Beekeeping

I imagine her body is like salt in a wound, it would burn like hell as it purifies me, building a wall between my skin and the diseased world that lies just outside my door. Corpses have it easy, no one acts surprised when a cadaver's flesh starts to rot and fall away showing everyone its true face. But the instant I speak from my heart, their faces twitch with that half-hidden look of disgust behind their eyes. So I intend to keep quiet when I can, and only make eye contact on special occasions.

I look up at the sky, and it's sliced in to eighths, not neatly or even, but jagged and imprecise, and you're nowhere to be seen. Your tongue and fingers were like corkscrews in my eyes, smooth hands in dissonance to a coarse heart. You left a hole the size of a name, and five letters can fill it, nor four, or three. I make an incision, a cut, a slice from kneecap to ankle and pluck out a melody with your tendons, it is a simple tune, ethereal, sweet, and bitter.

The rat stood in front of the church and screamed (spraying disease and filth): “Take! Eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Left and Right! My body is withered, and my blood is dust!”

The people stared in wonder and awestruck disgust at the little vermin shouting nonsense. I started to laugh, and so did the rat. That's when tragedy struck, the rat rose to the sky and fell back to the earth shattering into a million pieces, you see, I dropped the mirror. And now everyone knows the Truth, but no one will talk about it.

I have a sister, her father and mother didn't want her anymore, so I took her under my wing, a sister of chance, but not accident. She was beaten down by Sunday School, hormones, and tight pants in denial, but I won't let her break herself. I tell her to keep her chin up, keep her eyes bright and her wit sharp. She tells me how hopeless the world can seem,

“The world is run by men in goofy hats, little sister.” I say with a sigh.

“A bigger silhouette for a bigger shadow.” She says after some thought.

“And what use is a bigger shadow?” I ask.

“To block out the sun, to keep the garden from growing. But a shadow won't stop the rain.” I love my sister, I do.

I am cursed with a rash, a dull red inflaming sensation all over my body. Formication that never ceases, and fingernails that never stop growing. I don't hear voices in my head, it's just the one, mimicking and playing the different parts, and somehow that's more terrifying. I thought I had a guardian angel, I knew I had a demon over my shoulder. I called her Faith, and I knew he was Rebellion. But as I walked, as I crept in the shadows I saw him again, hovering just out of reach, out of sight, beckoning me to the old Tree. His eyes were so empty, and his teeth so sharp. I had it all backwards, he is Faith, lawful and limp. She is Rebellion, wild and willful. I saw her face once before, but I didn't know her name then. A girl with gold hair and oubliettes for eyes, I know now that she's a part of me, and now I know her name.

You have to care about something to worry about anything. And I was bought to tears by his voice. His face was gaunt, expressionless, he knew what I was doing. But she was soft and warm, I always wondered why she didn't have eyes, I know now, she can't judge and she won't hate. Him, on the other hand, he has eyes that too large for his loveless face, judgment flows in his veins just below the skin. And he grins at me in the dark, and she smothers me in kisses, intoxicating me with safety while he looks on with anger and confusion. She used to haunt my dreams, an omen of unknown fortune, but now a symbol of innocence, a sign of clarity, a standard of goodness, warmth, and love, with laugh lines and graceful limbs. He used to stalk my nights, a portent of my ineptitude, but now he's a token of older days, a reminded of unsure words and loose heartstrings, a memento of blue cloth and alcohol on the breath.

As I lay in my nest, my cage if you will, a little worm of an idea came squirming through my labyrinth of skin and plastic, and bored itself into my apple core. I knew in that moment that one day I would die, and that age old question would be answered in for me in my mind, and I nearly squealed in girlish glee. And briefly the harsh smell of sulfur was detected, but I remembered that one and one make two.

My sister, with all her pale and iridescent beauty, held me close to her bosom, not speaking but making quiet sounds of comfort. I closed my eyes and began to fall asleep with only a name on my lips, and fire in my heart, a little spark of the inferno to come. I love my sister, I do.

Dog Skin

Hurt felt horror fleeting

Her face his fantasy

Home fissure heretic falling

Dark sleek danger slipping

Defiance sleep dust stagnating

Dog skin determination slippery

Radial terror radiating twofold

Rumors tripping rebels troubled

Radical trimming remotely terrorizing

Helpless fell hopeless flies

Her face his fantasy

Hole fracture hell fulfilled

Pale Stone

Pristine ivory and sterile sapphire, and the vibrant clever crimson life-blood, flowing from North to South like an immense and polluted river. Lawlessness becomes lawfulness, when rulers are rampant and the people are pigeonholed. Stripes like the torn backs of slaves, stars brightly reflected in the sea of innocent blood, stretching from East to West like a soiled and stained canvas.

Pale stone and yellow papers held close to your bosom, and our walls are tall, so very damn tall. Some try to climb, but always they fall back again, and return to rot in the dust. And we're proud of ourselves and ridiculous standards of goodness, oh yes, the Few, the Proud. Reciting prayers to a dead God and saluting a burnt flag, oh yes, rise up slothful empire, rise up obscure kingdom, rise up and sleep no more. So those Few, those Proud proclaim as they giggle and seize and foam at the mouth.

If my legs were less muscle and more bone, would you love me? How about if my hair was longer? When did intimacy become neon lights and scared little girls in high heels? I saw my shadow touching himself in public, and no one told it to stop. We measure justice in skin, and truth by the denomination: but everyone knows who is really casting the shadow. Seven percent of my time goes to a crazy little man in a funny hat. A little sympathy here, a little vitriol there, and the whole damn thing keeps spinning in great lethargic circles stepping on the unborn and crushing the dreams of girls and old men alike.

Held high in the sky is the bloody tattered thing that so many flock to in time of need or greed. Fires burn in the hearts of a people grafted like skin in the bosom of a foreign land, haughty, self-righteous, salt of the earth liars and tricksters. Buried deep in the earth are the broken beautiful fleshy things that so many flock to in times of life and death. Smokes wafts from piles of shit and skin burning long into the night, like incense to an insane god no one really believes in. Prayers and veiled threats are the local dialect of Sodom, and the lingua franca of social serial killers and men in windowless vans.

Someone told us to be afraid, so we cower every summer and light the sky up as we watch the thunderclouds gather as we spit watermelon seeds on the blood stained dirt. Hold your hands high, this could our last day together, the Lord comes riding on those thunderclouds shouting propaganda and statistics, a preacher's wet-dream.

Pale stone, like black market ivory carved into teaspoons and cufflinks, and yellow paper stained with non-linear morphological verb conjugation, or is that Salem, the witch-hunts and all? I can never tell the desert and the burning stake apart.  

Acronyms Kill

Bleed black broken and beyond peace

Paled punctured prostrate and left alone

Animalistic annihilation abbreviated and worshiped

Withering worn waxing and primal

Rocks Stand

Willing wild and weary

Her haint her heart happily
Only originates obscure omens

Rebelling regurgitating red raw

Eggs ensuring  elusive events

Reflect

Spectating insomniac

Breathtaking sex-maniac

Reflected psychopath

His mind torn in half

Please clutch crawl consume me

Please burn churn exhume her

Speaking infatuate

Beauty complicate

Reflected virginity

She won't live to see

Please frown drown assume it

Please faint frail subsume her

Agonizing conversation

Traumatizing intervention

Reflected shapelessness

Whispers hidden in her bodice

Please react reverberate with me

Please shun run with her

Tea Leaves

Before the cock crows three times, I will proclaim my love for you. You'll know the messiah by the bitch-slap I give him in the dark. And they'll ask for your autograph, but don't be fooled sister, they're vultures, with only one thing on their minds. They'll clamor and dazzle and sputter and grope at your skin, thinking you're nothing more than a dream in lingerie, a plaything to be broken in and used up, don't let them into you soul, wink but don't smile. You're a goddess, something more elusive that flesh or friction. You're warrior, something more chaotic than lust or love. You're my friend, my sister, something more precious than a name or a pair of hips. Remember, my dear, you're eyes are brighter than a thousand suns, deeper than the foundations of the earth, and purer than the empty void of space, no man will ever see you the way you slip and glide in and out of the ether, only you can decide the true measure of your power and beauty.