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.

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!

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.

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

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.

"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

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.

~
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.

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?

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 problem with having one life
is having to choose
which life to live.

And the problem with soul mates
is having to choose
which one to love
and which to never meet.

There has to be a better way.

You could be a beekeeper on Mondays,
a violinist on Tuesdays,
a mother of three on Wednesdays,
and the greatest boxer since Ali on Thursdays.

On Fridays, your heart would belong to
the handsome attorney two doors down.
Saturday would come, and you’d fall into
the arms of your old Philosophy professor from university.

What would you choose to do
with all of your Sundays?

You anticipate the bees’ arrival
with that same wonder lust in
your eyes that a child wears on
Christmas Eve, spending the whole
month before their arrival planning,
thinking out the construction of their
houses, going back and forth on the
decision of where you will put them
in the backyard.   I listen with
fascination as you explain to me
about the workers, drones, and the
queen, who from a larva you tell me,
feeds solely on royal jelly.  

You have become a beekeeper
extraordinaire, intent on teaching
me everything you know about bees.
And it is quite funny when you mimic
the bee dance, buzzing around in
circles, then abruptly changing
direction and buzzing around again.  
I watch you with the same wonder
lust in my eyes as you have when
you talk about your bees, feeling
a wealth of love for you, this man
tenderly caring for and loving one
of God’s smallest creations.

I anticipate the bees’ arrival with
dread, careful not to let on how
much they intimidate me.  After
they arrive you take out a few and
gently hold them up for me to see,
the thought of their sting sending
chills over my body.   That night, as
we do our own tango between the
sheets, I think of them out there
buzzing, buzzing; the ****** queen
leaving the hive to mate with drones-
the lazy bees who make no honey,
their sole purpose to mate then die.

In my world it rains indoors.
The riverbed is always flooded.

The bottle is opened
and the hot liquid is poured.

And it keeps pouring.
Over its cold heart.
Little blocks of ice.

Lying in darkness,
I speak of unspoken things.
How much I reveal is unknown.
Even to me.

In my head...
In my head they are crying.
Their constant gaze.
I'm still fighting...
I'm still dying...

My childhood scars run deep.

And they burn...

In the black I feel a warm hand
touch my back.
It guides me safely.
I can not survive the night,
without this guiding hand.

I am not a beekeeper.
I cannot control their raging storm.

Yes...

I too hear the thrum...
They are forcing their way out.

The box is too full already.

The dark shapes are moving in the blackness.
The children's hands are bound
and they are beaten.
They want what was taken from them.

I can't help but think...
the guiding hand is not enough...
Release the children from their box!

I will stand on the flooded riverbed
and pay with one gold coin for passage.

GRAHAM MURPHY

Sometimes
I'm a passive pastime aggression past life regresser.
Sorry I'm such a sad excuse for a screwdriver,
you silly suffering succatash!
But really, I'm only sorry
because apparently
I'm the one who turned you into ****** tunes.
Maybe I'll come into your television with
new waveforms and let society tear me apart
steakchewsteakchew American diet and
then you can be a little less frayed.
And was I afraid? Hell the **** yes I was!
What are you some kind of beekeeper?
I've got half a mind to herd the hive and
two to love it for it's honey.
I haven't dove into a swarm of stingers
without a welt or two lately lemme tell ya.
Lemme show ya a lil somethin' somethin' cold
somethin' simmerin' somethin' like that
old house of cards filled with sickening soulsins.
Flutter flutter fly and the kingdom falls, god-****!
That was all that time?
Remember the last one of those I never finished and
there was no excuse for letting the time tick?
Bomb and tock when I had the right shoe.
Even if I've got two left feet
I've gotta make it werk!
I'm lip synching for my life
annd whattt!

you invaded me

made a beehive under my ribs

and all it does it buzzbuzzbuzz

honey escapes

through my lips

and your buzz is worth

the sweet

the small dog
attached to the long lead
has a tail that is blurred
with happiness
as he wanders through
the market village
tongue lolling
nose questing the air
for the myriad of  scents
he is happy curiosity
in a brindle coat

i watch amused at his vigour
as i drink from an enamel mug
holding a wonderful local bean coffee
eat warm coconut mango muffins
and ponder the purchase
of some artisan glass jewllery

my boys having scoffed their muffins
are off to see the woodworkers
the golden child hoping
to add to his collection
of wooden puzzles
his father to chat with
other lovers of woodgrains

we will meet later
after i have bought, applebox honey
collected by dave the beekeeper
portabella mushrooms the size of saucers,
to make stuffed fetta mushies for dinner
and all the other green and organic vege
i can find.  some prawns and a mud crab.
lunch tomorrow,  olive bread, olive tappenade
stuffed olives, some goodies for the biccie tin

and some of these coffee beans....

the dog raises it's leg against the canvas
of the tent down the pathway
before carrying on....
oblivious

The hoofs and horses burn in the twilight,
As you count breaths between the stirring Of bees.
Oncoming traffic like a beads on a string,
The Woodworker's rasp,
The beekeeper's screen,
Diamond headlights,
Oncoming rain,
A transparent light,
The stirrings of leaves,
Gravity ground in a ceiling of sky.
In a dry place, the Oracle's
Lost meaning,
A hole in the center of the Sphinx blind eye.
I ply my hand to broken wheel moonlight,
A servitude of stars,
These muttering clouds,
A musty collection of shanties and shacks.
I caught the last sleep to black and white rails,
Slap boards passing, a flickering screen,
In a a theatre of stars and orbits,
A string hang on a ceiling so sweet.
As dogs and birds welcome Blue Heaven,
JESUS SAVES plasters Route 10, Is it West Mex or East Tex
Or is it the same?
Dark buttes, silhouettes, bare bulbs and bugs.
Ariels deep in dark desert valley,
The scent of box elder set in the sun.
The Oracle of day draws you in deeper,
Like a reptile burrowed in the heat of high noon.
A trial by fire, a light like no other,
What wildflowers lurk in the Devil's dark garden?
Witch grass and juniper smelling like rain.
A limestone Chateaux dreary long hours,
In a place surrounded by four walls and a bed,
Scavenging shoes in the dark of the day.
Black spiders in closets hunt along runnels,
A quivering fly caught in a trance.
A brief disconnection,
Ten thousand night and five Fridays ago,
So said the tombstone to each blade of grass.
Gravity Good Mother, teach us a lesson, tied to this tether,
This searing vibration,
A rust belt corrodes the American Dream,
As gulls wheel industrial blight.
Cherry Blue Jewel, the last drop of water,
Glass curtains cover the winnowing storm.
Twilight and half moons,
Long shiny autos,
All the starlets rise with the night.
Pieces and fragments, in abstract arrangement,
Aged black men fishing rivers of cattails.
Asleep in the dusk, a tinkling currant,
My own echo leaving a hollow in air.
Times emollient, 5 beads on a string,
Pharaohs and Pharisees,
A beekeeper's screen,
Shadows caught in a quivering dream.

The Honey Bee

Little buzzing Honey Bee,
Honey sweetens me and thee.
Thou art busy all the Day;
Busy Bee, thy Wings are gay.

Flowers bloom and showers fall;
Spring is springing over All.
Thou shalt work till Daylight's end.
Golden Bee, thou art my Friend!


The Beekeeper

Little buzzing Honey Bee,
Thou dost make my Gold for me.
Labour, Bee, because thy toil
Buys my meat and drink and oil.

Thou art mine: what thou dost make,
Slave! to Market I shall take.
Mine the Bee and mine the Earth,
Mine by Right of Human Birth.

Let me tell you now, I’ve never picked up a bass guitar in my life
the guy stood stage side, cool as hell, his looks as sharp as a knife
surveying the crowd, picking the best, which girl is coming back to his room
town to town, gig to gig, thanks for the ride, I won’t be back anytime soon

An aura of disdain, a secret never to be told under that cowboy hat of his
reeling through the catalogue, hit after hit, hiding has no place in showbiz
A breed to contend, so lets never offend that man who has a different point of view
we could all have been a plumber or a copper, but the line-up for this role is a very short queue

Comparisons are strange and never the same, from deep sea diver to football goalkeeper
hey, a job’s a job no matter what you do, even home brewer to a honey making beekeeper
So what if you’re an oddball, the world needs its variety
from 6 strings to 4, its hardly a chore, he gave up on the piano and its keys
because that’s the way it is and the life I now live
simple, sometimes exuberant but always content,

That’s it,

Bass player me

JJB

I’d drive down winding mountain roads
in the dead of night.
I’d take an underwater cruise
in a sub that’s not airtight.

I’d be a beekeeper for a while
but never wear a suit.
I’d listen to a nine-year-old,
try to play the flute.

I’d watch the emoji movie
in a room with all my exes.
I’d catch a flight to Idaho
and ******* hop to Texas.

I hope you never see this list
'*** it consists of stuff I’d do
to give myself some time alone
or just away from you.

[I still bring snow]

I think mom’s new dog must have the bones of a kite. I have a lover, now. a he, a beekeeper. a she if she saddens in the nearness. a nothing, a dowry. ghost china. spacesuits for stillborns. under this blanket, a puppet reads to a doll about light. under that, the shape of what goes blind in a poem. I miss you. plural. I don’t wash my forehead. I still bring snow.

~

[house musics]

no star foreign, brother kisses a spiderless ceiling.

the diver
dead
our father
loved

~

[untitled]

a sick child can be in two stories at once. anthill. calvary. tell neither. I feel like maybe I am talking my way up the dollmaker’s ladder. eat? I won’t the black duckling. god

won’t the owl. angels

just birds
that faint.

~

[response musics (iii)]

...weigh god in photos. free a crow from the gospel of the negative. (we) revisit the medicines. call you dead and call you hawk gone to curl in the lap of a cyclops. ask (we ask) for what landbound thing did your body carry time? your past, every year, the same spot. thing never shows.

~

[response musics (iv)]

a run on mirrors. lowkey exorcisms.

wheelchair, lamb’s minus
one.

mom and the angel
of last
names. dad

and the snowplow.

dad and the ballet slipper.

yea the shadow
of his yawn.

~

[removal musics (xi)]

it’s always your story to which the afterlife gets added. did you even want children? do crows

hear thunder? no butcher believes in time.

~

[how I want you to remember my sister]

in a puppet show
about washing
my son’s
feet, or waving down

the ice cream truck
with her bible, or

as farewell

to nothing’s
church
of neither

~

[pseudo]

between the house of the first suicide
and the house of the second
there’s one
with a dog door.

the moms all work at the same ghost jail.

the dads say things like

/ finally a parrot I can hear / & / in hell
nobody steps
on their reading
glasses.

the dream is there we put our mouths on. our hands.
the dream
that was nest.

brothers dressed like jesus
brush their teeth
and sisters
keep a tender
thumb.

~

[takeaways from his speech to the poor about what happens overnight]

horror movies are all the same.

babies can’t get amnesia.

I once pointed a starting gun at the head of a thing that wasn’t looking.

sleep is the christ of the mind.

~

[dream saw and dream tooth]

to be
as asleep
as a father’s
left leg

as a birthday
for a window

~

[removal musics (xii)]

if childless, we call it mother.  

-

how long
did you fake
being young?

-

this part / of her poem / is empty

-

three men remove my shoes

-

translates

to yesterbed

-
  
self-portrait in milk

No time was left
to call you to bring in
black rose to ward off
the ill omen.
Garden was burning.

Between the dense
smoke and golden flames,
blood moon was disappearing
like brisk pain.
Nothing matters now.

I had kissed your
hand only once, before
the door was shut. The
lips would count the poems
we didn't share.

Clouds come, clouds
go. The story ends
of rags to riches. The riches
of knives become blunt.
The Beekeeper was dead.

compare the onslaught of the black plague
by superimposing it onto the map
of recent islamic terror attacks...
                                            what emerges?
a region in europe, immune,
       mind you, after the nazis
                          after the communists,
islam would have a hard time in poland;
it's mightily odd to have a black
plague immunity -
                 and an immunity toward islam;
to me, the ******* are still trying to sell
me persian rugs, falafel, and
      a fashion statement that might make
sense to a beekeeper;
just waiting for the oil to dry out...
   just waiting for the oil baby...
         just waiting for the oil to dry out.

Perfect domes―
beehived.

An alien sitting in
Mona Lisa? Do you believe in the
pshyche of a beekeeper?

A vision. The future tense
retrieves the past glory of tenseless era.
The mimicry will do its own job.

A freak incident. Earth was
moving. Corned bodies riding on lead.
You must fill up the blanks to―
prepare for lethal descent.

Idolatry. Every cult becomes
a new idol. Hate-filled sermons.
Yestersins will pay
for the mortgage.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­ You Must Tell the Bees

The royal beekeeper…has informed the hives kept in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House of the Queen’s death.

                                         -U. K. Daily Mail

But of course someone must tell the bees
Those wing’ed messengers among the realms
Who pass along the news of marryings and buryings
According to their proper place in the order of being

(or of bee-ing)

But of course someone must tell the bees
For their own health and ours they mourn the loss
Of master and mistress, and then welcome the new
With blessings of health and honey and blooms

But of course someone must tell the bees -
And they want to hear these things from you, if you please!