MADE FOR YOU AND ME 3: hive Being (Stanzas 2018--part 11)
scent of the day: Des Cendres, by Les Abstraits
Only first few minutes with this fragrance, so grain of salt. Birch tar and pine pitch drizzled lightly over vetiver roots on what seems to be a dug up piece of mossy pelt whose animalism has been almost entirely stripped away by earthy soil elements. I consider this a vetiver leather fragrance. The vetiver is very strong and reminsiccent of other fragrances that I cannot put my finger on. Haitian vetiver—a common designer vetiver—is listed, and that gives green and even charred lime facets. But how it comes off in the whole composition is more like Brazilian vetiver: vegetative, herbaceous, earthy, rooty—like the raw essence of tilled soil (tangled with roots and herbs) with a charred-leaf tobacco layer. Nothing is new here really. This is reinventing the wheel big time.
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 3: hive Being (Stanzas 2018—part 11)
that candy-bowl person in the office
banged by the girl who hates your wife
there is always a portent to be read in fire
exhaust pipe putt-putting blue smoke in the cold dawn
the watch did not stop ticking when the owner did
in the false reign of whiteness, only whites are to blame for their own failures
only the realest leap from the suicide bridge when the water is ice
trans women—real women—jerking off in the night bunks of a woman’s shelter
clip the nails of your fisting hand
skydive before suicide
“What?” voiced in an empty room
racing home before the opioid kicks in
soon enough in traffic you start nose-picking
so quick he was the snap that no pride could be gotten from getting under his skin
stabbed her so many times, what he hated twinned in her eyes
even when we are in person we are on our phones
seduced into depression despite knowing how unpleasant it will be
aging like GMO strawberries
before it was called “toxic,” fistfight passages into manhood made best friends
he took his own witlessness, an equanimity augmented by obesity, for sagacity
floor heat grate, under the metal years of thooked phlegm and cigarette ash
circumcised after death
resist the Palpatine slogan “Free speech is not hate speech" lest you find yourself ousted for asking a black student—a queen—to lower her voice, or for any word the lying powers that be decide is racist or inciting and thereby hate speech
black asses—clapping with lyrical obscenity—gobble up the rain of dollars in a frenzy of prehensile precision that would leave Attenborough himself speechless
catfish with bottle shards in their underbellies, hermit crabs homed in beer cans— one facet of our unease seeing this is what it whispers: that we and our artifacts are as natural as stones and moss, as natural as catfish and hermit crabs see us
the ceremonial disposal of wealth still occurs:
burning Benjamins like a great native chief
might have burned his first born son
dying, defecating, and doing it
are most disgraceful in cultures
desperate to deny our animality
are you big enough to own who made your success possible— who might have even saved you?
a country where you can be fired from any job even for your off-duty expressions must ensure basic income to protect against the gun-sale chance—thin for artists, heterodox by blood—that the culture becomes so intolerant that no one will hire
showing your ugliest, nastiest, facets to family, friends, and lovers—is it because you want to be healed or to be accepted?
the urine that comes out of the soma in his belly button looks like egg-drop soup—intestines, the material to build the stricture-free channel, never stop producing mucous
lack of ambition allowed him to come off as the kindest person
muttering to oneself out loud—our tree days still speak—for a semblance of sympathy
seriously, would you rather get back the possession or its thief?
before you label the believer “stupid” and “backward” consider whether you could even muster the courage to survive in a believing culture without that belief
okay-to-proceed signals (erections, leaning in)
do not suffice for consent, say the same people
who chase down shrieking beasts for slaughter
it was supposed to be free drinks in that city for life, but soon enough everyone forgot who he is—was
shiatsuing an expectant vulva in the final trimester—the honeymoon is officially over
being aware of being covered in—indeed, being made more or less of—the blood of those who died for you does not have to make leaving bed so burdensome
keeping the peace by employing the language of the rival view in the very undoing of that view
what if your voice, the one they tell artists to find, is twisted—perverted, demonic?
appreciating something does not require desiring it
birds flying higher to couple longer in freefall
faces staggered back to goo-goo-ga-ga by how time’s velocity only seemed to grow
more dying than we would like to admit would take the living with them if they could
before you label the black man “toxic” and “traitor” for spreading the lie— the excuse-entitling, agency-crippling lie—that the whiteness hunts blacks more than ever, consider whether you could resist the temptation of pampering
what thing runs better when run by people unwilling to take responsibility for its running?
that it is unfair to blame you for the horrors ten thousand years ago committed by someone configured—just like you—from particles numerically identical to yours, does that mean you are more than just particles in a certain configuration?
smelling the vibrator head anytime you cross its smoked-rubber path— putting away socks is never as quick as it could be
some of the dying, even in last moments, do not drop their falsities and so still speak with certitude
the alienating—the sad—state of those who cannot turn off their gift: Jordan playing a board game with kids as if it were the NBA Finals; a philosopher small-talking with loved ones as if defending a thesis
activists do not want to hear the gray; lovers do not want to hear it will fade
bottles of liquor fill the fridge—on deck to be put in the freezer
going back into the closet
chain smoking at AA meetings
so into the porn of your prejudice
evicted from your home by flood only to be evicted from your grave by flood
Huck says, “It don’t seem natural” for a black to care “just as much for his people as white folk for their’n”—and we are doltish (or better: offense-craving) enough to cancel Twain, completely “missing” his “Fuck you” to white supremacy here
if it is wise to see the full path before walking, then it is wise for us never to start walking
what would remain of consciousness of some thing if we deleted the consciousness of being conscious of that thing?
why we are “so in denial when we know we’re not happy here” is sometimes because happiness has a wider scope than we think
lovers of cow cheese disgusted by human cheese
the proof is to compel universal assent despite appearing in a contingent style peculiar to the narrow discipline of math
despite the various changes of history, it is perhaps a bigger industry than ever for blacks to be seen as nothing but victims
fake natty bodybuilders selling effortless solutions to make average joes look like them
combating a witch-hunt culture by making accusations yourself: the wilder the better, in fact
when you fish creeks regularly for dinner, sometimes the spouse will sit this one out in the car
showing the young girl pornography so she will see it is no deformity having such monstrous inner labia
in the democratic space of social media sleazy ads appear alongside mainstays (Tide, say), tainting even them with distrust
