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Marsha Singh May 2013
woke every morning and
dressed in the sun, then
dreamt in the breezeway
where the day's laundry
hung. She listened for
him in the summery hum;
sometimes she was honey,
sometimes she was stung.
rk  Apr 2020
beekeeper
rk Apr 2020
it's been longer than i'd like to admit
since i last heard your voice
with your uncanny ability
to turn my blood into liquid gold.
i can no longer hear you
calling my name,
but i can still taste the honey
that poured from your lips
as i drowned in each sacred kiss.
- i can still feel you when i sleep.
Raj Arumugam Feb 2012
Nero kicks Vespasian

1
Nero plays the lyre
He’s Emperor
so all must admire
but Vespasian goes to sleep
so Nero exiles Vespasian
and poor Vespasian now minds the bees

I am the Emperor
and all must admire
when I sing
or play the lyre
for I’m also a god...





Time kicks Nero*

2
But Nero goes to extremes
Rome burns, Nero kills
and soon events turn against him
and the Senate declares him
Enemy of the State
and Nero kills himself;
and the beekeeper Vespasian
through events played staccato by time
becomes Emperor Vespasian
and begins construction of the Colosseum

And Emperors too die
and I think I’m dying
Hey - help me up
for an Emperor must die on his feet
And hey! you know what?
I think I too am becoming a god!
lillian  Feb 2015
Amber Evergreen
lillian Feb 2015
My mind buzzing in a kaleidoscope of hexagonal memories.
I am reminded of when I was a child
My mother and I would drive for a hour deep into the
Evergreen woods to a small cabin,
Where an old man lived.

He harvested honey.
The beekeeper man.
I never went inside with her when she would go to buy
A jar.
The car riding idle, shaking while I wait,
I hear the hum of a thousand bees in the distance.

I imagine the hexagonal honeycomb
Home to hundreds of bees
All working simultaneously to bring me
But a single drop of paradise.

When my mother returned to the car she would hand me a Ball mason jar
Full of the stickiness of my desires.
The label slightly gluey from the beekeeper’s hands closing the jar.
I can feel the warmness of the honey seeping onto my lap.

The inkiness of honey dripping
Down my wrist.
Sweet, savory,
The flavor thick in my mouth
Each drop of amber seeping into each
Taste bud.

I always noticed the picture of this face,
An older man smiling.
A full grey beard and mustache.
There on the label he became alive to me,
A picture of the bee keeper’s head attached to the body of a bee.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2018
For Terry McFall, a Man of Bees and a Bees-y Man!

A beekeeper knows
That beauty is in the eye
of the bee-holder
Lvice  Nov 2017
Childhood
Lvice Nov 2017
The house that I grew up in is growing old.
I can barely distinguish between the house and my grandfather, and both have given up. Tired..of people walking inside of them.
I used to fall in the house running around the hallway and through the kitchen and now I'm falling through the floor.
There is no one to say "Get out of my kitchen!"
I've never been in the attic and I've only seen my grandfather open the latch once; I'll never get to see what was stored.  I thought Katherine's ornaments could be up there, but neither knew what had been done with them.
It broke my heart to see what I had seen. I wanted to have those memories again but not all the money in the world could buy them back.
The magic I had grown up with is dying. There is no more children to fall on the cinder under the fur shed and burn her forehead, or see snow for the first time. And after making snow *****, running hands through water and letting Katherine rub them through her bony hands. It doesn't snow in Louisiana but for this house it did.
I loved being old at such a young age. Picking blackberries with him and learning to preserve them. Staining my mouth, cheeks, hair, hands, my shirt with Mulberry. Then rolling dough on the counter and staining it with little girl hands and thin fingers and bear paws.
And still the only jelly I'll eat is blackberry jelly.
Cards at the table with Katherine was the best. She had this laugh. More of a cough and she wouldnt stop coughing until she caught her breath and then I would laugh so hard and try to walk it off and trip over her oxygen tubes.  That machine  used to haunt me. It looks with green eyes at night and stood in the open doorway of the door that I never understood why it was there, it never closed anyway. The doorway I used to hide in that one nightmare  about the dinosaur that would chase me around the same hallways that my grandfather would. I've always loved dinosaurs after that.
And eating at the kitchen table where there was always honey because grandfather was also a beekeeper and loved honeycombs and fresh honey.  The one flaw in that table was the window where I always thought raptors or a bobcat would jump out of while I was eating and eat ME. Tough little five year old me would put up a fight and scream until Paw would save me.
  The dining room table where Granny Velgin always had pancakes. The BEST pancakes. Where I learned to make them years later along with paine perdu, or French toast.  Little Cajun french me with my French name and father who was Czech but I have a  Cajun French grandfather.

The magic that was the now 60 year old house is going. It was always "50 years old" every time I asked my grandfather how old it was. It was his childhood house too. He says he still remembers Granny chasing Ayo with a pan for staying out too late..and I still chase the Christmas lights we used to walk to see. I still chase my cousins around the backyard geese and chicken and duck pen. I'm still chasing the magic that sat in the attic of the house I never looked in.
The truth that we thought was the truth
fell like the pack of lies that it was and
the odds that we thought were even,
were even more crooked than that.

So we dropped off the radar
and went under the grid and
slid off the end of the rainbow.

Same thing there
gold everywhere
and diamonds that
coloured our eyes.

In the morning after the morning last night
still tight with the alcohol, coke and some Demerol
we glued back the curtains to look at the sky,
it was raining.

And I know it always rains in February,
but something told me that
Summer was on the way.

Being criticised constantly
and ostracised eventually
September seemed like a good
time to go

but

as it's dry now
think I'll try now
to rejoin the
hive,
staying alive is easy
it's the living
that's hard.
Elliott G May 2021
Sickness, death, disease,
rats, bugs, ***** fleas;
Royal knights at ease,
not trying to appease
the masses anymore
as bodies amass on the floor.

Stomping down the corridor,
black-gowned conquistador
in court known as le docteur.
Majestically pointed beak,
leather satchel, utensils squeak
as one two three and four
the man takes to the floor-
And Waltz!

Clack the Castle door.
The wicker-faced figure
grows taller, grows bigger,
and one goes to figure
who first pulls the trigger
And Clasp!
Hands come together as one
step by step, step on the gown
almost trip and fall down,
white as silk and black as dawn;
A smirk met with a frown.

Endless days, deadly gaze
from beyond the red-glass eyes:
A mosaic from the skies
as God's son met his demise,
idolized by commonfolk,
glass sculptures embedded into walls.

The ******* of angels,
interlacing strangers;
masked visage from nature
in the form of bustling bees
busy beguiling Byzantine baronesses,
backstabbing brides, burning bioessence,
*******, burdens, nature's reconnaissance.
Tiny creatures nestled into wooden crates,
by the hands of humans' race;
the beekeepers their only living grace.

The two figures intertwined
Ying-yang dancing under starlight
Snow-white and the seven plagues
dressed in crystal, black parade.

The court jester coughs and gargles,
the monarchs paint the floors with blood,
as the silk road lifts embargoes;
a thousand-year old flood
of plague-infested spices,
time to roll the dices,
is it rats or mices,
who really cares,
everyone's already dead.
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2022
~
I work in the clouds
Building a world out of hype
I could be a beekeeper
A prison guard
Reverse pop idol
Extinguishers, all

Hackers ferry contemporaries
Around the diseased city
Merchants of transference
Polymorphing
Paths and angles
Pieces of eight

They could be brutal war fantasies
White noise translations of the snow
Cathedral nights in the deli
Ghost recordings from an opera house
Each with its own price tag

All the pretty girls
Thick with mascara
Go to plasticity
Drink chloroform
100 aspects of subterranea
So long as they come home
With a credit problem

Money devotion
It's what transferred us
Into numbered silhouettes
Slavishly pouring our blood into the sea

~
As light in flight as I am on my toes,
who knows,
I could have been a ballet dancer, a
swan on the lake.

Take two.

Heavy duty suits me
I am slow and
also know my feet don't skim,
I tend to sink when really I should
swim.

Take three.

Happy is the man to be
who knows the joy of being
We,
one
two
together.
"O, HOW SHALL SUMMER'S HONEY BREATH HOLD OUT""

each hive
a tiny planet
inhabited by bees

the beekeeper
looking for all the world
like a medieval astronaut

"God..." think the bees
coming in a puff of smoke
they fall silent

God takes off his face
throws down his gauntlets
becomes our father

"Good.." grins God
our father
"...that should do the trick!"

we watch the honeycomb
floating in its jar
fantastic as an alien being

the comb hangs above me
most of it drizzles into my mouth
the rest in eyes and hair

when father isn't looking
I put the cage on my face
pretend I'm a fencer

far away in a field
a bee
chatting up a flower

the bees and we all asleep
God's hand and face
a still life on the table

*
I wanted to get it from all perspectives...this simple job of work...from the bee's point of view to the kids to the dad and then the scene when all are tucked up in their beds...even God.

The title of course is stolen from Shakes's Sonnet 65

And of course...the bees...the dad..the kids...this particular summer whose "whose action is no stronger than a flower?" are saved from the might of time by....

O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Alas I am not a beekeeper...this was told to me by a friend remembering growing up with her beekeeper dad as we flicked through her photo album after he was gone...the poem is a bric a brac hodge podge of the things she told me...the things I could see...you might have notice that one of God's hands is missing in the final verse...but that's another story. They were playing boats with the gauntlets in the river by the house and one of God's gloves just got...carried away! Daddy didn't know 'til the next day that one of his beekeeper gloves had gone to heaven and boy there was hell to pay!
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Sonnet 65:
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
PoetWhoKnowIt  Dec 2012
Matter~
PoetWhoKnowIt Dec 2012
The mute man spoke
  Without tongue or teeth
The deaf man heard
  Without ear bequeathed
A blind man looked
  But not through eyes
A lame man walked
  But not with thighs

So the hateful will scorn
  Where nothing is wrong
So the child will dance
  Forever- without song
Then we will pray
  Oh! Someone is there
Then we will say
  Why would he care?

Should the artist not paint
  Because nobody sees?
Should the beekeeper keep
  Without any bees?
Can't we just sing
  Even though out of tune?
Can't the church-bell ring
  On Wednesday afternoon?

I've heard the mute speak
  More powerfully than Men
I've been heard by the deaf
  Time and Time again
The blind see me better
  Than anyone with sight
The lame can walk
  With more grace, more might

The tides come in
  The tides will go out
The sun comes up
  The sun will go out
What truly will matter
  When all is said and done
What truly is true
  When steady time carries the gun?
Made a few changes...
Mick Tomlinson  Mar 2010
aeolist
Mick Tomlinson Mar 2010
my arm is nothing more than an extension of my soul,
stretched parabola forming a straight line
towards heaven.
I stand on my soapbox with a sermon dangling
from my lips, this tired old street corner
this tired old man giving the world what it wants.
I am enlisted.
I am the bubble hidden deep
inside the bone.
I am the beekeeper creating a brand new colony,
stung by his own pride.

here, brother, listen:

walk with me while I tell you about the
accubation of life
and all of it's little lovers,
those tiny frail things so easily forgotten.
my tongue is nothing more than an extension of my mind,
soft, flattened, delightful
attracted to flavor.

a million spiders bred a million more,
and still their webs spread empty between the trees.

this is the way God works.

earthquakes,
tsunamis,
libraries engulfed in flames,
over-dosed artists,
a genius child sold into slavery.

we all become what we already are:
gentle creatures abacinated by society
fenced in and cornered by evil dreams.
we thrash in our sleep,
we wake violently,
we burst onto the scene like lions
from another planet,
hungry, oh so wild and hungry.

this is the way We work.

— The End —