You are weak and tired.
Did you hear me? You are unfed.
You may ride out your loneliness, but
I give in to desire.
And I am happy.
I live in a garden and I grow my own sweetness.
You want arms wrapped around you?
Go harvest them. Go honeymaking,
wear your lust like a beekeeper's mask
and visit the apiary of drones,
of heartless work.
Spend the day wandering
listlessly through smoke
and heavy-lidded, prick yourself
again and again
on the abdomens of the dying.
Venom is an aphrodisiac
and you are empty. Go sex yourself
fuller, force something to bloom
in the black soil of your chest.
Chew on legs and stings if you like
and glut yourself from the pollen sac;
collect the powdery semen
of dandelions on your lips.
Come, my garden is for the bees. Find me
here in the grove, resplendent
in white and covered in failing bodies. Witness,
smell the damp in me and know me
as I am, standing here
hollow and spoilt.
Feel the nectar congeal
inside even as it lands.
*
I know you, but you won't find me
near your garden
or the pale bloc of bees;
I self-taught the evils of domestication
and value careful slowness too well.
I have no veil of lust
to thin the heat of alien hands,
and I am shy of being further altered.
I content on liquid smoke and stay far--
for through cultivation
the keeper became the other: amended,
scorned and stung enough without request.
