Now I’m just stupid! I’m so awful!

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.

Because Brenda Dickson Is Here to Make Us All Fashionable.

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.

Because Breaking Up Is Hard to Do …

… 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.

I am doll parts. Bad skin. Doll heart.

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???!!!

This poem

[is gone! kthx!]

Because Context Is Important, Kids.

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

It was just WRONG.

Non-Poetry Aside of Fashion! / In Defence of Bret’s Hotness

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

Because Viv Is Dedicated. I Mean, DEDICATED.

And to prove it, here’s my second post for the day, to make up for yesterday’s outage-forced-pass.

When I was writing this poem, I thought to myself, as I have occasionally thought to myself whilst writing a poem before, hm. Hm. Hm. This sounds familiar. And as I kept writing the Hms got louder and louder, as the poem began to sound more and more familiar. And then I completed the poem and began to type it out and thought, Oh. That’s it. The ex-boyfriend. Of course. The ex-boyfriend of the plaid shirts and the creamed-corn-tasting breath once, indeed, did write a poem which began with the line “Were I to see you at a rock show,” or something of the like. And I froze, for a moment, thinking, Oh. Oh no. Oh no. And I debated, for a moment, the poem. I thought, perhaps, it would be best not to post it. I thought it might be best not to even type it out. I thought, I can’t take that from him. Can I?

And then I remembered that, though I have none of his possessions, he still, to this day, to this minute, to this second, has in his possession several things he took from me, including two very much beloved CDs and — AND! — a copy of a much-loved book — autographed by the incredibly fabulous and undeniably amazing Mark Doty. Other things he took from me include countless ink pens, hundreds of cigarettes, a hand-crocheted afghan, and a garden gnome I lovingly painted by myself. And my ability to listen to REM’s “You Are the Everything” without curling into a little ball and crying, crying, crying. And my innocence. There was my innocence. There was that. Oh, and my ability to have a successful and meaningful relationship. There was that. Oh, oh, and my general faith in the inherent goodness of mankind and the fact that not every person is out to screw me horribly and leave me in a shell of unspeakable numbness that lasts for months, if not years. There was that, too. Wait. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. The poem.

Were I to Meet You at a Rock Show

I’d still have angst I should’ve gotten rid of at 18.

Just you try to hold me down. Come on, try to shut me up.

My dearest, most fashionable reader: the intensity of NaPoWriMoFa (National Poetry Writing Month of Fashion) has caught me deep within its clutches. I have been sweating profusely at night for over a week — embarrassingly profusely, humiliatingly profusely. I can no longer trust myself or my emotions. I feel as if I am lost within the caverns of my own brain with gaping abysses on either side. Yes, dearest reader, being immersed in the process of poetry twenty-four hours a day for almost a month has taken its toll.

Take any of the women’s faces pictured here, dear reader (from The Blair Witch Project, The Ring, The Descent, and Event Horizon, respectively), and superimpose her emotion onto my face, and you will have a good idea of what my face has looked like during wakefulness as well as slumber this Terrifyingly Beautiful Month of April.

But please! Do not worry about my state of being, for those of you who know me also know that I tend to lean toward the fashionably (melo)dramatic whenever possible. It’s for the sake of the story, dear readers. It’s all for the sake of the story. And what a most fabulous story it is, dear readers! What a most fabulous story it is! Once again, I thank Most Fashionable Vivienne for inviting me to take part in this endeavor with her, and I also thank her for believing in my sanity. Thank you, Most Fashionable Vivienne. Thank you.

Though this month has been terrifyingly exhausting at times (and also, at times, just terrifying), it has also been incredibly, incredibly beautiful. There has been no pushing poetry aside for, say, Intervention marathons, America’s Next Top Model marathons, Law and Order: CI marathons, etc., etc. There has been the writing of the poems AND Intervention marathons, America’s Next Top Model marathons, Law and Order: CI marathons, etc., etc. I have found that poetry and television can coexist! O happy day! O happy, happy, fabulously fashionable day!

Serenata

You can’t [read the rest of this poem, betches! it's gone!]

Because There Are Forces and Forces Beyond Our Control

Dear Internet friends, you may, perhaps, have noticed that I did not post a poem last night. I did not post a poem last night. I was, in fact, unable to post a poem last night, due to an Internet outage in the area which lasted through three incredibly confusing phone calls with my Internet service provider, the night, and most of the morning. Ah, Internet! My dearest friend! Without you, I was forced to actually work and be productive, rather than examining blogs, examining Facebook profiles, playing rounds of Scramble, and looking at various forms of fashion. How could you do such a thing to me? How?

Now, however, the Internet has returned to me. And to prove my fidelity to NaPoWriMo, I shall post today not once, but twice! Here is the first poem, written in the middle of a Rock Concert (sadly, there were no fabulously fashionable top hats or white feathered jackets, so I’m not even sure it could be terms a Rock Concert) in a bar. I’ve long been fascinated with closed captioning, and spent a good deal of time glancing back and forth from the television to the Rock Concert to the sorority girls who were sitting in a corner with tube tops and look of utter confusion on their faces when someone pulled out a banjo. Here is the result.

Close (Captions)

Come on be a liar. My dress is the prettiest!

Most Fashionable Reader: perhaps you noticed that I did not post a poem yesterday. The horror! The horror! I used my Free Day Pass — though one can get into a lot of trouble with a free day pass. I recently heard a story of a woman who received a day pass from an institution, and during her free day, she a) rented a car; b) bought a wedding dress; c) drove over 300 miles to a ferry landing; d) took the ferry to an island, and while on the ferry, got other passengers to help her into her wedding gown; and e) went to the chapel on the island where she was purportedly going to meet her groom, a man she hadn’t seen in over fifteen years. I won’t bore you with the rest of the story, but I will say that no one ever saw hide or hair of this groom, and I will say that the police were involved at some point.

Speaking of madness, I happened upon this video today. The name of the song is “Lenore’s Song,” and it’s a response to, well, Poe’s Lenore, and the video is frightfully delicious. Think The Ring, The Shining, Friday the 13th Part I, Donnie Darko, Heathers, Carrie, and The Sixth Sense all smashed together.

Paradise

[is a place where this poem will never appear again!]