MADE FOR YOU AND ME 1: hive Being (Stanzas 2016—part 64)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about D.A.R.E. contracts, monism, vinyl records, guilt, alcoholism, funerals, flowers, meditation, vengeance, mortality, Walt Whitman, PCP, winos, fear, incest
the tune in your mind still has the skip in your record old shames reach like phantom limbs pissing, the drunk regrets spitting in the toilet recognition of objective values: a gateway to religion writing a book about the vacuity of writing a book when the candle of hope gutters out, shapes glow against the black in technicolor haunted at home by dark truths confessed with such ease on stage, where appearing brave and wise matters most to you midnight headlights through the window reveal bed partners with eyes tense on each other, but the car moves quickly enough for them to deny what was seen guilt bleeds through us unbidden: sins, disembodied (not really forgotten), flashing like ruins beneath new snow William Peter Blatty doing yoga rereading in hopes to read something different the child plays Candyland with a sitter, everyone else at the burial realizing that there are many levels beyond yours new names bloom from the compost we mislabel “anonymous” in our drama fear too often comes with an unspoken lie: a self-told lie that the feared object will last forever, which it virtually does if not faced their fifth-grade D.A.R.E. contracts in mind but unspoken as OxyContin gets crushed up between old friends ac-unit rears jut out windows of each story— umbrella wish hardness of heart (slowly accrued) prevented her, no doubt, from being knocked around, but becoming looser like a stream (swallowing, not rejecting, every stone) would have done so too if the “why” must end somewhere, must it end with a leap of faith even if the end is a self-evident axiom? all creation sings the same light, one Vedic Om split into rainbow bands arms unable to obstruct the coffin’s descent a husband’s gambling debts flowers good to eat tears are water for blooms Whitman perfumed for the injured soldiers he would read to and kiss a broken note now beloved, like the curmudgeonly quirks of a genius palms open, shins crossed— silence: the spawn of subtle noises that his bitterness rose to the point where he was ready to ruin himself in the course of revenge is no exception to the rule that everyone seeks at least their apparent good the needle of awareness keeps skipping against her mind's rutted thinking— her soundtrack repeating a pocked refrain groping for impossible closure, her questions only bury the ground like the dead leaves of autumn surprise melodies crept forth as the racket of wanting unwound needle-nosed pliers to turn the channel the rock that makes one stream two what atrophies when muscle is wasted on shadows? clutching her kite string against the reckless tug, another youth turns on to wonder about that cliff: the one of no return from which she too must fall what made his flowers so grand was the self-delusion that he could create a flower that would culminate the flow, that would put an end to all the flowering praying for health, white sea crests up the short bluff the infant is blind in its lust to suckle and, toothless to boot, it just seems so right—why, then, is it so wrong? a bent cigarette in the stubbled mouth of the careening wino at dawn drunk on counterfeit feats, the heart pumps the hubris of inflated ability exhausted from having to appear out the challenge to change compounded now by shame at failing to sober at dawn, he found himself still at basecamp—a pain in need of numbing confidence to quit only when high flattered to be liked even by the repellent cigarettes dipped in the smell of black magic marker her own reflection in the grave’s still water adulation, to kill another’s drive facing fear yields access codes to sanctums richer and deeper than mantras decadent with fear today we refuse to pick up the wallet so onlookers will not think us thieves, and we do not help the man collapsed in case we might catch whatever he has shut down by blizzard snow, it seems as if we are seeing the city at a time long past Dad should have been buried with the TV, but many others remain glued to the same one it is said that if a man has enough talents, he will never express a temper—but might he not get enraged at how preoccupied he is?
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.
