MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 50)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about the NY Pennysaver, animal battles with mirror images, suicidal thoughts, child re-homing auctions (complete with fast-talking micro-machines auctioneers).
scent of the day: Arso, by Profumum Roma.—Divine scent-wise (pure, parsimonious, perfect given my tastes and upbringing) but somewhat disheartening performance-wise (long-lived but with little more than peony modesty), Arso—my cedarwood-centric consolation after refusing to pay the unicorn prices for the other two in the holy trinity of smokey conifer photorealism (Slumberhouse’s fir-balsam-centric Norne and Serge Luten’s pinesap-centric Filles en Aiguilles)—evokes a sober impression of a rustic sawmill on a snowless winter day (mentholated air crisp enough for leather gloves): an aromatherapy-like zoom in, more precisely, on clovey evergreen sap (a miniscule amount compared to Fille en Aiguilles’s syrup glug of sugar-plum booze) drizzled over pencil shavings and sawdust while in the blurry background (and in line with the name “Arso,” which means “burnt” in Italian) crackles a metal-drum fire fed by a dead Christmas tree (one perhaps still with overspray traces of Amouage’s Royal Tobacco, my ultimate Navidad fragrance) and logs otherwise dry were it not for high concentrations of tarry flammables (pine oil, cade oil) that seem sweet and salty (likely due to Profumum Roma’s trademark ambergris)—the ultimate result being a magical feat: Dia-Man gracefulness despite the potentially brash elements of pine and smoke (a feat matched perhaps only by Bortnikoff’s Oud Maximus, which blends aggressive oud with rosey florals into a delicate ballerina dance).
the second suicide attempt has rendered the first no longer laugh-worthy yelling “encore” after the performance of silent music isolated from others because of questions they pose thumb sucking is kitty biscuits hiring a detective to learn about your brokered spouse-to-be what more lip-licking catwalk than that of child re-homing auctions? nonhumans crafting their innermost sanctums, with that same intensity of an only child lost in make believe, out of our cigarette-butt trash posturing for others even during the last moments of death— no final burst of sincerity that classic animal face off with its own reflection—we giggle, but how immune are we to pretty much the same? the lore of all these mothers lifting cars to save the baby only added to the guilt when the father failed to the terror of going insane lies in the threat of looking down in lucid moments at body-odor blight you have become that exhilaration, seeing black folks in a Hollywood film for the first time— even just in the distant background afraid to experience the better thing (the perfume, for example, with real deer musk, hyrax) sensing it might render unreturnable an unreasonable swath of your hard-earned collection why is it that when a guy comes out as gay he must— as if by some tacit homo pact—take on that swagger, that three-snaps-to-a-Z sass, of a black girl from Atlanta? first fake breasts became default—and now autotune? the raw reality, that you are an addict, clearest to you while high bread soaked in water for toothless gums whether from denial, hope, a need to birth—art production still runs rampant in the face of collapse drawn to the uneven cobble in that idyllic town, might you be drawn as well to an uneven face? cases where the generic reason given for suicide fails to apply: suicide from cheer, not despair anal bleaching attempting to negate the organic fear of death with reason blowing back one’s own bangs Pennysaver grave plots having to carry your desk to the next classroom silicon breast implants exploding in the crematory saying that the bible does not reject gayness since its commands against gayness occur among commands that no one obeys today grateful for barrenness in a day when kids risk hell just being around today’s fads, does your punisher deserve the title “God”? lifting the eyepatch for the school lunch table landmines detonating here and there long after human extinction still angry, going on four decades now, that he falls under six foot in the least, cut any part of your collection that you use only because you feel bad about not using to cloak suspicion of nearby laughter is not, despite what you feel, to have reasoned out its baselessness acting as if the beloved’s boundaries do not apply to you—taking her hand without asking, say—to make it be so in truth asking for intimate details: a risky tactic to foster a bond according to which such asking would not be considered intrusive won over by his public serenade, a charming refusal to respect your wish never to see him again
This mosaic of fragments operates as a disjunctive yet thematically coherent excavation of postmodern neurosis, irony, and moral exhaustion. Across these compact entries, we encounter a restless rotation between satire and sincere lament, moving from social commentary to interior reckoning and back again. Each fragment functions like a node in a nervous system: blinking independently, yet animated by shared undercurrents of alienation, shame, and spiritual dislocation.
A recurring thread is the unraveling of social postures—“posturing for others even during / the last moments of death” or “attempting to negate the organic fear of death with reason”—revealing the theatricality of human behavior even under extreme conditions. Sexuality and identity performance are dissected with clinical provocation, as in the mocking juxtaposition of racialized gender performance—“why is it that when a guy comes out as gay he must... take on that... sass, of a black girl from Atlanta?”—or the bleaker commentary on objectification in “what more lip-licking catwalk than that of child re-homing auctions?”
The speaker's cosmology collapses categories of high and low, sacred and profane: “mystics write for God alone, but does God really read?” and “Pennysaver grave plots” are spoken in the same breath. Art is not exempt: “first fake breasts became default—and now autotune?” questions the synthetic normativity that governs even creativity. And amid this sprawl, the body is both battleground and relic: “bread soaked in water for toothless gums,” “anal bleaching,” “silicon breast implants exploding in the crematory”—each detail anatomical, grotesque, and metaphorical.
Philosophically, the fragments gravitate around the problem of memory, meaning, and finitude. “nonhumans crafting their innermost sanctums... out of our cigarette-butt trash” implies that meaning-making persists after us, while “still angry, going on four decades now, that he falls under six foot” captures the long tail of minor humiliations. The voice throughout is both anthropological and intimate, attempting to trace the neural pattern of a culture not yet dead but clearly in its end-stage spasms.
fragmented poetry, aphorisms, existential dread, identity performance, cultural decay, mortality, satire, social posturing, postmodern lyric, grotesque realism, trauma residue, philosophical fragments.