scent of the day: Chypre Noir, by Ensar
First wear. Private Blend style tea and dusty-fungal myrhh given a black boot polish feel, which comes out more as the blood orange opening recedes, perhaps from an unstated cypriol note—Journey Man like note and, indeed, vibe with the cypriol and tobacco like oud. Really this is like a black green take on journey man. There is the pepper and bitter orange up top and then that tobacco (here from oud) and industral leather (here from oakmoss and perhaps cypriol) underneath. As someone noted, I think wisely, there is this dusty T-Rex vibe. But it also has the gingery snap of Boundless.
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 3: hive Being (Stanzas 2018—part 15)
snow alters the hour bell’s tune, foregrounding it once again
Takis and unlimited free porn
“I wish trans aikido was available back when I had bootleg Jordans!"
if your queen is not also your baby (at least at times), you are not her king
the liberation of being around those who do not give a damn
not believable, not authentic, enough to play yourself in the movie
bowels laxatived before the hanging
tripping with someone from whom you have been holding something back
the cool kids are not so bad once they start liking you
tossing dog poop down the storm sewer and taking all the Halloween candy
if US inmates ever got their hands on Korean soap operas!
getting upset over what was said with what we know, though, to have been good intent
lonely enough to build a fantasy of joyous marriage from just one meager gesture of concern, care—itself merely the indoctrinated, opportunistic, response
many blacks voted for him but only few could admit given the special favors in the immediate wake of his win: the reinvigoration of the commitment, like New Years in a way, of their treatment as super citizens, super cripples
what better indoctrination of the would-be slave than that God graces the humble
we feel shame when our sex pics come to light, but freely show pics of our eating
A: “I love you less than—nothing.” B: “That’s fucked up.” A: “Only if you make nothing something.”
the proscription against cultural appropriation looming overhead like a scythe, from extraterrestrial intelligences what might we ever hope to learn in good conscience?
fear and indolence candy-frosted by hope: “No need to get it checked; it’s most likely nothing serious”
planning—just itching—to divorce once the kids go to college, after teaching them that real love looks like pretend love
trunks sniff-touching found elephant bones to see if the dead is known
open to the surprise of what those not even born then are able to bring to light about your teen decade, which you only knew like the back of your hand
wishing that you did not care that it is her birthday, but more than that—wishing that she notice you wishing that you did not care that it is her birthday
in the hysteria of accusation, it is easy to misremember having been accused by people who were not actually accused
exiting their terminals, the combat soldiers are nauseated to find, as if for the first time, that their families—holding out signs and flowers and babies—are nothing but quivering meat
inhaled into wrestling fandom, unable in real life to body slam your boss
after talking out each other’s guilt for having cheated on their spouses, the cheaters make love a second time
were it not bad enough that obvious satire gets misconstrued, many read—honest-to-God— “if x, then y” as an endorsement of x being true
not wanting to face that the years have been utterly in vain, you continue the treatment for what you have been found not to have
appreciating the material merely for what it points to, not for what it is as material
the best sign of the insidiousness of the patriarchal white world order is that the censoring spirit of cranky old white conservatives possesses even college students, foaming to cancel anything unsettling—even art!
enough videos of injustice to numb us to injustice
having learned to step over the homeless
boredom and purposelessness breed hysteria
the family grows apart as the table gets bigger
confederate flag curtains
might the days of perfumed love notes return even without the return of paper?
friend enough to delete your porn folder when you die
sleep ever interrupted by knocking fiends
blessing the meal, whom do we name if we name anyone?
hurried greetings despite homecoming after a long absence
the great number of inputs it took— faces of shock, inability to speak, jaw bone, redness— before he could process that he was shot
upon cruise ships in arctic regions opened by climate change, we stand awed by bears adrift on ice chunks
shielded from death, they became adults who take life for granted
new gadgets and other diversions to counteract the painful labor it takes to purchase them
the mittened child gives himself over to the adult’s attempt at backtracking the coat zipper choked up with cloth
those too weak to defend their honor often rewrite the rules of the game: deriding honor, celebrating weakness
not wanting to trade what is for you a slur of stars for what is for the trained a firmament full of named patterns
thou shalt say “trans women are real women” or else be banned from friend groups (many of which are built up of people wisely faking their narrative allegiance) and deplatformed, fired—everyone running scared reveals the real powers that be
the push to craft “accessible” art (we all know the indie-bio cliché: “odd yet relatable”) can sound as good as the push to trust your gut, but your gut once would have heaved (vomit-emoji toxic in today’s tongue) at the mere thought of interracial swimming pools
kneeling in protest against the continual persecution of a marginal group does not go far enough if the persecutors, and those whom they benefit (so often Leave-it-to-Beaver types), hold that such kneeling goes too far
