MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 38)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about glow-in-the-dark scorpions, transracialism, celebration of life in all its forms, hiding details from doctors, pro-life protests, local-access commercials
the inwardness of hooded northerners accumulation of wealth to escape finitude those around whom electronics malfunction horrors committed to cover relatively minor flaws pimping from alley shadows even in this day and age boxcars of agony yet again, even in the age of nanobots black people calling the spinning back kick “roundhouse” jagged fault lines in brick walls unable to flex with the Earth black lights disclose bushes with cyan bulbs in the desert night the urge not to voice criticisms to which we ourselves fall victim impertinence well cloaked with wit even when no witness is present when what one has been called to do is not what one is equipped to do men moved to open up about marital troubles only when nothing is left to lose that society—and so he too, deep down—still questions whether one can be transracial has impostorness reek from his manner, and this might mean he is not of his new race if, indeed, one’s manner must exude no doubt as to belonging in order truly to belong however sad he acted, however upset he was at the threat to his routine and control, however much what was to come would demand daring—when his wife came out a surge of cheerfulness swept over him in secret: the horizon of youth opened again it is angering as all hell when slaves no longer behave as slaves—and it is downright scary if we have long been used to them as our slaves do praise the raw scent of arm pits—but not to scorn those perfumed do praise the power of the eye—but not to scorn machines do praise the athlete body, the icicled tree—but not to scorn sculptures the night in each other’s arms immobilized by remembrances newspaper strips for toilet paper the other woman was a guy poems are one means of throwing light on your concerns, your questions taking the doctor’s inability to spot what you went in attempting to cover as grounds for thinking it no big deal “Oh word!” he said, in a poor job of camouflaging phony listening to her on and on about how “It would have been too expensive anyway (furniture, clothes, toys),” and so she said—to draw out his “Wait, who?”—“I would’ve given it your name” creators so touchy about the handling of their ephemeral art abortion-center picketers wielding fake holy water to what degree does our knowledge advance not because of wonder but because of wickedness in seeing people stripped of naïve beliefs? to avoid provoking the denied threat now upon us, we use good manners— pleases, thank-yous, utensil silence blocking our ears to expert advice concerning, for instance, proper running shoes because such advice threatens our excuse to quit cavalier remarks, indifferent to the person’s suffering— but all to make him laugh giving your kids speaking roles in the local-access mattress commercial arm-in-arm between two friends arranging the dead one’s journal entries by the four seasons children held back a grade to be bigger for sports bird accents and dialects differing by region of origin “Wait—you’re telling me that I shouldn’t be ashamed of masculine energy, that I shouldn’t try to snuff out every last ember of it within me?!” demented from challenge-free childhoods spiked with comfort drugs, no wonder students—in what might be an ironic symptom of hatred for the comfort culture that reared them—ambush professors who discomfort them with alien outlooks as if he were exiting the stall in which you are next to shit, you avoid eyes with the one leaving your shrink’s office those we lead on—hugs, kisses, late night innuendo—just to have a steady someone whom we reject merely how it is framed by language can make the difference between a good and a bad trip: “cosmic consciousness” or “death of the ego”
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.
