MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 62)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about clambakes, SNES games, heterodoxy, cancel culture, slavery, death, cremation, ballet dancing, treating marginalized people with kid gloves, sweat lodges
surgeon banana practice catching someone engrossed in their own reflection Memphis summers turn shrimp pink on the counter a lab fragrance whose jungle match remains undiscovered forgotten attic memories now museum-worthy chronicles the cocky half-grin of rad beach muscle, 16-bit teeth beaming only on one side stroke technique forged in secret on blowup flesh unable to judge butter-charred clamshells, left cold on paper plates, tongued for their nutty-salt residue by kids gone quiet especially with all the chewy hinges left to nibble away we mistook the flower for a teacher, in how it rose even among all the rot—when, in truth, landfill nourishment was a life of silver spoons “Cast a ballot this upcoming election and it could be you who wins the mega-cash— all it takes is a vote and a dream” the father fights against ignoring the son now grow accustomed to ignoring him even despite knowing that we ourselves would have owned (and raped) slaves, our bitterness toward past generations still makes sense: it is, after all, bitterness toward ourselves true safeguarding nurtures capacity to engage heterodoxy the good ones—the good Americans with guns scholars redeeming knowledge from fragments the therapist insisting you were raped despite your protests remember when you would get a slave when you passed go? child muscles tight watching parents jugular scream a pope’s life of captivity in the Vatican an encore performance hiding in plain sight innocence finds feast in leavings spurned by jaded plenty banned for sexualizing a child, a sexual creature Satan, the angel of deception, would have us sincerely thinking that it is owed to the persecuted, that it actually empowers them, to be shielded—even in college—from triggering words and ideas watching the youth get dolled up in a mirror, aware that your time for going out like this is over but what do we let slip (into the) past with all our time wondering how we let things—weekends, vacations—slip past? hide from the truth by reading the caged bird in her hand simply as her want, say, to be a singer it got hard for cops to kill blacks without repercussions, but pets are still pretty much open game video games are exercise: the boy cites his jock itch as proof typecast in roles never auditioned for the baby gorilla beginning to rot against the thuds of its mother’s heart putting off the terrible minute at all costs exploiting the superstitions of others white pick-guard covered with blood after punk shows Puerto Ricans in Fall sparring with boxing gloves at Union Square Park from cosmic cataclysm emerges a nebulous cradle John Cryer / Matthew Broderick, Jodie Foster / Helen Hunt, Melanie Griffin / Meg Ryan, Topher Grace / Tobey Maguire, Rene Russo / Jeanne Triplehorn, Michael Bolton / Kenny G, Gillian Anderson / Kate Winslet—but to see it, you have to have aged at the right time against the autumnal chill of the setting crimson, ashes of a childhood friend disperse in the wind— fragments of bone pocketed for a plan unknown the dancer's sophisticated twirl breaks down into the joyous spin of child, leaving the audience moved but unsure whether this was planned young again, you would spend more time on good-night kisses than on complaints about having to get up so damn early although we know it atrophies us further, muzzling speech is a solution too enticing for slothful superficials such as ourselves when the trail mom insists that you stop making faces at her baby, your shut-her-up claim (that making faces grows neurons) has her yell out, as you jog on, “Yeah, fear-ons” if mere lip balm on your lips can make you feel as if you are suffocating, perhaps holding a mere ice pack can have you coast through the sweat-lodge ceremony marginalized people packaged as helpless victims, pity cases in need of special protections even from words— a privilege too good to give up (however much it hobbles)
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.