MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 56)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about starlight, execution, intimacy, the limited power of words, feminism, determinism, Afrocentrism, religion, racism, parody, Einstein, nature's expansiveness
scent of the day: Sex and the Sea, by Francesca Bianchi
Sex and the Sea (2016, Francesca Bianchi)—a tropical-fruit ambergris perfume intended to nuzzle the nose, as if you are on clit-suck duty while your friend is on fuck duty, right to the sand-scoured nether flaps of a back-arched beach screw (a threesome lubed by vintage Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil)—
presents enough aromas of tropical sunscreen and salty sweat to evoke scenes of Spring Break hedonism that, before the TDS era of Cynthia Nixon in red MAGA hats that say “Make Abortion Great Again,” used to leave a sensitive guy such as myself wondering for the remaining decades if I have a kid out there,
although I must say that—even in spite of the rubbery element I pick up on at times (a rubbery element that, in light of the title and the narrative built around the title, pulls my mind toward pool floats and blue-red-yellow beach balls smacked around by white women in visors as I take what I can get and binocular the sunspotted bikini cleavage from my car, my jerkoff perch)—the mineral-salt element is so predominant to my nose (predominant through the entire long life of the fragrance) that all the other notes seem corralled toward the single aim of transporting me to a much more forbidding scene (a less-sexual-apocrine-sweat-than-thermoregulation-eccrine-sweat scene)
where salt miners pickaxe and shovel salt deposits (perhaps someplace in the Caribbean, such as Grand Turk Island, where seawater is channeled into shallow evaporation ponds that, under the equatorial sun and relentless trade winds, gradually increase in saline density until only mineral precipitate remains, the thick crystallized crust eventually broken up by hoes and pickaxes before being wheelbarrowed off to salt mounds):
(1) ambergris, with all its driftwood brine, brings a brackish breeze that sets the location (the sunny coast of a luminous ocean) and zooms us in (with its high concentration and with the help of the ashy-mineralic iris) to the salt-crystal object of focus while also working with the sunny-powdery florals (so-ashy-it-is-creamy iris, pollen-fuzz mimosa, and dry-hay immortelle) to amplify the feel of rock-salt dust kicked up by the tools and working with the urinous-sweaty civetone (and perhaps an unlisted pissy-carnal jasmine) to evoke the musky-salty second-skin impression of barebacked miners laboring under the sun to gather the crystals, the civetone-ambergris combo—especially in conjunction with the bitter-fungal myrrh and lived-in-leathery labdanum and perhaps unlisted florals (not only jasmine but also loamy-mushroomy gardenia)—even evoking the musty-moldy shorts of these men (shorts that rapidly cycle between muggy from the outpour of sweat and dryness from the intense sun);
(2) tropical fruits—tangy-tart pineapple, which along with the blood-ferrous rose (an airy-fruity ghost of Opus X) synergizes with the ambergris and the iris to evoke the metallic edge of iron tools, and warm-nutty coconut, which (given the help of the buttery combo of makeup-powder iris and velvety-milky sandalwood and perhaps an unlisted heady-bubblegum tuberose) almost seems like the thick layer of cream at the top of a dented can of coconut milk forgotten in the cupboard—solidify the Caribbean location (or some other place of sunny exoticism like the Philippines or Ghana) where perhaps sunscreened tourists (ice-cream vanilla, almond-caramel benzoin, and perhaps an unlisted banana-custard ylang ylang all reinforce the sunscreen) are engaged in the eerie optics of drinking tiki cocktails as they watch the laboring miners as if at the zoo (these miners perhaps on break eating a fresh-picked pineapple and sipping on coconuts knocked down after a palm-tree shimmy)—
the overall result being a sweet-fruity fragrance that, although in my mind closer to sun-bleached salt mine sticky with exploitative labor and negative-stressful sweat than sand-sex vacation sticky with pina coladas and joyful-erotic sweat, does transport me to a balcony-railing Spring Break at least better than any other in my collection,
only the non-landlocked tropicality here is too robust to be one of Uncle Luke’s Atlanta Freakniks from the Me-so-Horny 90s and the salty-skin sweatiness here is too sour and acidic and vinegary (too Caucasoid, even wet-dog-like) to be even to an HBCU bacchanalia on the Gulf since those Spring Breaks are much denser not only with HIV and gunshots (a connection to which can be made given the sex and metal) but also with the gamey and meaty skin-scalp aromas from soul-food sweat and supercharged apocrine glands and low-PH-favoring microbiota that give out the goatier and cheesier notes of basketball locker-rooms).
*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.
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 56)
ear whispers make her insides lurch
the fingers of the two men, limp
in the dirt, remain entwined
even after their execution
she bumbles, too aware
that the 8k inside can come out
only as SD through words
in times of crisis it is wise to turn to those who went through it before:
photographers and writers going through the imminent crisis of AI should turn
to the painters who went through a similar crisis with the advent of the camera
that the grandeur of religion often garbs
the personal quirks behind the massacre
does not let the religion off the hook
Afrocentric, but not closed to letting the heart lead where it may
the first civilian air bombings
bigger tits and she would not have been a feminist
your past would determine your full future only if reality were nothing in excess to you
no longer able to drop the talking points and be who he is
wielding bogus racist trauma for popularity and excuse to be fat
the writer was inhumane, unlovely, until he picked up the pen
smarts are what get over walls, which is why border-keepers should attack smarts
apes weaponizing ancestral sin when their bloodline began with a slut animal pervert
waxing in warzones
a man finds it really something
when he stops moving his hips only to find
the stroking continue in even fuller fury
he knew he would die like Einstein
working until the day he dies—
the obsession of inner vocation
it was crucial: he had to invent that people hated him
to keep writing well, knowing how much praise can drain
and how much having something to prove can fuel
battle depictions in which the fearfulness,
the humanity, of the historical hero
is allowed to seep through
mass appeal as an artist too early (usually before death) is an evil omen:
not only regarding what you will do (since praise tends to dull the blade)
but regarding what you have done (since it could not have been cutting edge)
the simulacrum of the internet is no less near the source than a walk in the woods
since nothing exceeds nature: the big block to feeling the divine muse in every nook
is thinking, for instance, that poems about #anyage hashtags are not nature poems
the highest praise turned out to be the bleakest:
the audience took his parody, meant to skewer,
as a mirror tribute—many saying “I feel so seen”
what purer human bullshit than thinking a star,
cradle of the metropolitan skyline’s every atom, knows
how great it is only when its light glints off a skyscraper?