MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 52)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about stalwart herbivores, FOMO, self-acceptance, insanity becoming more noticeable, old age, sheep on hallucinogens, a handsy grandpa, drowning
the humbled lioness—low in hopeful submission at the hooves of a bloody cape buffalo, panting— is gored and flung, gored and flung, floppy in dust visions of mirth elsewhere haunted her soul, rendering the present pale and wanting the deeming having come so chronically from the outside that it now comes from within, we are deemed failures for not mastering (or for at least not recovering from) grief self-acceptance requires filtering external metrics through the wisdom of an inner compass attuned over time beneath the surface fractures that we are, that allow us to be lovers and rivals, lies the uncrackable core of being itself that stage where life, its main drama, is spent retracing steps to recover misplaced objects: remotes, pills, glasses, canes, insurance cards conscientious horse love may lead to let down if your pheromones are not right for the beast to mount—but then there is the perfume loophole now any denial of the accusation of being anti-x (woke, trans, black) is proof that the accusation is true lunacy ripened to conspicuity iguana tail thrash bloodies fish-tank glass finding God in jail and giving him up on parole masturbating to historical figures would you feel accomplishment if one of your lines became a cliché? the bright side—word-jumble disorder, a windfall for poetry Rocky Mountain big horn sheep seek out lichen rocks, tripping taking up the painted gesture yourself— hand over face, say—to sort out what attitude, what inner life, it betrays although it continued to sponsor wars and weapon expansion, the company fired an employee alleged to have made a fat joke arranging the dead one’s journal entries by the locations of writing hair-mussing from grandpa, and sometimes more fashionably emaciated the urge to pinch cow lips, dog lips—bite them even cheering her on to fight death even though you know she is sunk deep in dying—if not insane, why else but for you to look good? living well as indicated by the practice of closing and opening refrigerators, drawers, with the feet while the hands are at work all-day cartoon marathon filled with commercials saying “Go outside today” defense attorneys put glasses on their clients: nerds are safe, honest yellow strips slashing by as you drive yourself to jail phlegm swallowed for nutrition that admonitory gesture of a silent shh— forefinger to lips—implicates its target in the eavesdropping fixing the drowned victim’s face for the casket, mouth still locked in a final panicked pull for air
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.
