Amor Prohibido

Let's workshop this poem--set to Selena’s song “Amor Prohibido”--about a man, presumably older, inviting a girl on a getaway, presumably in a DM--a DM aiming to balance playfulness and predation.

See asterisk commentary below for why I am now redacting my photos. TDLR: perpetual infants get perpetual frost

scent of the day: Orange Star, by Tauer

Orange Star (2010, Andy Tauer)—an orange-incense fragrance that spins diverse citrus elements (honeyed clementine, sweet-tart mandarin orange, herbaceous lemongrass, heady orange blossom, and likely some bitter-green petitgrain) through Tauer’s signature resinous-hazy filter (as seen in L’Air du Désert Marocain) to make for what I see as the orange-resin sibling of Incense Extreme (or, as I sometimes call that fragranc, Lemon Star)—

should make me think of eating a creamsicle in a grove of citrus trees swirled by a Mediterranean breeze (which it can do) or even of scratching a frankincense tear into from a briny piece of driftwood on which Fanta-floral ambergris marmalade has been spread and allowed to bleach in the sun (which it does even more) but, in how the Tang powder mixes with oceanic evaporite, I much more get the image (and smell) of an clementine-mandarin-flavored baby aspirin pestled into a mineralic dust and swept away like cocaine off a record case by a sneeze)—

the overall effect being a fruity-fresh fragrance that, while happy as Andy’s own smile and teetering on the industrial edge of mall bathroom cleaner (just a little bit more lemongrass, and a bit less cinnamon and vanilla, perhaps would have tipped it over), brings a dark undertone (almost like a hint of citrus rot) that makes it more brooding than the more action-oriented Habit Rouge (as if dark clouds are on the horizon of an otherwise sunny scene);

the overall effect being, in other words, a marine-citrus fragrance that, despite the unique edgy elements of mineral-spirits-meets-sun-fermented citrus (truly a benchmark for citrus in its juicy-to-dry variety the way Sultan Vetiver is for vetiver), does bear enough of that strong dusty base DNA of Taur to be considered a flanker to some prototype (usually we say not the first release, Le Maroc Pour Elle, but the second, L’air du Desert Moracain) that best embodies the taureade fingerprint: bittersweet and salty soda bubbles that seem coated in a stony powder (olibanum, myrrh, and ambergris rooted in tonka, vanilla, and labdanum), a powder made extra dusty by culinary spices like coriander and dry woods like Texas cedar.

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Amor Prohibido

Hey. I think you should let me spoil you a bit. 
Your semester starts soon, right? So how about
we do a little Airbnb getaway before school
sinks its claws in you? I know that’s forward.

But I know what I want. And I know enough
about this world to know what you need. 
I promise to be a gentleman—until, of course,
you give me the green light to be otherwise.

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*In league with anti-art humans (the canceler scum gremlins among us)—now we have AI scouring my platforms to flag things that might upset “vulnerable populations.” For that reason I have chosen to treat everyone as infants, bot and human alike—the bots who have banned me from Claude and GPT as well as the humans who have gotten me removed from Substack and terminated from my professorship. I will frost all my photos—which, in an illiterate world of TikTok’s infinite jest, should be the only needed safety measure.

On that point, it just blows my mind that people who lack the firepower to read the sheet music of my syntax have any say over literary art. I want to say, “Isn’t that wild? Doesn’t that blow your mind?” But am I even speaking to someone who respects the word—or who can even fucking read? Jesus Christ!

What is even worse is that—AND THERE IS RARELY AN EXCEPTION TO THIS RULE (so watch what the fuck you say to yourself)—the people most offended by transgressive literature, literature that explores the darker things of which humans are capable—those motherfuckers are the secret diddlers of our beloved children and pets.

Let me make the rule clear for the spastics among you: THOSE WHO ARE THE MOST VOCALLY DISGUSTED BY TABOO SUBJECTS ARE OFTEN THE ONES STRUGGLING WITH THOSE EXACT SAME IMPULSES. There is a corollary to this rule: THE MORE YOU ARE CALLED TO REPORT (CENSOR, SILENCE, SHAME) THE ARTIST FOR HIS OR HER TABOO SUBJECTS, THE MORE LIKELY YOU ARE, IN FACT, STRUGGLING.

Look at all the anti-homo preachers. Look what they are about. Look how they get methed-out just to make it fucking last all night like Tom Petty. Fucking heartbreaker huh? Don’t think you are an exception.

I have your number! And I will not stop calling you out. I will not stop poking holes through your veneer of respectability, your calls for “safety.” Give me a break! I know what your “I’m triggered” and “I’m offended” means. It is as see-through as a toupee, as an oversized watch. You are overcompensating.

Nah. That lets you off too easy. Your “I’m shaking right now” is as see-through as tinted windows on a “family” van. You are performing a burlesque of virtue to hide the rot—perfect for a Kardashian world: plastic, shallow, performative.

You cancelers are the dark souls. You ban me, the mirror holder, because you are disgusted at yourselves—because you know what the fuck you are into, you lying scumbags. It is a tale as old as time. The poet shows you as the pigs you are. If we were not all set for obliteration anyway, I would never cast my pearls at you. Hawk tuah. I spit on you cunts.

Don’t ever project your sick fantasies on a person shedding light on the dark. Report yourselves. Not me. You are living nightmares right out of Orwell. And you lack even the basic humility to see it.