MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 10)

Let's workshop this stanza sequence, which includes robot companions, sex work, Lyme disease, holy relics for sale, "fake" blacks, celebrities beating their wives, the white-man's disease, alcoholism

treating yourself to a drink 
for the strength it took to admit 
you have a problem

companies that sell both the foods
that cause diabetes and the pills
to control blood-sugar levels

those tasked with searching apartments 
for clues to relatives or wills of the dead
paired up in threes to discourage theft

cherishing moments with them after news 
of some tragedy can spoil those moments
by means of stares too teary, hugs too tight 

HIV-positive orgies

smudged by mystic healers

it is no longer politically correct to call homosexuality (and AIDS)
“the white-man’s disease,” but what about depression and suicide
or cancer, TB, MS, beat deafness, and the related two-left-feetism?

repressing sex helps distract us:
beneath surfaces we thus find
loins instead of oblivion

the split-second decision, as best friend
of a star stomping out his wife, to block
the kids from leaving to call the cops

however much despair dwindles from the thought
that we can all be great artists, might despair grow 
if the consumer class dwindles thereby?

as the ascetic gets good at his renunciation,
builds up enough stamina to be awe-inspiring,
he feels drawn back to the world he scorns

he grew up thinking
you could not be an artist
if you were right wing 

dents and holes attesting to passion

loincloth tribesmen playing bingo in the village hall

bums fistfighting over who gets to work the corner for change 

eager to give your immigrant parents a day
at hipster springs, when they simply want a free creek  
where food and alcohol is not prohibited 

gangs and nations might even sell weapons
to their own enemies were money as central
as people say—but that never happens

offered billions to shoot your pet, loved
as a human—its classification
as “animal” becomes a big factor

intrigued by those who lost it all, in fear
that we are on the same path—in fear
that deep down we want to be, in fact

extra attention given to the child in public, playing with him
and kissing him on the playground before school, arouses 
suspicion: signposting a happy relationship seems dangerous 

everyone knows that all black people—lest they prove
to be Uncle Clarences—are through the lens of racism
alone to process any obstacles they encounter in life

is five dollars for a splinter of the cross a good deal? 

it is almost always merely “almost 
to the day,” but what matter is it even if it is
“to the nanosecond” when nature is so rich? 

dysfunctional art written off as just 
there to shock, as if its cradle were not
this land of poverty, opiates, prison

paying him so little, you duck situations
where you might be forced in his presence
to address him as the crew foreman he is

the desire to ask if you were a good mother
is not strong enough to risk the child calling up
memories hoped to have been forgotten

how beautiful it is that not only 
a culture, but even a mere tick,
can shape your identity 

subjects unsuitable for fine art

ill-tempered flips of magazine pages

many are not going to like sex work
anymore than many like regular work,
but in the end surely it is work

knowing that you have to turn back
but still going a few paces forward in hope
perhaps just to smooth the transition

reasonableness described as skepticism 
in a culture where skepticism is pejorative
serves to sicken that culture even further 

that stage where the urge is still present
to shake off the soothed feeling formed 
from the robot stroking your teary face

This is a portion of an ongoing mosaic poem called Made for You and Me. This portion is from the first installment: hive Being (Stanzas 2016-2020). More specifically, it is from the 2016 portion of that five-part work.

Photo: old classic