What’s with the bees?
You’ve asked
    several times now
What do I tell—
   I had not noticed them
Maybe, it’s because my lamp bleeds honey
  all over the floor and the walls

Maybe, it’s the soft buzzing of the fan
or the colourful paintings
        that are now anything but.
Perhaps all these thirsty flowers I’ve hung
  Or leaves on the wall paper
Maybe, it’s the wooden texture
of my shelves
  Maybe, it all screams ‘home’ to them

a break from those gossiping towns
    and manic roads

What can I tell— I don’t even know
Maybe it’s me they desire
—though I doubt it
                 Ask the clock,
ask him what he knows of me
I put on some music and
  it tickles my soul
—It pinches
I turn it off and all the world is left alone
  Birds ask if they can join me
I deny—
Foxes invite me to their hunts
         I deny
Owls have stories in their wings
              but what good are stories in
   a world so loud—

Sun dances from east to west to east
—untiring
I’ve lost count of her rounds
She asks me about my hues. I say,
I cannot read
    I say, I cannot write
I say, I cannot will myself to flutter
         I say, you see those wilting blossoms?
I think I’m turning into them
       (What a cheesy thing to say)

She sings me songs and paints up the sky
—I smile pink
though, why, I cannot tell
I tell her my hues are smiling, too
     She pats my cheek
and gracefully glides away
   and it is

        all still grey
the houses grey, people grey,
cars, plants, towers and stalls grey
Maybe that’s why the bees prefer
  this quiet cell

   It is still golden here
and blues still weep in the curtains
   This is us—
          I and the bees
they live on the silvery walls,
In the sheets, under the bed,
     behind those empty canvases
and inside drawers
          next to the books,
      next to the clock,
           —the picture frames

    over the fan,
the pillows, the carpet
—inside, inside me
Around me, around the poems
    taped on the door
around me
What’s with the bees?
   maybe, they’re
maybe, they’re just my friends.

Golden bees
over purple seas
Lies etched upon their wings
It is, I think, like that—
I cannot force this ink to scream
— Black flies
and brown moths
Dust knows what verses we carry,
but what good is she
Restless wasps
beneath a crystal cage
quiet— quiet carved over the bodies we bear

It flows like this, I suspect
They say death laughs when a man dares fly
But I dream this body
—not mine
hands
—not mine
Not mine, I swear
And I plant my smirking blade
into a soft earth
It giggles red, and red and red
and I pluck the gleaming fruit out
It smirks still—

So beautiful do they look
to my withering self
—not mine— not mine, I swear
Red upon red upon grey.
She spills for him,
and I let them meet, they
kiss and kiss and my heavy hands allow
—not mine
And I dream this dream
of a being so mine, and one so not
The flesh blends in with the crescent
a closed fist with an open chest
and I cannot tell who
smiles, who pleas, who wilts, who slumbers
Cannot tell grey

from red, from gold from black to brown
and bees
It bows like this, and you do not
part the slave from his king—but death
does not laugh
I’ve heard her weep somewhere inside
She says her wings hurt,
her wrists do
I think I tied her up with the walls of a skull
Where bees are buried
and moths lurk drunk
I do not remember now—
I did, when the blooms were still yellow
when ships talked of snoring oceans
and beetles listened—

and I dream this castle where
a maiden is ill
Walls silent,
and dresses, useless, lie
Slave girls and boys with dusty hands
and sweaty necks,
are blamed—
They have buried her in velvet quilts
and cushions stuffed with jewels
The graceful curtains
sing to her and
paintings their stories tell—
but I doubt she knows

It is, I think, blue
I cannot squeeze the beauty out my blood
and isn’t heaven lightened
by the very flames of hell
Do them heroes hear the moths’ shrieks—
up up into the sun so bright.
And I dream this canvas
where a maiden has died
Death’s song rang,
and she followed it out—
and the physician is hanged
for he could not stop her

And the queen to her lover,
surrenders her life
But far is the lover now, music sunk
deep in her bones
and the queen her voice,
surrenders, but—
The beetle never stirs
And the wasp still laughs under
Its glassy sky
— I dream the lightening
kissing a red sea
and I cannot tell purple from the queen’s pleas
And her lover’s dress
lies vacant in my chest
I cannot—
I cannot will this fly to move
and the moth—
Oh, the moth

Beauty of nature
Everything in harmony
The blossom can’t wait
to become a flower
To show her colors
To attract the bees 🐝

Shell✨🐚