MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 23)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about mortality, violence, beauty and perception, artificial intelligence, urban life, addiction, and the all-too-animal reasons behind even our most spiritual art
the pallor of obsessed faces what stays silent under hellos and goodbyes outsourcing to an AI chatbot the toil of crafting Dad’s eulogy dying just after stocking up in bulk clubbing the fearcrobatic fish to stillness the stroked head dozing in its mother’s lap an international star in the psychic circuit a washed-up celebrity clinging to relevance through TV ads once beneath her so many masters of obsolete practices: we have been preparing for AI wanting loved ones to behave as if you are not dying if rape includes any unwanted activity involving genitalia, birthing can itself be rape her parent blacked out each night from drink, the child feels proud to tuck herself in at decent hours having outsourced to an AI chatbot the toil of crafting Dad’s eulogy, your brother merely said “But that thing is soulless!” other things equal, the one oblivious to her beauty, seeing herself as neither beautiful nor ugly, has greater beauty you cannot tease “Your momma’s on welfare” when everyone’s mom is children change us: a bumper sticker— a flag one especially—was never our thing until their newfound US spirit clueless about how to answer the “reflection questions” appended to your own art in the college textbook wine purple-stained places nibbling teeth had lip-skin flayed really really really smart tend to be those who respond, “But that’s just a hypothetical; I deal in reality” did they truly believe they were communicating with jungle gods through their mega structures or were they—like all maters—just peacocking? pink-sock prolapse of her rectum relics of the spouse a smell sweet from poison in the milk cellar, rat teeth gnashing in death when something works against you for reasons incomprehensible (life—this—some say is a good example), even just saying so can be escapist could the conscious awareness that makes pain so much more terrible for us than fish be used to control it, make us not go mad? strength to be your best summoned up through recognizing the nobility— the glory—of your opponent if only you truly accepted that you are not the center of it all, you would have little issue tackling just one issue in the world instead of panicking before the countless doors open to you black homosexuals singing gospel gay marriage, interracial kids; stay-at-home dads, choose-your-own-bathrooms; a black president, a female candidate the feel of absolution in confession makes them okay with not taking action against what they feel guilty about children write words like drawing pictures and, when it comes to figures drawn over and over, cartoonists draw figures like writing words those living in the city’s underside taking part in the city’s goal to divert tourists from the city’s underside walking fast and with an air of being in your own world to avoid street violence people for whom the night world was a reality before the age of five the scatter of whores as the cop cruiser passes by self-help, psychic therapy, séances, Amway seminars a Tom-Cruise Aladdin freeing Jasmine to a whole new world (civilized, American)— a whole new world spreading as they sing once we stick on a label we often do our best to stop life from proving us wrong is the fact that home tales morph through generations and migrations something to be kept out of mind? activism’s conflict with truth-telling imagine if her chronicles had been written not by academics but by those among whom she moved: waiters, receptionists, caretakers alcohol has the middle-aged woman at the beach, arms up in dance, unconcerned with her sagginess and unenvious of bodies tight in their fecundity at least those who think AIDS is God’s scourge on gays do not just duck the issue of how such horrors can be when God is omni-good, omni-powerful, omni-knowing
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: journeylatinamerica.com/destinations/mexico/holidays/treasures-of-central-america-heritage-of-the-aztec-and-mayan-empires/