MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 41)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence cops, Mexican teens, suicide, self-grooming, Afrocentric charlatanry, slam poetry, social media, addiction, club bouncers, machismo, rehab, nuclear weapons
scent of the day: Habit Rouge EDT, by Guerlain (a sparkly happy margarita scent that dries down to a masculine lemon powder; a favorite of Keith Richards and Madonna)
united in that we are shrieking realizing your loneliness only after meeting the one who took your hand Veruca-Salt types, quick to cry rape, must have been a real terror to black men shaping someone’s identity by telling them what it is the factor of hereditary tire-gut in Mexicana teen suicide taking a social-media break is already now a performance of chic integrity, but to announce it on social media beforehand—that is like plastic surgery done to the extremes of Lil Kim and Michael Jackson and Donatella Versace confident repetition, like at the mirror before an interview, to groom ourselves into what we know to be false the stranger-cast shame in the eyes of the belligerent clubgoer— too many chest buttons open, smelling of some mass-market freshie (Acqua di Pecora)—as he is lifted up and carried out by the bouncer an act of observation—a drug test, a concerned glance— can collapse the addict’s superposition of states: functional and dysfunctional, orbiting and falling slam poetry performances of charlatan Afrocentrism: “White supremacy is a malignant disease. Of course it is, brothers and sisters. Does it not make us feel dis-ease!” with entire families living in tunnels, the shopping-cart man might not be faking like he is hellbent on an atypical destination the seller’s testimony that the animal died of natural causes allows you to buy the endangered-species leather cops will use their hand to shield even a black head from hitting the door frame through which they fold its cuffed body the off-kiltering lean against the parent declares the child’s boredom core audiences aging quicker than ever suicide by cop, as if it would damn the cops although it alienated him, he attached himself to what (so he thought) would not lie or die or betray or get sick— to art, to art as a cause, rather than to a person his long hours grinding tricked him into believing he could handle the work, but hating the work— something he could not handle—was part of the work accidentally dropping a megaton nuke on your own country, but then blaming another so that it goes down with yours sacred capsules of powdered scripture (although the scripture is random and printed out on inkjet printers) ever-evading preparation for the end of himself by preparing for the end of the world, which he was damned sure he was better prepped than anyone else to survive the only sensible interpretation of someone who interprets as denial (and so as guilt) your request for a definition before you accept that you belong to the stated category is that he believes that your request is insincere, that you already know the definition few would need to go to rehab if it were just about getting you to want to stop instead of providing you with the tools to stop and the hope that you can stop and—perhaps biggest for social creatures—a community to keep you on track at your daughter's ballet recital for the first time ever—and, behind the curtain, she watches you walk in and take your seat—merely because of what will cause a trough as intense as the peak: your new client has a daughter in the recital too
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.