MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 28)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about tricking old people, escaped tarantulas, artists neglecting relationships, the Library of Alexandria, demons, rape, suicide, etiquette rules, levitation
the license that being an artist gives to neglect loved ones her t-shirt read: “Stop being a pussy and rape me already” an artist fearful of causing offense is closer to a jingle-writing ad-man the missing pet spider—everywhere, nowhere—became a koan of suburban Buddhism time, which no face-lift can outrun, curses the gorgeous oily rainbows, contorted, in gasoline spills living today, but still incensed at all that was burned in the Library of Alexandria struggling to write what you forgot you had once written what remains in the typewriter after death domestic squabbles, vases shattered against walls books recovered, distended, from sunken boats mothers wondering, not whether you had a good time, but whether you were the prettiest at the party rejecting new art on grounds that it rejects beauty relieves one from having to state that those finding beauty in it are wrong the question “That’s where you live?”—asked with that italicized “that” of incredulity by someone whose words are hang-on worthy (cop, social worker, priest)—can punch the child hard enough to bring into focus for the first time the squalor of its dwelling the video did not pick up the levitation because it was just the possessing demon projecting that image into our minds promising to retain certain feelings—love, say— is just as silly as promising that your heart will continue to beat for another sixty years cans rusted to the shelf seventy years of fuzzy UFO photos couch cushions to muffle the noise fake chicken squeaking under the old person’s dementia knife coloring within the lines to get the Christmas bonus slime molds solve metropolitan maze puzzles to reach nutrients the shameless sharing of child porn in the early days of dial-up not inviting people because you do not want them not to come you knew him so well—until you found his body hanging these mp3s, catalysts within the sonic time capsule, might have transmuted base nostalgia into the heavy element of wisdom if only he had the courage to sit with the reality of time’s torrent and all his unfulfilled hopes, regrets it is a sign of good health to approach people with stereotypes, low resolution approximations—but is a sign of bad health to be unwilling to fill that in or shift it given what they actually are as mafia movies reveal, the flip-side of etiquette rules (there at their very origin) is that, however much they are claimed to keep us safe and civil, they serve as pretenses to lash out
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 2017 portion of that five-part work.