MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 21)

Let's workshop this stanza sequence, which includes Amway seminars, illegal dog fighting, the fragility of memory, glaciers, consumerism to fill a void, donkey shows, dolphin-human sex, cemeteries

the dog with the dangling eye fights on for its betting master

keepsakes given out in hope, at bottom, to live on 

urine breath on the sidewalk visible under flickering neon 

church bell tolls muffled by untrammeled snow 

giggles from undocumented infants in the processing camp

a rusted swing creaks against the whistle of a sluggish freight train in the distance

a moss-covered gravestone touched by the light of dead stars

the clinical detachment of dead-eye doctors—a taste now of the embalming table

horizon thunder breaking the cemetery silence

wrinkled bills for a needle fix that will have her maggot bloated in August sun

in a time of so little porn, her acting abilities would have gone underappreciated

the monstrosity of he who hates you without considering you a monster

head cocked against the violin, he eyes you from a swarming sea of subway faces

no longer does the smell of gasoline
call to mind that electric first kiss—
her memories now as fragile as dreams

replicating hurtful objects—the worst
from architecture’s past (gas chambers, say)—
while their (would-be) victims still live 

that connection between high-school classmates—
special in having been before spouse and kids
and in somehow being there after

to be counted among the best—that is one thing, but what
features (perhaps despair-inducing, genocide-engendering)
must a work of art have to be counted among the worst? 

meltwater carving chutes through blue glaciers

addiction seen as an attempt to solve a problem

terminated merely for mentioning those vetted but "hurtful" statistics

Amazon placebos to fill the void of God’s death

donkey show opening act—
masked wrestlers toddler 
side to side in waddle run

hermit crabs with water-bottle shells,
kids playing on beaches
of broken up plastic

smacking yourself in the forehead 
to show self-disappointment for the one 
who expected you to remember  

being selected for a prize gives peers a chance,
after a few bottles of celebratory cabernet, 
to open up about how you were a bad choice

creation done in rebellion against the absurdity 
would seem to tolerate museum fires more so than 
creation done in denial or ignorance of the absurdity

the post-shoot interview, where the starlet 
tells the camera how much fun she had,
makes the gagged-and-bound gang-bang okay

out of warring parties A and B, trust not the party that says that person X—whom it
knows spends critical and creative energy showing the senses in which both A and B
are right—belongs to an extreme sect of the other party, a sect aiming to obliterate it 

museum visits for extra credit

to judge is to love, but those 
of us scared to be loved 
are prone to find this false 

some prisoners carry out the special duties
of which they have been put in charge
proud, as if laboring for their own sake

lowering the likelihood of making it, 
members of the garage band do the drugs 
that make them feel as if they made it

our bodies breakdown, but we acclimate
as the prison tightens—even celebrating 
the new paths opened by the breakdown

shaken out from the motel sheets to swim through the air 

fear of making the mistake that will get others hurt

rapid blinking to stifle the formation of tear drops 

the credit card bill for the taxi ride of death

when forgetting keeps a group down

various stages of putrefaction

encouraged by your Ambot superior
to skip a mortgage payment to attend 
the next jumbotron Amway function 

there was a time when he cared 
whether his swears were audible
as he careened down the street

the security of having one’s back
against a wall, knowing that no one 
can watch you or take you from behind

dolphins use your limbs to rub
their genital slits, but most prefer 
when you do the work for them

when you go on a hike or thumb through photos
to find lost inspiration, inspiration is back just then
(although perhaps not to a satisfactory degree) 

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.

Photo: thesun.ie/news/629691/cruel-world-of-chinese-dog-fighting-uncovered-in-horrific-images-of-bloodsport-that-leaves-many-animals-dead-or-with-terrible-injuries/