MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 49)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about screen time, ennui, existential angst, purpose, determinism, evolution, nostalgia, rebuilding after tank blasts, poker eyes, stock trading, car-key murder
snow like dust motes in the gleam of a lone lamppost two souls with two screens of digital dopamine under one blanket explaining that the greasy bondage gear strewn about the house belongs to a friend a silent chorus of weariness as to the symphony's worth pregnancies to claim more milk from the nanny system that urge to give the mentally disabled drugs and alcohol tree branches and rivers meander as conditions change clinging to a person who looks like someone bygone sitting being the new smoking, where will you stand? the café—like an ant mound—rebricked again after yet another tank control chosen over connection, forfeiting genuine embrace a gardener cutting away too many blooms in pursuit of a perceived order seeing in new lands only what stokes nostalgia for home shadows of the past find form in faces of the present, binding souls to echoes brushstrokes reminiscent of past artwork, the artist's hand hesitates reality may bend and shift (as in when black moths start to predominate in the town since the smog of a nearby factory blackens the birch trees on which the white ones once clung invisible to predators), but the overarching blueprint remains forever rigid what’s-the-point weariness evadeless in these digital days where everyone is a little star earnest and methodical scrutiny as to the cause of the engine light to pretend away one’s helplessness various cultures (Arab, Italian, Black) glorifying the stereotypes foisted upon them— their boxes becoming more like stages and yet what if the teen on the fast track to sex change— on hormones now and with surgery around the corner— is gender fluid, or perhaps even depressed and rebellious? the tragedy of running off with a bum’s bottle caricatures turned into solidarity badges of pride poker eyes fliting between the elements of their hand the accusing women are just money-hungry, of course hail the nocturnal guardians over a world at rest on the stock-market floor, glances ricochet between screens, each tick a potential turn of fortune watching others sleep to feel as if wrenching more from life than them— when that turns into hour-plus stints according to the stereotypical caricatures of the two genders, a definitional structure long taught in schools (blue and pink), it is a trivial fact that we all spill over the edges in some way when someone is breaking into your car, approach with “Can I get a light, brother?” and stab him in the temple with the keys prayer before a test might seem stupid (either you studied or not), but the prayer could be something like “Let what I know come easily through my pen” or “Let my nerves not get in my way”
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.