MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 61)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about pollution, killer whales, a still life of piled vaginas, running into old friends, black cultural attitudes, pizza gate, cults, rifts within religious groups
cathedral spandrels are silences in solos—trim words; play rests the night whispers of muses now the morning psalms of duty finger-brushing teeth with baking soda one’s reflection in one’s photo on the bookshelf old friends keeping you an old version of yourself venereal diseases spreading in arranged marriages watching without being noticed allows you to witness your own absence cookie-cutters serried—kids roof-to-roof jumping drowning the echo of discordant behavior with more discordance dead advertisements awaken from columbaria in our minds orca dorsal fins folded in resignation to a closed-in fate even despite knowing that we ourselves would have made the seas plastic too, our bitterness toward past generations still makes sense: it is, after all, bitterness toward ourselves that human rush of wonder in a black child hovering over a rare insect—but the attitude of her culture invokes the jarring scream “Child, get from that bug!” that human need to interact in a black child speaking to the delivery man—but the attitude of her culture invokes the jarring scream “Child, get from that door!” with every accusatory finger we point three more curve back—reminding us that, in another era, we too might have . . . a still-life of dismembered pussies— pieces of meat piled up with no sense of pathos the average time for one’s cheerfulness after running into an old acquaintance to shrivel into an unavoidable feeling the dimensions of the animal cage would be humane were we talking a coffin rather than the living quarters for this colossus born to roam trackless fathoms how can we ensure the survival of mankind when many endorse the following all at once: astrology, mediumship, Pizzagate, the NRA? a keepsake of fleeting sentimentality now a relic anchoring a civilization reeducation camp silence shapes notes enclosed at home due to your child’s reputation complicated child locks for the toilet seat have him pissing in the tub harming those we have harmed in a twisted bid to silence guilt for the harming chastising the history we repeat in different details a songbird’s rousing chorus at dawn goes on much longer—only drowned in the cacophony of what it heralded brushing with the left may be good for the mind but teeth pay the price like horses taking feed from an outstretched hand, on our backs we contort tactile lips out to grip the brimming cup so that nothing spills in its tilt released from decades of wrongful prison not into open skies so long envisioned but into the pyre of industrial cremation our indignation towards the ancients is but an outward echo of the scream at the face of our own potential treachery surfacing to sound ancestral calls through cage bars in case the sea is near we shake our fists at ghosts of yesteryears—our own reflections, in truth arcane rituals of closed worlds now timeless ceremonies of vast empires primordial reflexes on the ready beneath decorum, which is their child too are those who value effort over outcome prone to feel less alive if what they use— shoes, drums, bones—never wears out? cults and religions; costumes and uniforms; knickknacks and antiques in the murk of plastic-laden oceans, beyond mere discarded relics we see shadows of our own failings cane tapping along new terrain, the entire body alive at a level the sighted rarely enter secret conclaves held in caves gave way to congregations under open skies—at least for those loyal to prophet’s vocal opponent
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.
