i am the honeybee, finally having enough of you swatting me away
giving you every ounce of poison i can gather in my stomach
and losing myself
in the process

Whimsical strings of particular words;
Cut and pasted into delicate furnishings.
A cadence,
Rhythm,
Feeling.
Weaved together into metaphorical meanings
And deeper understandings of not only oneself
But the collective mind of humankind
As if great discoveries are made with every letter.

The barely comprehensible wisdom resonates,
Echoing off walls and through empty minds
As if carrying more of a meaning
Than a gentle breeze
Entertaining a slip of paper
Through its nimble fingers.

It’s hollow bones would crumble under
the slightest press.

When I am done with my poem today
You might see it.
Well, if you're reading this
then you did see it.

I'm sorry.
As the fingers strike the keys
my mind is sodden.
Vacancies available, as they say.

Anyway, cast your thoughts
to those who will not see this.
Either occasional lookers
or Hello Poetry zealots
may let these pixelated words slip by.
They won't be affected.

But you are.
Now, I'm not expecting to change your life
but maybe I've got you thinking
at this moment,
when already in the past I've finished this
and sat back silently,
wishing the dull pain
of the past's barbs in my mind
away.

You are potentially similar.
Or maybe you already switched away.
****.
I forgot again.

I got up to talk to my dad.
I took out the garbage.
Did you stop, leave in the middle of this poem?
It's okay because me too.

You have read this poem,
maybe considered it.
I am almost done.

I'm not sure how this is going to end.

I guess I'll just put out my poem now
for people to find and to not find.
But remember
that the small stuff
from insignificant sources
feels for you.

I know I'll have to be one-
so I push a little harder.
The door swings open,
and there you are,
naked and crying,
with a blanket over your head.
I keep teetering about
on the threshold,
step in, step out.
I shut the door,
and walk around.
I might be the one-
but I'm not ready for your sound.

I've been teaching people
how to be poets.
Now, even to me,
this sounds like canned *******.
But I believe that there is more to it.
It sounds so elitist to think
that you were just born with poetry
in your heart and mind.
That it could ever be so hard to find
inner meaning where there is none.
Even love is an illusion
the same way color never existed
outside the eye,
your beauty never existed
outside my heart.

Now before I start,
let me go back to square one.
I find it hard to believe that someone
can't be something just because... they aren't.
Poetry, like all art, is a skill
and like all art, you don't need to be good.
No-one is judging your art
unless you ask them to
and if it ends up in front of their face,
you've asked.
It's a skill, you get better and worse,
good days and bad days,
but some people just need to realize
what poetry really, really is.

It's not about rhyming, or even sounding good.
It's about meaning.
What's the deal with this flower?
This flower is art.
It's a piece of chlorophyll, who cares?
Because the flower is beautiful.
What makes the flower beautiful?
Because I choose to believe that this flower is more
than what my eye percieves.
Boy, this art **** sounds like
a bunch of crap.
*It really is.

stumble over the rhythm you create
as if it wasn't yours.
trip over the syllables in haste
as you attempt to overtake them
before they run out of control.
this is not poetry;
this is just plain crassness.
you're a verbal klutz,
and it hurts our sensibilities.
you can't hear what you're saying,
you are driving blind
in the blizzard of words
and you have the audacity to think
you'll get out of this unscathed;
somehow revered
because of your valiant effort
and mediocre product.
a bad combination,
and you're bound to be
called out on it, for sure.
luck won't cut it.
you have to know what you're doing
and you have to be good at it.
so if you have nothing to say
that you'll be saying right—
nothing that will squeeze flesh
through clothes or break skin and teeth
or kick and scream—basically,
don't
even
try.

i spit metaphors
and stumble to my knees,
i wipe similes from my lips
like blood and teeth.
i am pummeled with irony fists
as i stagger and crash
across barstools in anapest reels,
with splinters of broken
clauses enjambed in my flesh
and choppy flashbacks
blinding me, pounding my head.
i slip in spilled spirits,
scrabbling and scrambling
to steady my psyche.

i flail, i falter, i fall,
again and again in alliterative agony.

this is not a beating.
this is catharsis.

I will defy the movement of language
With syllables soft before the snow
For Autumn in the fewest chosen words
Along lines of simple alphabets

In the palm of my listening
I will observe you walk as a poem
Skips across ethereally this earth
With colors and bodies of Christmas

An instantaneous impression of beauty
I will sing a lullaby to the irreproachable sky
And kiss the poem-greeting letters
That dissolve as a soul among the trees

And the centre of music
That is a living expression of the times
Today the sun comes out in your poem
And I listen for the poem I will write in reply

I will be a hero of a recluse today, again
With an inner smile of jewel-pointed clarity
That the imagination is a universal thing
The night’s sheerness of black gardens

A voice from which religions spring
Spiritual movement completes itself
In an intuitive release of meaning
A letting go of the sadness of having come

And gone, like death, poetry takes me there
As a river of music, entering my blood
Chilling me with a serotonin symphony
The joy of being here, the glances and reflections

Of existence, mirroring poetry
Between silence and music
The snow and sun, men and women
The rain and drums stalk my fantasies.