MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 13)

Let's workshop this stanza sequence, which includes Rubik's cube tournaments, 1980's car ashtrays, the Texas A&M bonfire horror, bestiality, pimping, math as bad for "the black spirit," Amway tapes

challenges lift the wormtongue spell of pessimism

civic-center security enforce crowd silence 
as teenaged forearms ripple clickety-clacks
in Rubik’s cube contests unintentionally surreal

lost ones sometimes fall so hard for each other
that, from gratitude and from fear of going back,
they block each other from uncovering the way

kids burying their faces
in the skirts of their mothers
when spoken to by strangers

a dashboard ashtray, glutted with butts,
tapped clean against a rusty rocker panel,
midmorning, onto the A&P parking lot

a lethal bonfire collapse, then
all this talk of “Aggie Family”—
only the vilest sue their family

a Wal-Mart employee, lowest on the rung,
makes the long walk across the lot, head down,
to tell the family they will have to move on

the wild eyes of the ones who somehow survived

boys sticky-back to sticky-back in the shared bunk

a land where it “spirit murders” blacks to teach them math

being worked on by a confident expert—
of love, say—is a nightmare for those 
not wanting to face that they are objects

when you learn that the great dancer engaged 
in wartime bayonet combat, you cannot help 
but think of the finesse with which he killed

watch out for the venomous vengeance 
of those who insist, “I can never be, be 
what I am, having seen what I’ve seen”

that funny feeling inside, that accolades
are in part designed to drain recipients,
may undermine going after new projects

one pink slip given out by a tranny boss
has a God-hates-trannies campaign carry on
for a lifetime, and spread down generations

leaning upon those four touchdowns
just like a show, the high-school hero 
lives as a shell, yes, pumping gas at Shell

courtesy sacred salt sweetens the online healing-crystal sale

instead of blocking from mind
the death of a dream, why not
commemorate it with a dream urn?

at the feet of the great pimps you learn 
to cut women off from all but you
and mix beatings with effusive love

used for therapeutic riding by day
and Washingtonian exploits by night, the horse
knows father and disabled son quite well

blood flow redirected, more each year, 
away from interests that give life zest
and merely to muscles for manual labor

just a mite more mental firepower and he would see that Satan’s words 
to him “All it takes is the least evil being to destroy heaven” are true 
merely in the trivial sense that it is impossible for evil to be in heaven

life got in the way, but did you put it there?

Amway cassettes and VHSs horded 
in boxes for years, the guilt pitches
concerning their power still at work

disheveled to affect 
one too deep
for concern with glamour 

the strangeness of a view 
being the chief motivation
for endorsing it

asking your foreman
to put your son on
at the sawmill

watching yourself conversate in the barbershop mirror

invited only because you were 
standing with the people 
the inviter wanted to invite

methadone addicts 
high on job sites 
running circular saws

mid-career give-ups who find themselves brave
by noting that taking to the streets for justice
is a privilege of those in retirement

hypothermic hobos undressing in the streets

one who enjoys the art of boxing so much
that a personal stake in one beating the other
would actually detract from the viewing thrill

Armageddon “on the horizon,” the God-teen wonders
whether she should continue to practice going without
TV and cookies, or simply enjoy them while they last

whites are blamed for thinking that all blacks look alike,
until such thinking proves convenient—accounting, 
as it does, for all the Tupac sightings, for example

what is the true target of our rage 
when we rage at the dog gnawing in bliss
on the dug-up bones of a loved one?

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: lsc.org/news-and-social/news/photos-rubiks-cube-speed-cubing-competition-2018