MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 58)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about birds, prostitutes, church blasphemy, having your kid shoot people, Squarepusher, seditious portraits, willows, domestic abuse, robbery, dreams, divorce, Lego
banking on him not punching you for awhile now that he is on probation as butterflies take flight, so do dreams birthed in cocooned minds vultures tearing at the seal placenta encrusted in sand a cold handgun slid, from calloused hands to smooth, with stomach-sinking directive: “Buck dem niggas if they attack Daddy!” in that same hall where dance partners once foxtrotted until dawn, where glowstick ravers once jump-jumped beneath the strobelit sonic artillery of Squarepusher, now— resigned with a grin to his pinning thrusts, dreamy eyes that fail to meet his leer speak of her deeper inaccessibility what influence of nurture do the fierce eyes of the falcon transfer to its fledglings? vicious squirting inside faith’s sanctum blankets window draped to shut out sunlight, like friends and family deep purple of tongue veins willows survive the winds by yielding old but still stealing Faustian sips before the party ends epitaphs rendering lives mere curiosities, if that fragments of pottery in an archaeologist's dirty hands myriad worlds lying dormant between readers in the midst of the party he knew, almost seeing it in his periphery, the dust would gather even here lemon seeds tumbling in the crawfish boil—leave a smell of cloves baking in ham more singing causes more rain just as more trips to the dermatologist causes more skin problems that the medaled leader of empire stands painted in the pink glow of a setting sun suggests the painter’s seditious prediction a young father sinking in the graveside mud, beaten by the concussive downpour the lie of thriving systemic racism reinciting individual racism on all sides a wildfire checked by a thin line of cleared vegetation until the gust of wind fragile flowers on the battlefield the tattered quilt warmed several generations before becoming mere decoration shooting ducks as they float—TNTing fish public dissections of common criminals prostitutes with certificates of health in hand her aged eyes have seen too much, yet refuse to shut household phrases whispered in another language as a turn on more talking rights for cancer patients, but even more for blacks, in writers’ rooms what hope is there, really, when so many believe that truth is whatever one believes? vestiges of unknown yearnings, sorrows, victories crayons and Legos in each divorce-attorney office interventions disturbing the balance they were meant to restore justify further interventions some aspect of the lone cactus must in some sense await what we call the “elusive rain” an actor in the media propaganda about him, the leader believes himself to be an expert pilot too the death inheritance freed the artist from striving for commercial viability a perched sparrow swapping eyes— left, right—at its object, verifying what one eye sees with the other recognizing the face of the one robbing you at gunpoint, a face from somewhere long ago the inaugural wail of the newborn, unaware of human taxonomies, interpreted as LGBTQ belonging
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.