MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--part 90)
scent of the day: Amber Australia, by Elkhaldi
Another slept on one. Such a lovely briny-salty coastal feel in the drydown. You would think this has ambergris in here. But that coastal impression is common from the linen-driftwood feel of the sandalwood used here plus the mineralic edges of the ouds. Very much another sprayable attar feel. That is really what you get from Elkhaldi. Anyone who refuses to swipe but wants the experience—here is where you go, hands down. And for people who really like this feel I can image their two favorite brands being Elkhaldi and Yaaseen. They really do scratch same lo-fi garage band sloppy itch.
Opening is a boozy-orange-tinged creamy woodiness (orange-blossom plus bitter citrus plus ouds and sandalwood) that seems right for Spring even though the color of the juice and the base seem right for Fall. I get orange creamsicle woodiness too like in Bortnikoff’s Oud Cologne or In Franklin’s Malinau ooud distilation. The feel almost is like eating an artisanal creamsicle on the coast—its stick, though, is not the standard tasteless one but a dark resinous one, rum-dipped, with a lot of gourmand touches all its own.
The lychee-bready boronia, plus the hay-metallic Kashmiri saffron, plus the lemon-leaf white rose, plus indolic-honey orange blossom, plus bright-juicy orange, plus nutty-spicy sandalwood, all over a fruity-tobacco oud—this fragrance has a great deal in common with Hayati by Amphora Exotica. They both are build around a fruity-tobacco oud (in Hayati it is the pollen-plum Cambodian and in Amber Australia it is the fungal-fermented Trat) and sandalwood (in Hayati it is the ghee-butter mysore and in Amber Australia it is cedar-driftwood Australian) as a pedastal for the boronia, which give an impression almost of green tea and dried rapsberry in a leather pouch in both cases. Amber Australia, however, comes off more dark chocolatey and gourmand, mildewed and herbal, smoky and rugged, whereas Hayati feels more vanillic and floral, buttery and waxy, musky and refined. The musky-fuzz is definitely more present in Hayati, which features not only musk but ambergris. Both have a resinous chewiness and warmth but as Amber Australia’s linen-driftwood sandalwood becomes more and more prominent, it becomes less so than Hayati. Hayati stays ulta-creamy and honeyed whereas Amber Australia is more about the dark-bitter woods. Hayati is more uniform sophistication (classical music like Mozart) whereas Amer Ausatralia, with it stormy clash between sunlight creamsicle and bitter-cocao darkness, has the tension of a troubled artist prone to caffein-induced mood swings that his wife or wives will definitely be able to tell you about (grunge music like Nirvana).
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017—part 90)
car speakers from a base head—your uncle
claiming you did not cheat since what you creamed does not count as a person
a prostitute to question, to converse with
the tossed cat unballs midair
what you presume is required for life
known brothels low key in the hood
prison PTSD from years ever on edge
the black applying for membership in the Jewish country club
not going to the hospital in fear of being deported for breaking in
testicles snared in an ancient suckling reflex
not wanting to talk, express feelings—not wanting to enter tiresome circuits prefabricated (by TV)
too vain an intellectual to appear the fool for the sake of song
self-soothing behaviors frightening to others
the cliché of the public world, “it’s just a cat,” did ease some of the private pain
monitored and baited so sedulously in a society where no one is hiring, count on the prisoner’s return
school shootings will lessen if you welcome the nerd
the thud rhythm of a sneaker in the drier
most factory farmers are not sadists, but neither were most slavers
getting back with the girl whom your friends—each of them full of “finallys,” and all with the same but independent stress front-loaded on the “F”— said they were glad you dumped
“Wait up. Let me get the shit straight. You telling me only this nigga gettin high? Nah for real. I paid to watch this naked-ass shaman nigga get all fucked up—when I’m the mahfucka over here with the issue?”
only the most antisocial can avoid giving the psychoanalyst what is required: mommy-daddy answers
would you rather kill a toddler—cliff-yeeted post anal-pump cum—and forget (along with everyone else) that you did, or not kill it but spend the rest of your life with the false memory that you did—sex sleeve murder-blur creampie included?
schools with major freeways in their backyards
sneaking out liquor bottles on garbage day—“Hey Jan!”
your refusal to play along becomes the evidence used to condemn you
the honeypot strategy in religious dating: tempt the self-proclaimed virtuous man with sex, pussy fingers to his nose after dinner; get rid of him if he goes after it
chucking stones at trucks because they are polluters or traffickers, not because what the news says: the drivers are Mexican
hunch bettors reaching out to family, after a disappearance, for loans with promises to pay back the amount from last time—“and more!”
doctors refuse to treat a man who wants to increase his manliness, but the fuckers jump all over—as if their livelihoods and reputations depended on it—treating a woman who wants to become a man
every supposition is rooted in how we sense, think, behave merely as humans
inserting the tampon for your lover
learning who someone is by what passages they underline
suing Mom for having you
the cringey air of chicanery in the thunderous speeches of performers: Hitler, MLK
canned dog food for the parents; something normal, something Kraft, for the kids
mistaking comprehensive depression for a stroke, unable to pull yourself out of bed after the usual energy reset
the regenerative nectar of rest emphatic in lions, sprawled out for full days with sea-kelp tails
there would be no safety even were there no desire—put the ladder to her window
not telling loved ones of your illness, unfit to bear counterfeit flourishes of care
the hope that figuring out the cause of your depression gives you the cure
attire less arresting than the desolate eyes of the runway husk
core commitment to inspiriting those of whom you will be envious if your efforts happen to work
operated on by a doctor, tempted— by faith in the efficacy of prayer— to rely on prayer over training
the inability to create the illusion of toughness, of pending death, required to commit the stickup
anally contracting HIV while Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” plays in the background
untanned regions mistaken for bathing suits
voluntold to do extra work—the extra work now in the form of right-think modules
midget heads born that size
comics lost to sitcoms
justifying your piece by saying that the art is in the struggle to interpret it
sheep with a bah about them suggesting openness to being fucked by man
the violence of the chest compressions at least reassure onlookers to the CPR that paramedics did all they could
a work so great that most are afraid of the tremendous feelings it might awaken if they open themselves to it
a grueling shift from the primal need to keep your child alive to the need to help it die with minimal suffering
good looks transporting you into sinister sexual territory
like a jarring word in a poem, the torn canvas jolts us from the painted fantasy back into the mortal realm of materiality
full of guilt for being unproductive, gazing upon the tree that feeds us, we reach out for the smartphone
put on the right robes and family, friends, will no longer lose sleep over your doing nothing all day
bittersweet remembrances of bygone commercial consumption
adults ashamed of sleeping with cuddle objects: blankies, teddies
children chastised by the “feminized” for sketching spectacles of monsters decimating cities and their citizens
savoring a depressive episode, as one savors a flu, in that it gives an excuse to take time away from responsibility
sexual violence as a torture tactic cannot explain reverse cowgirl double penetration of her corpse
sex lube in the neon fanny pack
priests did not need microscopes to know the deadly horrors of anal sex and pork— do not be so quick to scoff at your elders
reminders of how the gut has misled before stoke our hope that it is wrong about others seeing through our latest veneer with ease
send sensitive artists, poets, to space too— not just those military men trained to be rational, unmoved, cool under pressure
the city’s outdoor fountains for hobo baths in the lavender light of dawn
knitting an impressive personality out of her impressive appearance
an oil painting of a mirror soiled by months of toothpaste splatter, that aerosol mystery of stroke vigor and porcelain rebound—its bottom half a haze speckled with chalky plaques, some dimensional enough perhaps to count as barnacles
exploiting in art the safe distance of similar historical happenings to comment upon present ones
an upstanding employee of an abusive corporation gets canned if he attempts to mainline his values, but what happens when we all plunge the syringe?
longing for societal collapse, perhaps less from a drive to die (and kill along the way), and more from a drive to live what we sense will be lives of purpose and care
wheeled to your seat to beat the security line, staying in character for the other passengers will mean being unable to get up to pee—but you planned for that
when keeping secrets starts costing too much, one response is just to be openly fucked up— with an attitude of “What’re you gonna do?”
the face of one in love—cozy in posture with a slight smile—viewing back the one whom she knows to be viewing her in love
if there is such a thing as your body and it is only the cells with your DNA, you are a minority in your own space
pick burrs and ticks off your pet in hunched lullaby like our groom-bent chimp moms; chill the watermelon in the creek swirl for electrolyte blessings like cotton-sun slaves; hug a big stone and moon-bounce along the swim-hole floor like fire-lung Indian kids
with their having lived so long with someone that special, you almost want to tell the grieving family “Congratulations” instead of the “I’m sorry for your loss” drawn from your lips
imagine if private prisons were paid, not simply for the number of bodies, but for how many do not come back
tougher sentences for kids of the judge’s race
years of nail-biting confusion about whether to stay, finally dissipated into the flushing relief of realizing he had dug in too deep not to stay
since your limitations—human, male, blind, one-armed— in many cases do define you, the saner and more effective move is to appreciate the way in which they also un-limit you
since we no longer even make as much as our parents, do not be surprised when we no longer even live as long as them
the fixation for sterility is a fixation to evade death, but only in a vacuum— pure death—is sterility ever achieved
welcome, you faggots, to our white-authors-can-only-write-white-characters era— recidivistic, insular, lonely (and yet, in a knife twist, packaged as “progressive”)— where trauma must be time-stamped and notarized before it can speak through us
to keep alive some semblance of belonging, he clings to manners even with no one else at the table
but whose midnight are we talking, Denver Tokyo, when we say that Jesus is coming back on the first tick of the new millennium?
