fighting bees

fighting bees Mar 2014

How does it feel -
this life equation balanced thing you hold in your hand
where this adds up to This
and we are all so much easier to control
and he wanted to be a poet but his father
gave him a maclemore CD so
now he's a rapper
And to her the sunrise was an immemorial ritual
that she danced to every day
but you turned it all even anyway
in an equilibrium
of balance and an equals sign
And at school you always detested algebra.

fighting bees Mar 2014

Letter

your father did not stay long enough to teach you these things, all he stayed for was the birth certificate and the first looks at you naked. but you don't tell people about that, same as you don't talk about all the times he's come back for the same thing.
and despite your mother's best efforts and cookies, you did not stay long enough for her to teach you. it is why you think you are like your father, this endless string of leavings.
and so it is that i, the worst teacher of them all, have been forced to tell you this.
and i am much better written down, or at least i'm braver.
so these are Your Guidelines:
The Way to Reach From The Whiteness:
do not love boys with shallow eyes, because they will always turn out to be deep, and you will feel betrayed
do not love girls just because they look like boys , or because you think that will make them happier.
your only fault my dear is that you think all you are good for is to be someone else's everything, even though you have seen how impossible it is.
for once, please let yourself be only a little, with sometime else to fill in the gaps and together you will be everything.
don't run around the block when you think you should, only run when the running is the only thing keeping you sane.
when you are making love, remember that what you are doing is not ***, you are trying to get into each other's skin, and under each other's fingernails.
wear the pink shirt.
it will not make you any gayer than you already are
you will go to university, i know you will
stay there, for once resist the urge to leave and turn up at my window again.
stay, learn the things no one knows, until you find your favourite book, and a boy with skin the colour of you carpet and eyes and colour of your wallpaper, for he is already home.
treat him the care, love him the only way there is, with sweet kisses and midnight dances.
do not be afraid to hold his hand, it will not burn like the others
learn how to hide your hands from people who will see them as your father's, made for the same things.
keep your hands on you guitar, around the pencil, do not let them think they can take these things away from you
you are not your father.
i know you will do the right things.
and i know you will die, but before this, you will live and you will be happy, always.

fighting bees Mar 2014

Smoking

There is a boy in the library, ignoring the crazy lady talking through the window.
I feel like telling him she is nice. And probably not half as crazy as the librarians in this town. She has 2 children. They live in Greece. And when she cries, her dogs hide under the deck.
But he probably doesn't speak English.
Hardly any of these people sitting on their backpacks at the library do. And even if he did, he wouldn't listen.
He is reading. Its a good book. I know its a good book. I've read it. Now I feeling like telling him to leave.
He should not read it here, underneath the colour wallpaper. He needs to find a corner of a beach, so he doesn't have to cry in public. And he has to cry, because if he doesn't, I know the crying will happen inside. And his eyes will turn a shade darker with the smoke of their deaths, and his muscles will strain to rip from his ridiculously alive tendons. His eyes are already black, and I do not think he can afford to find more darkness.
Not that I would know.
He might pick cherries for a living and flirt with a trailer park attendant called Fiona is his spare time.
But I have a smell for the scared and enclosed people here. I can see the kracken hunters and the faerie kissers. They show themselves to me accidentally and I turn watch them destroy their dreams.
People ask me why I am cold all the time. They do not understand, because the boy at the library closed the book before he could cry and I knew he would be destroyed anyway

— The End —