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judy smith Jul 2016
The 9.6 million followers who tune in to watch Miranda Kerr having her hair done on Instagram — for this is how models spend most of their time — were treated to a rather more interesting sight last Thursday: a black and white photograph of a whacking great diamond ring.

Across it was the caption “Marry me!” and a twee animation of the tech mogul Evan Spiegel on bended knee. Underneath Kerr had typed “I said yes!!!” and an explosion of heart emojis.

A spokesman for Spiegel, founder of the Snapchat mobile app, who is 26 to Kerr’s 33 and worth $US 2.1 billion to her $US 42.5 million , revealed “they are very happy”.

At first, the marriage seems an unlikely combination: a man so bright he founded Snapchat while still at Stanford University, becoming one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires by 22, and a Victoria’s Secret model who was previously married to the Pirates of the Caribbean star Orlando Bloom (she allegedly had a fling with pop brat Justin Bieber, leading Bloom to punch Beebs in a posh Ibiza restaurant).

Perhaps the union indicates that there is more to Kerr than we thought. More likely, it reveals something about Spiegel — and the way the social status of “geeks” has changed.

Since Steve Jobs made computers cool and Millennials started living online, nerds are king. Even coding is **** enough for the model Karlie Kloss, singer will.i.am and actor Ashton Kutcher to learn it. Silicon Valley has become the new Hollywood, as moguls and social media barons take over from film stars and sportsmen not just on rich lists, but as alpha men.

Being a co-founder of a company is this decade’s equivalent to being a rock star or a chef. And, if their attractiveness to models and actresses proves anything, then being a Twag — tech wife or girlfriend — is a “thing”. Sources tell me Twags are also known as “founder-hounders” because they like to date the creators of start-up companies.

Actress Talulah Riley was an early adopter. She started dating the PayPal founder Elon Musk in 2008. Riley, then fresh from starring in the St Trinian’s film, met Musk in London’s Whisky Mist nightclub after he had delivered a lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society. I interviewed her shortly afterwards and she told me they had spent the evening talking about “quantum physics”. A month later they were engaged. Their on-again-off-again marriage lasted six years before she filed for divorce again in March. Currently Musk, worth an estimated $US 12.7 billion and focused on Tesla cars, is said to be “spending a lot of time” with Johnny Depp’s estranged wife, Amber Heard.

Model Lily Cole dated the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2013. Later she had a son with Kwame Ferreira, founder of the digital innovation agency Kwamecorp. Actress Emma Watson is going out with William Knight, an “adventurer” who has an incredibly boringly sounding job as a senior manager at Medallia, a software company. Allison Williams, Marnie in the HBO television show Girls, is married to Ricky Van Veen, co-founder of College Humor website.

Could it be that these women are onto something? Dating a bro certainly has its appeal. They are innovative: how else would they invent apps that deliver cheese toasties or match singles based on their haircuts? They are risk-takers who must be charismatic enough to inspire investors and attract crowd-funding. They may not be gym-fit, but they are mathletes who can do your tax bill. They are animal lovers: every start-up is dog friendly. And they are fun: who would not want to date somebody with a ball pool in their office?

There is a saying about dating in Silicon Valley: the odds are good but the goods are odd. Nerds are notorious for peculiar chat-up lines and normcore clothes. Still, if geeks can be awkward, that is part of their charm. Keira Knightley, complaining that Silicon Valley was all men in hoodies and Crocs, described how one gave her his card, saying she should get in touch if she wanted to see a spaceship.

One Vogue writer recalled a Silicon Valley man messaging her via a dating app, in which he noted: “In 50 per cent of your photos you’re holding an iPhone. It may interest you to find out that I invented the iPhone. More accurately I was an engineer on the original iPhone . . .”

Most promisingly, some guys are astoundingly rich. It is suggested Kerr’s engagement ring is a 2.5-carat diamond worth around dollars 55,000. She has already moved into Spiegel’s dollars 12m LA pad. Between his money and her Victoria’s Secrets bridesmaids, no wonder sources claim they are planning an “extravagant wedding”.

It might rival even the Napster founder Sean Parker’s $US10m performance-art bash. He married songwriter Alexandra Lenas in a canopy among Big Sur’s redwoods decorated to look like an enchanted forest. Some 350 guests wore Tolkienesque costumes created by The Lord of the Rings costume designer Ngila Dickson. They sat on white fur rugs and were given bunnies to pet. Presumably rabbit babysitters were on hand when the disco started.

If such fantasies inspire you to become a Twag, the great news is you do not have to be a supermodel to be in with a chance. Such is the dearth of single women in Silicon Valley that one dating site, Dating Ring, crowdfunded a plane to fly single women to Palo Alto from New York.

Be warned, though: guys are single because they are married to the job.

No wonder most meet their partners at college or work — the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg met his wife, Priscilla Chan, at Harvard.

The Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom met girlfriend Nicole Schuetz at Stanford. Melinda met Bill Gates when, in 1987, they sat next to each other at an Expo trade-fair dinner. “He was funnier than I expected him to be,” she said.

Kerr began dating Spiegel in 2014 after meeting him at a Louis Vuitton dinner in New York. You can bet he was networking. Shortly after Louis Vuitton showcased their cruise collection in a Snapchat story. Last season Snapchat went on to become the biggest new name at NY fashion week.

If you want to meet tech guys, you might catch them at Silicon Valley parties, which is how the Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick met his partner, Gabi Holzwarth, a violinist hired to play. Or they might be schmoozing clients downtown in a swanky Noe Valley club in San Francisco or a boring Union Square hotel in New York. In London you find them around Old Street, aka Silicon Roundabout, in bars, at hackathons, or start-up meet-ups. In the day they are coding at Google Campus or practising their pitching in a co-working space.

Some tech boys date the old-fashioned way: on Tinder. Airbnb founder Brian Chesky met his girlfriend of three years, Elissa Patel, through the app. When I interviewed Instagram co-founder Systrom he admitted that when he had been single he had signed up.

Dating agency Linx — presumably a play on operating system Linux — is dedicated to making Silicon Valley matches. Amy Andersen set it up in 2003 after moving to Palo Alto and being “flabbergasted” by the number of eligible men. She claims her clients are “extremely dynamic and successful individuals’’: tech founders, tech chief executives, financier founding partners of large institutions and “tons of entrepreneurs”.

Andersen says tech guys make “fabulous partners”. Romantic and chivalrous, they write love letters, plan dates, “even proposing on Snapchat!” If you want to marry a tech billionaire, she says, “you need to bring your A game.” Her clients look “for women who are equally, if not more, dynamic and interesting than he is!”

There are drawbacks to dating tech guys. Before Google buys your amore’s business, he will be living on *** Noodles waiting for the next round of funding — and workaholics are dull.

Kerr says Spiegel is “25, but he acts like he’s 50. He’s not out partying. He goes to work in Venice [Beach], he comes home. We don’t go out. We’d rather be at home and have dinner, go to bed early.” Which might suit Kerr, but is not my idea of a fun.

You had also better be prepared to share your life. When Priscilla Chan miscarried three times, Mark Zuckerberg wrote about it on Facebook, while Chesky used a romantic trip with his girlfriend to promote Airbnb - uploading a picture of her in bed, with a note saying “f* hotels”. Besides all of which is the notorious issue of Silicon Valley sexism.

It has a chief exec-bro culture that puts pick-up artist/comedian Dapper Laughs to shame. Ninety per cent of women working in the Valley say they have witnessed sexist behaviour, 60 per cent have experienced unwanted ****** advances at work, two thirds of them from their boss. Whitney Wolfe, a co-founder of Tinder, took Justin Mateen to court for ****** harassment. Her lawsuit against the company alleged that Mateen, her former partner, sent text messages calling her a “*****”.

Spiegel has tech bro form. He apologised after emails from his days at Stanford emerged: missives about stripper poles, getting black-out drunk, shooting lasers at “fat chicks”, and promising to “roll a blunt for whoever sees the most **** tonight (Sunday)”. After one fraternity Hawaiian luau party, he signed off emails “f*
bitchesgetleid”.

No wonder some women are not inspired to become Twags. Especially when you could be a tech billionaire yourself. Would you not rather be Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, than married to the boss?Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/evening-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses
Matt Jan 2015
Master archer
Lars Andersen
Fires with such accuracy and speed
It is truly amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk
Sia Jane Jan 2014
I think perhaps as a writer, we seek the adventure, the unknown, the destructive, not only to know we are alive but to know what it is to live. We live fast, we love without restraint, with impulsive desire. Are we the tortured, the wounded, the broken, abused. We have lived a thousand lives, loved a million times. We dream, we idealise, we fall in love unintentionally, we make mistakes, we endure deep suffering and we fall to the hands of lust within a heartbeat. We choose to show our *******, our *****, our hearts or our souls. We refuse to sell our mind, to which we must always remain held to. Our body is a vessel, one of productivity made victim to abuse. It's such neglect, despair, that leaves us enveloped in patterns of trauma and deeply embedded psyache. Once touched, our bodies remember as an elephants mind always will. We are tainted, scarred, stained by another's love, lust, cheating, lying, crying, kissing, losing, dreaming. We are the risk takers, the ones who dare step into the unknown and often don't adhere to rules and regulations of societal ideals. We crave love. We crave endless excitement. We crave the adrenalin rush of a new lover. We don't settle. Wanderlust writes us. Each journey shapes us, choosing a new direction, experimenting with style, fiction, autobiographical tones. Landscapes colour our pages, pollute the rooms with a myriad of paints, smoking out those who don't endure, slaves to the written word, a pledge to keep reading pages of paper, dusty from step ladder high book shelves. Finding joy in limited first editions, autographed and locked behind glass doors.  Fairy tales whispered by Hans Christian Andersen - The Snow Queen in a pop up book laced with glitter and scintillation. Falling into stories, Alice's rabbit hole, lost to liquor saying drink me. The young ingénue, naïve and shy, her first role acting, embodying the spoken word through the masters written script.

© Sia Jane
I didn't use "I" in this piece, I was merely thinking out loud, a stream of consciousness maybe.
Patricia Drake Mar 2013
First we build bridges
With Lego bricks
In primary colours
And we move on
To build bridges
From  words
With tought
In many languages
Because we have to
And we build bridges
In steel and concrete
Between islands and peninsulas
Between us and them
We prioritise bridges
With our money
On our money
To showcase magnificence
And to replace expired glories
And we cross bridges
In real life and cyberspace
To seek community
In alternate relations
Outside the confines
Of Hans Christian Andersen’s  quiet pond.
Bob B Nov 2018
For what would be a change of pace,
Check out this unusual place:
Persecuted groups came to create
A place where they could discriminate.
1840s gold rush dreams
Preceded years of get-rich schemes.
Nutty religious cults explore
End-time prophecies galore.
Believe whatever if that's your conviction,
Even if your "facts" are fiction.
You can construct your own reality;
"Whatever goes" is gaining vitality.
Anti-intellectualism
Accompanies attacks on secularism.
Fewer people think it's not odd
For leaders to wait for messages from God.
Satan's causing natural disasters,
For he's out to get us, according to some pastors.
Hustlers hustle the hustled, you see:
Religious theatricality.
Snake oil is sold for a quick fix;
Someone always has a bag of tricks.
Charismatic visionaries
Hope their income never varies.
Though P.T. Barnum is gone, we can say
That humbuggery is here to stay.
Homeopathic cures are widespread.
Devious mediums talk to the dead.
Scare tactics of foreign "invasions"
Keep popping up on numerous occasions.
Some have rewritten the history of the South.
Fake news spread by cyber "word of mouth."
Commingling entertainment and news--
Called "infotainment"--can spread one's views.
Acting out your fantasy makes you feel
That fantasy--NOT reality--is real.
People are duped by made-up scares.
The "National Enquirer" peddles its wares.
Cosmetic surgery transforms features.
People are abducted by strange space creatures.
The fantasy industry proliferates:
Fox News infects all fifty states.
Prosperity-gospel preachers are abounding,
Hoping their spiritual interest is compounding.
The war on the devil is not metaphorical,
For scripture, some say, can't be allegorical.
There are always the paranoid ones
Who fear the confiscation of guns.
Groups attempt to change the rules
So creationism can be taught in the schools.
Anti-establishment's becoming the norm;
Mistrust of experts is taking greater form.
Lies don't matter as long as you
FEEL that what someone says is true.
Some fear "invaders" crossing the border;
Others fear a scary New World Order.
Distrust places the media on trial
And fosters climate change denial.
Some say vaccines do great harm
And GMO foods are cause for alarm.
They say gun laws will only provide
Guns to "bad guys" with something to hide;
That regulations on any level
Of finances are the work of the devil.
A con-man leader will always keep spinning
The fantasy that with him we'll be winning.
That fake news is harmful and only distracts
People entitled to making up facts.
Voter fraud's still the talk of the Right;
Conspiracy theories keep coming to light.
Con artists boldly state:
Conversion therapy makes you straight.
If an alternate universe is in demand,
Then WELCOME, ALL, TO FANTASYLAND!

-by Bob B (11-12-18)

°Inspired by Kurt Andersen's "Fantasyland: How America
Went Haywire"
EmilyRose Thorne Apr 2012
“And what do you think? Are there cliques in seventh grade?”
SHE
stands alone.
But not really.
“Absolutely.
There are cliques.
There are the Country-Club-Better-Than-You-Stuck-Up-Brats,
and the Future Fascists of America
and the group evvvverybody likes,
or at least,
that’s what they think,
who wouldn’t like them,
what’s not to like?
Y’wanna know what,
there are more cliques too,
the Invisibles,
two groups of Invisibles,
boys and girls broken up into Invisibles,
the Idiots, sittings with the CCBTYSTBs,
actually,
they’re sort of the same.
And there is exclusion,
there are hurt feelings,
there have been hurt feelings,
there is the hurting of feelings,
this is real,
this is honest,
this is now.”

Silence,
louder than HER words,
echoes
through the room,
bouncing off walls,
ringing in my ears.
No one applauds
as they have to the rest;
nobody applauds
nobody
applauds,
nobody
applauds
because nobody agrees
wants to admit it.
I do not applaud,
but I do.

“What are the weaknesses the seventh grade shares?”
Immaturity.
No common sense.
Lack of any sense of responsibility.
Idiocy.
SHE
contributes.
She says what my mind has created,
She understands
without me telling her.
But no,
they cannot listen to HER
with her true statements,
they don’t want to face the truth,
but they say,
We don’t want to look bad,
but they cannot handle the truth
is all.
“We are NOT immature,
we aren’t idiots,
we have common sense,
we’re responsible.”
Really.
Huh.
Never knew that.
I guess I’m just not up to par with my knowledge of the cliques.
Idiot.

“What are some strengths the seventh grade shares?”
SHE
has realized
that SHE is going to be ignored.
She does not
contribute.
But this time
I
do.
“For the most part,
most of us,
we are honest.”
They stare
with widened eyes.
She speaks.
Yep. I’m speaking.
I’ve been speaking.
Always.
What?
Oh.
Okay.
You don’t talk loud enough. We can’t ever hear you.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, you liar.
You haven’t been listening.
But it’s okay.
I understand.
I’m used to that by now.
And now,
I can safely say,
so is SHE.

“Why would you go and say something like that?”
Staring with their penetrating eyes
that seek for the truth,
Why could you say what we needed to keep under wraps,
didn’t we tell you we don’t want to look bad?
“You haven’t been here
but a half a school year.
You really don’t know,
you
don’t
know,
so you can’t speak,
be quiet,
be
quiet,
be silent.”
Be silent
as the snow
on the coldest day of winter,
be silent
as the
clouds
after the biggest summer storm,
silent
as
the
rain
hitting
cold
hard
hearts.

*Thank you to Laurie Halse Andersen for coming up with that in her book Speak. (I created everything except for the Future Fascists of America bit.)


This poem symbolizes honesty and a lack of willingness to face the truth in middle school especially. On Thursday (March 22, 2012) there was a 7th grade meeting. The headmaster the seventh graders to get in groups that the homeroom teachers had put us in. My friend Cam and I wound up in the same group, which was pretty great. The headmaster asked us, “What are the strengths of the seventh grade?” “Weaknesses?” Someone said we tend to be “cliquey.” Mr. Chambers asked who agreed with her, and people said “no,” or “just a little” and someone said, “I think we have cliques but not the mean kind.” and Cam stood up and said that she absolutely thought we were very cliquey.
When I had SHE in capital letters in the poem I met that although Cam was speaking, I had thought the same exact words. When she is lowercase, it means that just Cam was speaking. When I said I don’t applaud, but I do, I mean that I didn’t physically applaud, but in my mind I applauded her and supported her every step of the way because she was brave enough to speak her mind and I am shy and reclusive.
“…I don’t give a nargle’s bonbon what they think of me,” is what she told me when I told her how brave she was. Before that, she had told the people who confronted her and called her a liar, “you’re just in denial.”
Soooo in a way, this is dedicated to Cam’s honesty!
Fly Vida Jul 2011
"Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a tenement sky
Dream my lungs out till I cry
Then scatter my ashes through the Lower East Side."

Where babies cry and hands collide
Whether givin dap or throwin die.
We are the first in a line of many
Who made something out of nothing: a dream and a penny.
Like a phoenix, they rose from the dust of defeat
And brought the rhythm of their home back to the streets.
The scraps of culture that America ignored
Became the boat of what got us ashore.
Jazz from Harlem mixed with Rhythm and Blues
Became acquainted with the drums that Tito Puente used
To create a music that refused to die
Salsa: established on the Lower East Side.
So many legends and have come and gone until today
But we will always remember “Aguanile.”
The music that played through the day and night
Can still be heard on the Lower East Side.
Lavoe and Puente, Palmeri and Colón
Celia Crúz made her voyage alone.
As a platinum selling Latina in a white man’s world
She kept singing with her head up and her tongue curled.

The same blocks that gave us beats to abide
Also have a darker side.
With gunshots and sirens- like Piñero said:
“The streets are hot and feed off those who bleed to death.”
We took our own lives when violence was brought upon us
Too many children grew up fatherless.
If walls could talk they would tell you
Of all the pain that they’ve been though.
Boys and men who were smashed against the pavement
Ones that screamed and others that will never breathe again.
Hot like ice and cold like fire
Signs that read “gunman for hire.”
Read between the lines of a “Help Wanted” sign
Outside a legit business with a ringleader inside.
Kids stopping by on a daily basis
Lookin for work as a foot soldier in case this
Thing that they call school don’t get them nowhere
Cause remember- they’re not from around here.
But they makin their way on the Lower East Side
Where all eyes on you- can’t even the rats hide.
Cause its survival of the fittest just see another day
And in order to get in good you gotta play the game.
Your mothers and aunts are worried to death
But you gotta eat- so forget about the stress.
You gotta play the game whether you like it or not,
But there’s gotta be a breaking point where this all needs to STOP.

If you go down to Third street, between avenues B and C
People walk to a different beat.
A place that’s an escape from the world outside
Where fingers snap and words collide.
It was in the year 1975
Where you could see a generation strive
To find their souls on the city skyline
Amidst the smallest of confines.
Tongues spit metaphors and air filled the lungs
Of the poets that paved the way for many more to come.
The stage that was built by (Miguel) Piñero and (*****) Rivas
Was blessed decades later by Lemon Andersen and Beau Sia.
The place filled to capacity, bodies filling every space
Not an empty seat in the house, yet even more people found their place
Posted up against the wall all eyes fixed forward
Because when a poet raised their hands, no eyes were lowered.
They were free to clap, snap fingers and call out
In accordance with what a poet spoke about.
The Utopia that I speak of exists until this day
We call it the NuyoRican Poets Cafe.
Where all are welcome bring yourself and your freedom
A dream and a wish and the desire to achieve them.

Let us be the first in a line of many
To remember out culture and give it to our babies.
The English and the Spanish
As much as their tongues can manage.
Let's not be so quick to go against one another
Because in order to survive, we all need each other.
I want to live in a world where we all from the block
And we gotta support each other whether we like it or not.

"So please when I die
Don't take me far away
Keep me nearby
take my ashes and scatter them thru out
the Lower East Side."


In memory of Piñero, and all the pioneers of the time...
Lunar Mar 2017
The most tragic story isn't the one written by Shakespeare
or Hans Christian Andersen

It is not about Romeo, Juliet and their forbidden love, dying together

Nor a man, a mermaid and their impossibility to live for each other

It is about a writer and a reader:
Where the writer has written down, in every language, every realistic & imaginable word & emotion for the world
But the reader doesn't even have a chance to read them

The most tragic story is about the reader who can not read, and in the end, the writer who will not write

The most tragic happily ever after is where the reader and writer end each other
To My Reader
Aeerdna Dec 2015
Broken
Empty
I feel naked
Ashamed
My heart is exposed and my weaknesses are there
In everyone's eyes
My darkness only blinds me
I hear people laughing diabolically
Planning ways to use my flaws
I feel people getting too close
I cannot stop them
My wall is down, my broken arms
Cannot build a new one
I cannot run anymore
Cannot oppose them
I can't cover my nakedness.

My mind has become a blank page
I don’t know who I am anymore
I am lost
In the darkness I feel that I've never existed;
In my thoughts I see
Things that are not supposed to be here

Bitter words are flying in my brain
There’s a cold wind in my soul
I am getting cold
Like Andersen’s Little Match Girl
Dreaming hopelessly about some arms that could make me warm.

I hurt
I'm hunted by poltergeists,
With my bleeding hands I dig my own hole in the ground,
I hide in it
I close my eyes
I feel that I'm dying, but I know
I am only sleeping.


I can only hope that I will soon wake up from this nightmare
The Americans are the children of the world
with “Why?”
Children, forgotten the tales.
Forgotten
Hans Chr Andersen and
„The Nightingale”.
How shall I explain to you, oh, emperors,
the tears,
the white roses,
the morn.
How?

Добро утро

Американците са децата на света
със „ Защо?”
Деца, забравили приказките.
Забравили
Ханс Кр.Андерсен и
„Славеят”.
Как да ви обясня,о, императори,
сълзите,
белите рози,
утрото.
Как?



Translator Bulgarian-English: Vessislava Savova
rarebird
© bogpan - all rights reserved
Shika Holtzem Oct 2019
Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale.

This motto ran in the family and still does to this day. Legacy enclosed in a parcel, passed down from generation to generation. Opening it and being left in awe at its glowing truth.

One day, it was my turn to open the parcel. And when I saw it in all its splendour, I was indeed awed, just as those before me.

Ever since then, I yearned to write fairy tales. Sometimes, they came from searches for beauty in the ordinary. Sometimes, they came from movies playing in my mind.
I wrote them all on paper; the ink flowed from my pen, spilling daydreams and brainstorms into my notebook.

But what about my own fairytale?

You see, I was so accustomed to creating other’s fairytales, I almost forgot about mine.

I suppose it would be of adventure and derring-do; I’d travel the globe, sail the seven seas, constantly seeking sources of inspiration. Boat or plane, car or train, the world would be my oyster.

But what about my pearl?

Well, I would certainly never forget it! Because even if it’s a concrete forest, it’s still ingrained in my identity.
But even though it’s safe and secure, it’s small and keeps me enclosed, like a swallow in a cage.
That’s why I adore exploring life outside the cage; to find new magic, which allows me to continue writing my fairytale.

And I would live happily ever after by settling down with a kind, loving partner; husband, wife, spouse...someone who I can share a happy home with. All the better if I were a mother, for I would pass the parcel onto them.

Now reality is ensuing. Turmoil and trouble are taking their tolls on the world. Beautiful places become blood-stained battlefields.
Lives are lost; no one lives happily ever after.
And there are those who want to escape, but cannot; it is due to this that people are losing their belief in fairytales.
In short, the magic is dying.

I know this is so; as there is so much beauty to be found, I do know very well that the world is not perfect.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, all this doom and gloom. My creativity is a wild beast that cannot be tamed, and with it I will weave my stories the way a weaver does a tapestry:
Intriguing concepts, colourful settings, meaningful messages, relatable characters, all with the power to make my audience challenge their thinking and empathise with my characters.  

Characters such as:  
An outcast duckling, shunned by the world merely because of his looks, but is really a beautiful bird.  
A little maiden, no bigger than a thumb, venturing a world of marriage-minded moles and toads.
A vain emperor, who parades in a fine suit made of invisible cloth, but is really wearing nothing at all!
A so-called princess, who sleeps on a large bed of 20 mattresses under a miniscule pea, to test her sensitivity.
An icy queen, so enigmatic and cold-hearted that she could just as well be winter herself.
A yearning mermaid, who trades her voice and tail for legs to meet the man she loves, but alas - is not meant to be.

All perfect escapes from the boredom and terror of reality.

And I hope, when I am dead and gone, my stories will be so universally known that they will transcend cultural barriers, written and told in all the world’s tongues for all to read and hear.

For I want to be remembered as one who used words and stories to heal and help, in a time of hurt and harm.

Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale, and we all have a part in writing it. How it ends is up to us.
Dr Peter Lim Feb 2021
Winds have died away

snow still drips from barren trees

what's in store tonight?
CJ Sutherland Aug 2021
This song, the man influenced my writing throughout my entire life
I think of it/him
often
as inspiration.;
Here’s a tale of a simple fool,
glance at a page or two
laugh ha ha
but you blush a bit
For  you realize
while you’re reading it
it’s also
reading you….

I write  myself a note each day
I place it in my hat,
a wind comes by
the hat blows high
But
that’s not the end of that.
For all around the world it goes
it lands here right beside myself
I pick it up and
I read the note
which is simply
to remind myself
I’m CJ Sutherland
that Who !
I’ve kept a journal since the age of 12
I have 40 of them Today. Writing is
who I am
it’s not WHAT  I do.
I would like to know
from everybody
who reads this
WHY DO YOU WRITE
What motivates you?
Getting to know fellow poets
Denmark’s war


When the Germans occupied Denmark during World War 2 the old king was not dethroned
Every morning, he was seen riding in the park
Once, when his horse was spooked, by two German soldiers. he fell off his horse but got up
He dusted himself off, mounted his stead, rode on
The occupier thought his presence was good for morale, keeping the people passive
It was difficult to be a resistant fighter there was no place to hide after all Denmark is nothing more than a gigantic sandbank
The story of the king could have been written
by Hans Christian Andersen his work has been translated into my languages
We must not forget the physicist Niels Bohr who contributed to the understanding of nuclear power
There are many more names but this is not a list of great achievements
Denmark survived the war by not being overly aggressive making the enemy feel at ease
The farmers farmed, and fishermen fished so much that when peace, came they could help
Norway who faced starvation
THE TELLER OF TALES

Fragile as a little bird
you alight on my lap

weighing no more

than a dream
or a wonder would.

You adjust your bony ***
perch & command me to begin:

“Say... the story! ”

This is how the story
always begins

eyelash to eyelash
chin to chin.

You gaze into my eyes
as if the story already

exists there
and my voice just colours it in.

Whether it be Grimm
or Hans Christian Andersen

you never take
your eyes

off of
my eyes.

Your little hands
hold the sides of my face

So(you say)
you can feel

“The way the words move! ”

And night after night
to your and my
ever greater delight

You say: “Say... the story! ”
And the night listens

as the big human
weaves a world

for the little human
to get lost in

& find herself
again.

Precious as water
little daughter

I carry your sleeping
& put your dreams

to bed.
Johnny Noiπ Nov 2018
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and in the place where he died. Clean, clean, little light.
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— The End —