MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 12)

Let's workshop this stanza sequence, which includes piss fights, suicide, homelessness, the ravages of war, self-deception, the importance of diversity for hygiene (not just physical but spiritual)

distraction from distraction

shooting yourself through the mouth from fear of the death process

luring cats to you with that human-snake hiss 
of a long alveolar S interspersed at irregular points 
with subtle bilabial Ps: “sspsspspspsssspssspss”

if someone turns at the urinal to piss
all over your legs, are you one to move 
(“What the hell?”) or one to piss back?

battle entrenched long enough that citizens 
keep selling their wares and sitting at cafes—
bombs and thuds of rubble background thunder 

back after the devastation, 
all markers to orient yourself 
(signs, stores, trees) gone 

envious applause of the failed pitcher’s bravura
at the carnival games—milk bottle pyramid,
speed pitch—passing through his hometown

hacking at the frost 
abloom in the freezer 
with reverse-gripped butterknife

wondering whether marital affairs
disappear from the record
after a certain length of time

genuine surprise when extreme disasters
do not result in citizens repenting
their gay and gay-enabling ways

together under one roof again, but no longer close 

nostalgia for then, now—now despite sensing
that nostalgia will later grow for this now 
from which nostalgia snatches you

crucial discoveries—contentious or at least growth-spurring—
shake us, and so universities—centers of discovery—implode 
as soon as they start sheltering learners from being shaken 

dumped immigrants cover the wharf

locavore hipsters with artisanal green tattoos and year-round scarves

smashing the storefront window with bricks in broad day,
and waiting curbside for the cops since there is no food
and mere tarps tied to light poles fail to block the cold

thinking it will get better
throughout the process
of it getting worse

we need contagion—
strangers draw words
from our mouths

ragged husband and wife, 
each other’s cane, visit
their now citified son

trying to confirm that you are indeed hated,
and that you do deserve death, with a suicide
too gruesome for loved ones to handle 

that the artist’s foreground chair is empty
in his painting of wife and daughter at brunch 
will mean more with his death just weeks after

that essence of skeeviness—think: cult leader,
orange salesmen with combovers—common 
to both for-profit prison and for-profit college

winter coats at dinner

teaching your kid to drive for when you are too drunk

she turns the gazing Jesus back around after she poops

alone, the preadolescent boy kneels 
to the humped mound of fresh soil—
the girl, much younger, holds her hat

that goody-goody bum 
who struts about the underpass camp
as if he is in this just to help  
 
abandoned by family—
the loathsome illness
too revolting to bear

he stands by in the heat, puffing 
a cigarette, while she struggles 
to collapse the stroller into the car

the point of living the years that vanish
from all recollection is that those times
make you who you are at each present

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.

Painting: Katjesspel (The Kitten Game), by Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (1860-1878)