MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 44)

Let's workshop this stanza sequence about irresistibly tight ("toight!")--fatally tight--marriage nights, Keenan Ivory Wayans, bald spots, pressing hard while brushing teeth, combovers, George Michael

scent of the day: Fumidus, by Profumum Roma. Perhaps the gothic vetiver scent to end all gothic vetiver scents (a no-holds-barred niche version of Encre Noire A L'Extreme, combining the primal with the industrial), Fumidus (Latin for “full of smoke”) opens with a hair-on-your chest bite of a Laphroaig scotch and then—as the scotch quickly dials back in abrasiveness (although always lending peaty hints of cellar mothballs and oak-cask mildew)—settles into its solitary minimalism: bog-monster vetiver (dirty roots, bitter and medicinal) and scorched birch (tarry and leathery, almost reminiscent of creosote or even burnt tire)—the resultant impression, quite evocative, is that of a weathered man sitting in a cold cigar room lined with musty books, next to his leather chair a full ashtray and in front of him (close enough to receive the warmth it once gave) a spent oak fire (perhaps with some charred hazelnut shells still discernable in the ash), a faint cinder glow that gives out umami whisps (nutty like aged cheese, vegetal like seaweed, mesquite like barbecue ribs) until all that remains hours in is a subtle tone (tealike by dawn) of mold-and-ink vetiver.

another preteen uterus ruptured on Muhammad’s sickle-moon wedding night

if one feeling were final, inescapable, then suicide might be the answer 

denying our connection to freakishness by calling people “freaks”

an exhaustive dichotomy but only in one domain

rosebud is young pussy, life’s answer to which we have been long groomed

so many years in the cult to which you sacrificed all, where even could you go?

dreams of crack rock set in a charred-bottom bubbler, only no drawer has a lighter

challenge avoidance registered and passed along in the very epigenome? 

the crowd, taunted to roar louder
by the echo back of its own roar—
Keenan Ivory Wayans: “Message!”

bristles splayed worse than rope-tie rape porn
from the insane brushing pressures of someone, 
especially if a woman, clearly bent on self harm 

once you stop combing strands over the bald spot (let alone gelling
them down against rogue wind) what is missing almost disappears:
muzzled insecurities shriek; accepted ones play in the background

attachment to the guitar songs
of the cult, however repulsive
they now seem in your normal mind

however many decades of disciplined cognitive restructuring pass after deconversion
from the Tupperware-party-turned-rape-cult, George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex”—
even an elevator’s tinkly orchestral cover—summons panty-sopping Pavlovian slime

hands gloved in octopus, brown men 
spar until the creatures drop in stupor 
and are hung from clotheslines to dry

the artist's way,  especially in our consumerist climate, has been to alienate people
(a defense mechanism to guard the fire fame reliably extinguishes)—but sometimes
even the best alienations (think: Infinite Jest) backfire by some strange happenstance

as if you were prey in his eyes, he paces behind the chain-link fence
like a dog wearing a path at the edge of the lawn—the pacing coming to a halt,
though, each time the “hold me back!”, the “You’re damn lucky!”, gate is opened

ashram westerners so easy to exploit

streetlamps knocked out with stones

waking before any alarm—that can feed the belief that you enjoy the job

such things happen in an all-boys school

stealth-bomber gummies during the Gulf War

a necktie around your neck brace

becoming the object of a dare

the headsman’s daily practice with the axe, aware 
that he can be called upon anytime to deliver 
a blow humane enough to save him from shame 

asking a banal question about a rich matter
need not amount to reducing
that rich matter to the banal

the breeze, although it carries 
particles of burned persons,
sweeps back the beloved’s hair

the stallion unloads his cream 
generative in the man who will die 
from the depth of the final thrust