Poem-A-Day #358 : Fire

Fire

bees
          in
                paper

Poem-A-Day #241 : Everywhere / The Dream

Everywhere / The Dream

It's hard not to see apocalypse everywhere

The dream of drowning again - the one with the boat
and the attempt at fleeing - the one where your arms just
give out and your lungs are only shrubs not trees

The one with the darkness of water - the tingling
necessity of cold - spikes of jellyfish tentacles
never teeth not sharks this isn't that kind of thing - it
is a gentle death - so fucking quiet

Remember when you dreamt of bees all the time

They would land on your cans of soda - somehow find
the hole in your jeans and sit on your flesh - tongue
the salts there like miners looking for veins

Those were good times - less cold - often so full of sun
that you would wake up needing aloe on everything
feeling itched like poison oak - you drew oak leaf
patterns across every page of every book you read

At 7 AM the phone alerts you that a child has been taken

It is the sound of alarm - a sort of bleating in the darkness
that also resembles the klaxon of air raids - a unexploded
bomb in a churchyard - the mine your foot just ticked

The child is traveling in a beige car - are there
still beige things in the universe that do not travel - that
do not move constantly towards being less beige
do they all have children in them

Then at 9 the notice of a bomb downtown - a robot
lobster clawing at it - digging in a trash can or a strange
backpacks large pockets - there is a question in the sound
of alarm and that question is not why

In the dream of drowning there is a moment where you want ice cream

And that is natural - you probably want to go back
towards the kitchen - the boat sinking breaking falling apart
about you - you want those churned salt-licked milk crystals

There isn't anything clear in all this is dark - it is night
will continue to be so - the bomb will not be found - will not go off
the boat will sink and sink and sink because it is an unreal
a fractal inside your brain of what a drowning looks like

Poem-A-Day #11 : This Geology

This Geology

Elk preen on the edge of the canyon
clasping themselves to the rocks - lichen around the knobs gray and feathered

Wind boils itself - fire in the eyesockets of lime

Shapes make and unmake themselves - grasping soil and then letting it go
like birds from the nest

This geology is angry

Blood in out over - the universe begins with a shallow grave spun from a river
and it ends in the palms of a bee

Poem-A-Day #3 : bee sting

bee sting

          the red
      shoulder      the shoulder
where the red      hold
my hand I'm scared

          hold the red
      parts of my shoulder      in your hands
cup them      like tea sandwiches
overpriced and crustless

          my hand      slipping
      beneath my shirt
grabbing      at the knot of flesh
the animals keening endlessly

          where the bees
      in winter      go to red shoulder
drive off the edge of it
continue into a field of where

Crock

Crock 6/14

It is a tub of honey         you say
it is, this curved earthen jar
full of golden, clear, smooth

I hold it to my lips
pour it over my head
the glazing comes down

Like a new born         the slime
of bees, fills all space
you say         you made this

Bees tipping on last years nettle
when things were different
simpler         you say

No, not easier though
curved, like this jar, darker
dirtier, you say I'm morbid

I laugh filling my teeth with
honey, filling my lungs with
the scent of things no longer around