s Fashion below. Note the photos in which Mr. Michaels bears an uncanny resemblance to a) a Raw Eddie Murphy and b) Kid Rock (those being examples of Bret’s unfashionable moments).
zeldafitzgerald
viviennehaighwood