MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 51)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about moth wings, percussion on car interiors, high teenagers, found objects, distant stars, digital archeologists, black holes, attic dolls, acid trips, shrinks
eyespots on moth wings: the red cape in a bullfight dumpster boots too large, stuffed with rags at toe and heel wrecked by imagined fun occurring elsewhere, Tears for Fears on the stereo piecing together the shadow civilization buried in the glitching sands of degraded data a knight in armor cobbled from fallen enemies other-worldly psyches craving escape too pouring over interactions with missed loved ones the urge to place cold hands on another’s body resolving our regret by reshaping our memories inviting your shrink to the dinner get-together the River Lethe beyond myth in black holes lonely enough to brave offense with extended touch history lost in the noise of cyber archives too expansive fantasies of freedom from one another chiseling away painful recollections in the carving of a more palatable narrative, the sculptor encountered a tenacious vein a doll in the attic, its dress the torn pages of love letters passed down through death an extraterrestrial to them, the drunk hobo— one of the few who gets to see the stars—wonders if among their planets someone else hurts like this a torturous and tortuous tome can have you envious of the smarts it took to write it, and so even more guilty at the desire to put it down to see value in the discarded might seem to challenge society's consumerist hunger for the next, but the lady rifling through dumpsters sells what she refurbishes without philosophy, mathematicians might slip into regarding numbers as platonic entities, but that does not mean philosophy is settled on the matter those who scorn writers who speak directly, failing to dress up—elevate—the subject with language, indicate as well their scorn for the subject matter “An arrow is shot only by pulling it back,” says the Triple Diamond Ambot, the horns opening on Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” in a land where free speech is blocked on campus (and to such an extent that even off-duty painting and poetry get professors fired), expect experts not to be allowed to express what they know (about global warming or viral pandemics or whatever) in both cases the number of lives taken grew alongside our bloodlust and self-hatred at what we were sanctioning—but whereas years ago we ate literal food sold at booths around guillotines, today we insert popcorn emojis during cancellation Twitter events utterances delivered, thick and choked, passing the joint dashboard-door-ceiling drums driving high as teens brown moth wings leave behind metallic eye-shadow birdsong in a breeze piercing despair digital archives vulnerable to the entropy governing little less than being itself psychedelic trips resetting neural patterns core wisdom beneath the neural noise hands chilled by winter become instruments of playful mischief even as adults the courage to honor forbidden desires mules surefooted down rocky slopes mourning in advance we tease Segway riders in city convoys just as we did pc users a mineral layer on the shower curtain next to the toilet chopped-onion air reverberating between eyes and glass lenses fucked foreigners construed as conquests of the country to which they belong heartache channeled into art revealing we are not alone the UV tanner upset by the question, “Is this—your granddaughter?”
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.
