Expatriate Recommends Diaspora

Now Tony, dear, what do you call yourself?

“Enthused, confused, stunned, besotted….and a designer”

Anthony Xavier Edwards, unlikely fashion star,

moves to Shanghai from down under

Ensconced to the Bund* by postage stamp,

envelope sealed by Yves Saint Laurent

Tony loved his Australia, then left it

Do it, but, where? Do it, but, where?

Pack the tuxedo, treat the crème one with care

Ooze north with glamour, oh aren’t you fab

Design a restaurant? Sure, take a stab

Line China with cashmere

Your office with mirrors+

Find the modern in the erhu^

Minus the tears

Press the chairman for his email

You want to scatter your seeds

Feng shui for the Wall

Will it include beads?

First, headline failures

Think turbine engine tour

You wanted appreciation

Damn Australia, it’s a bore

Next, wool deal goes awry

Valise emptied of money

Stripped to your Tee

It’s terribly unfunny

Soon there were scarves for Hillary, the dressing of Chinese King Tuts

Costumes for the orchestra, lace and tailoring and fine hautes

It ended all “prêt-a-porter”

“Nothing’s better than you” he’d say

and “That’s not ego

but confidence, I pray”.

Pronunciation guide

+ meers

^ are-who

~pretaportay

*Shanghai's Bund is the riverfront promenade that evokes

pre-War glamor present-day vitality and modernism. The

Peace Tower and the former HSBC Building are among the

best-known pre-War structures still standing.

With inspiration from Shelley Silverstein’s Nothing to Do? found in

Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls, a children's book of poems collected by William Cole and illustrated by Tomi Ungerer.

East German Lust…oh Bodo, where are you now?

With cool attention, a small audience stands around

an industrial road roller parked at the Museum Biedermann

before a raised platform flanked by slight ramps on either end.

A monotype will be printed this day, here,

with the help of a very large machine.

As the driver prepares to deliver the final crush to the

work which lay before him, he pokes his head through the cage

of the driver’s compartment, checking the alignment of the paper's edge.

The gaze of a bystander intercepts the attention intended for the

now moving steel drum flattening the soon to be “print”.

The tension of hips and lips conspire to relax the bodies now

a repose without clothes ensues

A calm reception relaxes to flatten the limbed corporeality

rising like the smoky scent of kaiser speck

The flattening completed, the head darts around the cage’s corner,

looking back on the work now, and climbs down the ladder

lifting the thickened paper sheath….revealing to the

softly cheering audience, his heart.

Just Press the Button to be Free

The man lassoed her

with a three-point seat belt

firmly bolted to the frame

of the aging sports car.

Safely ensconced,

choke satisfied,

they wiz past the sanctuary gate.

The rocks

are tattooed

with sunlight.

Wild turkey display.

Kneeling does* unfold

legs to stand.

A distant river

comes into focus.

Select trees

united by an orb web

remind us what eyes

are for.

The spider is the

only hunter today.

*does, plural for the female deer

Mornings on the Island

Mornings on the island, that compact strip of green

bordered by a wrap-around street, were spent

in the company of others like myself.

Seeking fitness mindfulness, or nature’s beauty

mindfulness, or nature’s beauty

(in bloom that day, a week or so after the spring equinox)

we walked around and around the island as it is called

and breathed in new mornings.

Sorting out issues of concern with each lap

I was creating a check-list of what I considered to be

good work as part of my membership in the various

communities in which I participated.

I needed validation.

The loop in my mind mirrored the laps formed by my legs

as they made their way ‘round the island.

Interruptions included ever so brief greetings to neighbors

if only with a wink, or the occasional “good morning”.

Round and round in space and in my mind.

Again and again I wondered, “Where am I going these days?”

“Nowhere” filled me with dread.

Clearly, I was feeling lonely that day.

Bored, although fit, I sighed or simply exhaled unconsciously.

Next, with no warning, my body rose from the asphalt roadway

as though through a transparent cylinder made of air.

Lifted straight up, my feet moving skyward with my upper

body leading I was sucked up and into the clouds.

Soaring over the clouds, now, in an upright position,

my last recollection was of my legs, slightly bent at the knee

The experience appeared to have happened between footsteps.

At first, I thought I had been deposited back on earth

just a few paces from where the journey first began, but no

I now know that I missed but one footstep--the loneliness truly lifted that day.

Oh-prefaced responses…that’s o…h…prefaced responses

Oh Victor, oh victory…two very different responses

Do you think about sex too much? The question appeared in Glamour

in 1990. Did you answer…yes? Or was it….oh, yes…

Changes of state registered by both.

Victor, the man, the state of his manliness.

Victory, the state of the state or what ever sovereignty was chosen.

But in both, a shift, an aha moment

or an oh moment

glorious each in their own way.

O’Reilly…sorry, different.

OMG…silliness for 2.0ers…

O…Prah….I still don’t get it.

Oh carry on

oh yeah?

Oh you again?

Oh, you’re kidding…or….

oh, you’re killing me.

Oh, really?

Oh, I see and

Oh, I gotta go, and

oh no!

Oh master, oh servant.

…[singing]…Oh, oh oh oh…oh oh….!!!!!

Choose your ohs wisely.

Photographs Not Taken

There are the photographs not taken

An aged, elegant couple

sitting on a 5th Avenue park bench just north of the Met

matching blue-tinted eyeglasses

serenity in their long couple-hood

a “biopic” of quiet seated before the volta

A widow living in a tenement built by Mussolini

Tending to a crude distillery housed in a Mussolini granted garage

the quiet drip drip drip of slivovica welcoming visitors to sit

in deplaned seats of the now defunct Jugoslavenski Aerotransport

Wearing a stained, but clean apron

this simple, yet noble woman

is unknowingly part of an image

solely recorded by grey matter

A recently slaughtered calf hangs from a hook

on the ceiling of a farmer’s work room

slowly dripping its blood in anticipation of the butchering

tiny raised glasses of herb-infused liqueurs toast the beast

foreshadowing the soon to be prepared tripe, stews and soups

And the pic formed by a talented, but short-sighted gallerist in a

town house gallery standing before walls once rioted with

iconoclastic works

Most resting in storage now, unseen, unaccompanied, and

increasingly unremarkable with their exile

Clean white crew neck T-shirt over standard Levi blue jeans

A nod to basic good taste and handsomeness

minus the scarred belly the clothes would later hide

Untaken photographs, but photographs none the less.

Photographs Taken

The square head

as seen from above

faceless

but I see it is you

Trademark folded arms

shown with head

but recognizable as you

even minus the head

Hands holding the live trout…

your face facing a fish’s face

fish’s head as stiff as yours

…a wanting photograph of what men do

sometimes when they are together

The curly-haired teen with grand dad

and body language claiming know-it-all-ness

or is it hardheadedness

The dubious expression surveying saffron

colored Gates in mid-winter Central Park…

a dismissive attitude turned

tastemaker’s boast later that week re: Christo

I no longer take your photographs

but your head is still square, still

hard, so still, so stark

The Siesta Project

Tomorrow we launch the Siesta Project

We begin with stopping, as in stop making your bed

Lounge at your leisure,

Ignore the clock

And forget you know how to tweet

And floss, and fold

Loosen

Or better yet

Loose

Just Grab Me a Colour: Lipstick Madness

Description/Name Colour

Oh-prefaced Pink Pink

Topless Taupe Clear

Eternity's Pull Fuschia

Waste Not Want Not Glacier

Life's Illusions Orange

Marguerite Littman Pale Beige

L'orange Tourmaline

Forest Bathing Opal

Hold Your Comments Maroon

One in a Million Flame

Embraceable Indigo

See Something Say Something Rose

Chandelier Periwinkle

Whisper Berry

Racy Not Radical Crimson

Untraceable Auburn

Tuileries Promise Persimmon

Patsy Kline's Crazy Almond

Grab Me Peach

Aphra Behn Lilac

Mother Never Told Me Mango

Single-minded Sand

Whisper Cerise

Nonesuch Magenta

Whistling Tangerine

Shepardess Mauve

True Romance Cherry

Libertas philosophandi Lavender

Gabriella Radujko