MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 18)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about oak leaves, kidnapping, home-economics, barflies, schizophrenia, self-delusion, activism, religion, group sex, a new birthday telescope, the mid-1990s
bound to a chair, her basilisk eyes of eros—unbroken all night—terrified her abductor intrigued by her only when someone else finds her beautiful change the ceremonies too little and the people freeze, too much and they dissolve how hard it is still to face that your mom has a name but that electric gelatin between our ears is itself a soup of drugs maggot-squirming group sex deer beds in the oak-leaf layers of decades a saccadic menagerie of fucking neighbors opened up by the birthday telescope echelons of consciousness inimical to a normal life he did not say but everyone knew: he was anxious to be seen with a woman so huge elders like to give advice because it heightens the worthwhileness of their experiences girlfriend came back smelling like balloons after the argument a bullying enthusiasm but tragedy, as with ants, makes the world come alive eager for old ones to die since they know, and can expose, who you really are— but sad much later for the same reason hopeful that people will be too preoccupied with their own flaws to attend to those that preoccupy you home-economics teacher in a 1940s boarding school showing reservation natives how to apply lipstick and style their hair, how to clean themselves in every nook “like proper women” the sense in which there is newness in the first formulation of the thought that nothing is new wanting to avoid the temptation of wanting you dead, your heir renounces all rights to inheritance that exploitation blooms only from society perhaps should suggest that society is a primordial fact rather than that there is no primordial exploitation your heirs, although feverish for debt relief, never face head-on wanting you dead ashamed not to be beating cancer with all these testimonies of how others triumph, as if it were so much in their power predawn in a cemetery, smoking a blunt with friends as a teen in the mid-90s—a breeze wafts a moist coolness, and you sigh at all the pain that lies ahead under these same quivering stars yelling at your hallucinations avoiding triggers of bygone dreams often means cutting out so much music chaos territory beyond citadel masteries and marchland illusions of wilderness she wanted more to have done it than to do it combing through the antiques of the dead he was the only man to paint her without losing his mind a cushioned bed of pine needles pub crowds mired in ego's sewerline the same stuff as every name in history, are you not essentially every name in history? left by the woman of your dreams— and yet only to discover the woman of your nightmare refuses to abort true adventure, whose thrill and importance inspired us to create story, originates in the ineptitude it rattles throughout piquant teases of exposure, against a backdrop of concealment, stokes intense desire—so many religions are the hacks of the procreative drive an age when you appreciate in words, even if only internal behind a sigh, how windchimes tinkling can pacify a space activism directed across the world despite the zombie groans and back bent poses of fentanyl, the stench of urine, right outside our doors patrons at the bar you enter to toast your victory, they could care less that you cracked the math riddle or ice-picked up the vertical verglas melting down a 6000-foot killer—but take heart: another you would
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.
