MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 20)
Let's workshop this stanza sequence about cocaine, karma, avalanches, botched circumcisions, hawks, alcoholism, childbirth, divorce, graffiti, Thanatos, Las Vegas, weddings, prison, privacy, sunsets
prison sheet over the head to invent privacy where you can yet another school-kid-meets-landmine yawner the next Shakespeare will die too the acting-class excuse to explain rage outs to neighbors looping on the bus all day to keep warm or cool, to sleep, out of the elements miming fascination Vegas Goodwill bridal gown when the shame expressed is in fact pride mountains are dry islands a father’s don’t-tell-your-mother wink parents in grade-school desk-chairs soporific ropes of gutter water the last slice of Sunday sunlight on the corner of the kitchen table perched hawks awaiting what may scurry from the forest blaze starting to drink in the mornings he took it on as his fault (not even five) when the cop k9 “Scotty” found that karmic coke stashed in his undies—self-blame he continued, more and more unknowingly until his senescent delirium, trying to atone for sharks like us can live, courtesy of our technology, much deeper into fin-worn senility now that they have cruise ships to shadow for the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of waste dumped overboard the only religion that should be on the table for preemptive extermination is one so bold as to declare itself “God’s final revelation” rip up junk mail and send it back to sender with the included business-reply envelope: the company gets charged for each return is how courageous you find killing yourself, finally ending that thumping radix of bravery, solid measure of how attached you are to life? traversing such distance (zenith to base), the avalanche— juggernaut of velocious vigor—seems from far off safety a parody of slow motion (as do shore waves from a plane) graffiti banned but not billboards— even billboards advertising, yes, gambling and cigarettes and alcohol to the question “How do you know he's the enemy" the man answered: “Cuz look at him: the fucker's dead!" a decade beyond divorce he still has, if only in an attic box of emotional unpartables, the cheap baby blue postpartum sitz bath born of the same stuff as reality itself, even a simulation is real near death, it is easy to confide in those who are not characters so entrenched in your life “simply raise the baby as a girl,” Dr. Smith said (an axe to grind) after the botched circumcision: “We now know its all cultural overlay anyway” the silver lining to her size is that she has an inbuilt test for seeing who is likely a “good" person: it was in who would look her in the eye still—in who would open up and laugh and relax in her fleshy air just as we hit upon water when we dig deep enough beneath the crust, so we eventually desire to die— wearied by experiences ultimately incomprehensible the fall of a scene you never thought would end but the benefit of being the creatures who know we are going to die is that we know why it was worthwhile to have been born cliché being, like bacteria, entrenched in who we are, raging against it is a risk lucky for the rest of the world most of us fail to be our authentic selves, going about each day instead as our more accommodating mask-wearing selves
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.
