Wasted White Privilege (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Dukkan (Semi-Bespoke: 1gr Turkish Rose), by Elkhaldi
Dukkan is a rose fragrance in the jasmine-dominant tea vein of Ensar’s Rose, but bent much more in the diredction of Nectar thai. Another rose oud but this has a jasmine undercurrent (loud at first but not indolic) and a lovely menthol quality with sweet tea facets—almost evne chai-like. The earthiness it emphasizes, after its jasmine-bubblegum-connection to L’Huere Exquise fades and the rose rises, is not the chocolateyness of Malik al-Taif but a rootiness that I also feel in Violette Iriani. It is way up there in ranks but I hesitate to say that even with this extra rose, which does balance out the otherwise jasmine dominance like we see in Ensar’;s Rose, it can compete with Amphora’s Attainment. As for my first wear it is great but overhyped at least in this one cultural moment. That said, its medicinal quality brings a calming menthol naturalism that is hard to underappreciate.
*Let’s workshop this poem about white trash children (discarded, feral, angry) in the toxic shadow of an abandoned industrial economy, children flaunting their only real power: malignant bitterness.
Wasted White Privilege
Too eager to salt walkways and wave “Morning” for the side of the tracks they U-Hauled into when snow still muffled the rot of lopsided porches, the reek of underground solvents from an IBM long gone like some ghetto dad—the new couple
on the block, black parents smiling in a summer sun side hug, tell their boy to ride only on the sidewalk and, not knowing that such expressions of care ladled out nogoodnik chum even more irresistible than an open hydrant or a busted vending machine,
within seconds a shirtless shiver of white trash pedals in (teeth soda-rotten before the age of one, all these kids) on wheelies and handlebars and pegs, again and again jumping the curb out into the street where they spit dehydrated loogies at beeping cars
without any more reservation (in this payback, this bitterness, they call “fun”) than they would teabag their pubeless genitalia into the mouths and eye sockets of mothers too conked out on junk to fight even the penetrations of a whole little fist.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
