MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 66)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about military tactics, irreverent versions of Christmas ditties, hunger, adult reprimands, staged photos, ashram rape, innovation, broken hips, funerals, Mormons
gay ballet classes stamina wanes almost unnoticed until the music calls deprivation to help glimpse the ambrosia of ordinary crusts placing a wad of hundreds on the communion plate with a mien of no big deal forced cohabitation healing found in smothering that knee-jerk chaos widely adaptive in childhood toothless mastication of stale bread evanescent car-wash rainbows dog ear cleaved cutting dreads peanut-butter jar between paws braced, the tongue lashing its remains picking gelatin off turkey—thanksgiving leftovers at the Tupperware’s bottom making friends for after-school somewheres to eat meager spoons of paste forced inside to sustain a being faint in pulse children raised without the cuddly cooing of baby talk but will not telling her how great she is spur her to leave you? that familiar stranger a sow vibrator unable, as if overnight, to rise to dreams still as restless as in youth—the nectar of vitality poured (to boot) into buckets with holes admonishing youngsters for what in private, sometimes even if in private to yourself, you are happy to hear live on: the same old vulgar versions of Yuletide tunes you know the mission is wrong (head-on attack will get your team killed), and yet— knowing someone else will lead it if you refuse—it is right, nonetheless, to take it: for once early signs of slaughter to come start appearing, you can change the mission to “rectify” having been rapers, sea-bottom-senders, slavers, lynchers, hosers, whites took an LBJ uplifter role, “inadvertently” hooking blacks on pink nipples, so reifying black inferiority that black dreams for dignity go no higher than victim-card guilt trips young again, you would spend more time on the dance floor—hips sturdy but flexible enough to support such ambulance gyrations a nacre of adversity, reflection, and forgiveness— but mainly of opportunism and self-deception— formed a pearl around that youthful jag of folly that unyielding cell, failing to forgo the anarchy of lone ambition, this time meant an early death for the whole weary jaws chewing through pain out of blind duty: numb mechanics repeating like most of the cosmos too aware of their shared essence—indeed, so aware that it is taken for granted below the threshold of consciousness—that growth for them requires the opposite of what it now requires for us: more fragmentation, an ignoring of the oneness of all if you do not have the clinician’s ability to detach into an observer mode when being attacked in a conversation, one strategy—instead of floundering as your body starts pumping—is simply to announce that you cannot remain logical under such pressure “aid is futile (even sadistic),” says the dark side, “since it encourages more suffering in the future” scarlet from exertion nostalgia prevented the seasons from spinning muscle into mind jagged memories smoothed into tidy tales sunk for life what served his survival impeded the communion necessary to flourish reaching for a hand across the table arriving after the coffin has been closed potbellied children weaned from milky dearth to bready dearth sometimes taking charge of a flawed plan (instead of refusing to participate) gives one the power to lessen its negative impacts spring cleaning wonder at how you could have been that child in the photo the poet’s call sang in him from jump: fleet-footed vitality of youth funneled into creaking combinations of words she was measured by the everything-maker and was found wanting meet those challenges, those as hard as a child’s first steps, with the cheer of a child taking its first steps everyone is a little politician, now more than ever: the social-media craze for likes cuts to our very core, making us be about—say and do—what will get us likes her sagacity became extreme enough to curve her into tight resemblance to her “polar opposites” on the other callous tip of the horseshoe: seeing even uncooked tragedy as potential, no more did she register misfortune their transgressions recall carefree days outside in summer, when meaning graffitied each moment, before adult duty: do our scoldings, especially when violent, reflect our envy? in knowing its shores, we think we know the lake secondhand rhythms: innovation’s compost the “mercy tap” in porn and mixed martial arts a time when play was prayer slum breeds alienating the spouse from friends and family subway car dancers gymnastics coach to mom: “it's time to start having her wax” a Mormon the opponent, the incumbent unveils a White House beer washed-up gymnasts grooming as before: waxed lips, clip-on pony tail her loss of sleep over the betrayal makes the betrayal not so bad for her pressured to identify as racist to fit in, what story do you tell not to feel bad about yourself? iconic photos from history— scenes staged not to look staged— make us tear with inspiration ashram rape seen by liberal whites as union of one’s inner breath with that of an enlightened 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.
