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