Lemonade Aikido
Let’s workshop this poem about the pageantry of false trauma and calculated pivots turning former brags into sob stories that skyrocket social capital in an era where victimhood rules the roost
scent of the day: Odor 93, by Meo Fusciuni
Odor 93 (2015, Giuseppe Imprezzabile)—a tuberose-tobacco fragrance that wrenches us into the pagan-woodland overlap between the innermost circle of the prostitution Venn (namely, white trailer-trash females, meth thin and crotch-rot commando, quick to resort to raw-dog anal with little qualms about bottle-fly swarms or follow-through head game), on the one hand, and the innermost circle of the nerd Venn (namely, floppy-disk-era white men, Coke-bottle glasses and pocket protector, quick to freak out if you address them by their government over the forest weekend LARPing in some fantasy hybrid of Arthurian legend and Dungeons & Dragons), on the other—
kicks off with spices (dweeb-pit cumin, menthol-elixir clove) sprinkled over dirty-fermented florals (creamy-indolic tuberose, fecal-tobacco narcissus) whose stemmy-twiggy facets get the spotlight due to mossy-vegetal greens (crisp-cool birch leaf, herbal-savory sage, musky-earthy patchouli) and dark-leathery woods (medicinal-phenolic oud, rooty-mineralic vetiver, leaf-fire guaiac, musty-hay tobacco),
a vanilla-dusted swirl of notes that seems meant mainly to keep the tuberose from appearing simply as the cartoonish bubblegum common on mall perfume counters (the equivalent of waxed and douched white-meat vulva from the first world) and instead (and in honor of its sobriquet “Mistress of the Night”) in its more natural voluptuous sense (the equivalent of mucosal and Outkast-stank dark-meat vulva from the third world)
where we see its buttery-coconut sides (triangle-punctured can of condensed milk) and its fruity-honeyed sides (overripe mango dripping juice) and its green-leafy sides (florist stem cut at angle underwater in a steel-basin sink) and its mentholated-medicinal sides (Vicks VapoRub on the child’s chest) and its carnal-rotting sides (the mortuary-floral liminality between birth hole and shit hole) and its dusty-spicy sides (a residue of black pepper now part of a dim pantry’s dirt) and its rubbery-latex sides (those tubes of gummy plastic material, Super Elastic Bubble Plastic by Wham-O, that kids would blow air into it with a straw to make durable-moldable bubbles)
the overall result being a white-floral woody fragrance that, in seeming to combine wizard-mage ceremonies of summoning storms or enchanting armor or so on with sex-trafficking ceremonies of skin branding or forced bukkake or so on, has me thinking of the territorial crossing of a woodland LARPing weekend with a mountain kegger party where some Merlin cosplayer finds his virginity screwed (the funny-feelings perhaps strong enough to say raped) by one of the party’s herp-chirp succubae, a quick-and-dirty interaction capturing the fragrance’s mystical-mentholated-mucky aroma and that might very well be the actual yeasty burnt-grimoire aroma of the real Merlin (Morgana juices soaked in his pre-electric-clipper bush and all) if you were to squat before him (ass to grass like a baseball catcher) and shake out the heat trapped under his moldy-sooty wizard cloak like a dusty blanket on the porch.
Lemonade Aikido In the grand theater of fake fury over the president’s hot-mic boast that he “grabs ’em by the pussy,” she recast her soirée flex—worn like Cruella fur over years of milking envy from starstruck primates— as mascara-tear #MeToo ripe with anal embellishment.
"Lemonade Aikido" is a biting satirical poem that launches a sharp critique against what it perceives as the opportunistic and deeply cynical appropriation of social justice movements, particularly #MeToo, within celebrity culture. The poem dissects a specific instance of hypocrisy, where an individual cynically reframes a past event to align with shifting cultural narratives for personal gain.
Formally, the poem is concise, employing sharp juxtaposition and highly charged, often unflattering, imagery to convey its satirical edge. The title itself, "Lemonade Aikido," is a clever oxymoron. "Lemonade" refers to the idiom "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade," signifying the act of transforming an adverse or challenging circumstance into an advantage or benefit. "Aikido" is a martial art focused on redirecting an opponent's force. This title immediately frames the poem's central argument: a seemingly defensive or empowering action (like joining #MeToo) that is, in fact, a strategic redirection of external outrage for self-serving ends, turning a potentially negative past into a perceived triumph. The poem sets its scene "In the grand theater of fake fury / over the president’s hot-mic boast / that he “grabs ’em / by the pussy.”" This direct reference to a widely publicized political scandal establishes the specific cultural moment the poem is dissecting, providing the backdrop for the individual's performative shift.
The crucial pivot occurs as the "she" figure (implied to be a celebrity or socialite) "recast / her soirée flex—worn like Cruella fur / over years of milking / envy from starstruck primates— / as mascara-tear #MeToo / ripe with anal embellishment." The poem’s critique here is profoundly layered. The "soiree flex" is revealed to be a specific past behavior: bragging for years about an intimate, albeit crude, encounter with power (being grabbed "by the pussy"). This "flex" was "worn like Cruella fur," signifying a cruel, predatory embrace of status derived from proximity to power, used "over years of milking envy from starstruck primates." This establishes a past cultural context where such an encounter, though demeaning, was leveraged for social currency. The poem then exposes the dramatic "recast" of this very same past event. When times changed and such boasts became a "negative," the individual pivoted, transforming her "flex" into a "mascara-tear #MeToo" narrative. The "mascara-tear" explicitly suggests an inauthentic, performative display of trauma, where tears are literally a product of makeup, not genuine emotion. The final phrase, "ripe with anal embellishment," is a particularly crude and provocative detail, pushing the satire into the realm of the grotesque by implying a fabricated or grotesquely exaggerated nature to the claims of trauma, or a perversion of the movement's intent for sensationalism and attention.
Thematically, the poem delves into the intersection of celebrity, profound hypocrisy, and the perceived commodification of social justice movements. It critiques the notion that all expressions of outrage or victimhood are authentic, arguing instead that some are calculated maneuvers to "make lemonade" from public crises and shifting social norms. The central argument is that the "she" figure engages in a form of "Lemonade Aikido," strategically redirecting what was once a status-enhancing boast into a narrative of trauma when the cultural tide turns, ultimately enhancing her own social standing or "flex." The poem challenges the audience to look beyond surface appearances and question the motivations behind public displays of solidarity or victimhood. It suggests that individuals, particularly those accustomed to a life of curated image and "milking envy," can cynically appropriate the language and emotional resonance of powerful movements like #MeToo, turning them into a "grand theater of fake fury" for personal advantage. This raises broader questions about the authenticity of activism in the digital age, the fluid nature of "truth" in performative contexts, and the potential for genuine causes to be co-opted and perverted for individual gain.
satire, activism, performative, #MeToo, celebrity culture, hypocrisy, social commentary, opportunism, manipulation, outrage, gender politics, contemporary issues, authenticity, commodification, political commentary, moral relativism.