BLACK VINYL DOO-WOP WASP'S NEST

The needle hits the black

scratching when it lands,

then the music plays itself:

a phonographing hand.

The chords play that goddamned beat

but that chorus just repeats

but we know the purpose of the song

is that way it moves the feet.

So I like to play it often now

‘till the vinyl wears to smooth

the black, it slashes grey

‘till there’s pouring, pleading grooves.

My heart hardens to a chrysalis

when the music                                          belches honey

a sticky sweet                                          junk funk cream

a bled brain breakfast:                                          ordered runny.

Bees buzz into my                                          coffee cup fist      

burrowing deep                                          in the handhive

oscillating                                          into my nails

making honeycombs:                                          yellow, five.      

One per finger,                                          an outstretched source

of saccharine comprehension                                          of another’s sentience.

The gooey golden tendrils spill and touch another beekeepers’

and then we both know what the honeybee’s dance is all about:

both of us – simultaneously and matrimoniusly implode in understanding

of the black vinyl doo-woop wasp’s nest that is the bright wide world:

a grinning big buzz that shakes the tectonic plates in time to

Gillespie’s swearing in the studio

did you hear the way he made that brass boy wail?

I found what a life means and through that man

and it means a whole lot of scary sudden things I can’t explain on a page

with twenty-six measly letters and one ancient color of ink

with the hexagonal code of #000000

we have 0 need to desire anything else outside of this moment

because we’re comforted by that infinite digit of history’s monochrome.

But I know how You feel and I feel when we do the things we do

because all men are men and women are men, you dig?

Queens are drones and vice versa and that’s why my arm swallows this waxy stuff

is so I can have the good fortunes of realizing this, you see-

and these bees are the only ways we can enter each other’s nests

without them, we’re on isolated trees with deadbeat pooh bears climbing the trunks

but we can’t feel them or know what they want because we’re only trees – you know what I mean,

lad, boy, child, queen bee, everything that’s you and me inside the way you twiddle your thumbs,

like that, yeah boy now, you are man – you are the human experience!

and boy I am getting tired, and- and- and

and now five hours have past since we dropped the needle, and the songs’ slowing slow now

And it’s getting pretty cold in here,

so I’m gonna get going

it’s really grey out today

grey as a - stone or something.

and I’m really itching

scratching for another song

but how much?                                                                                                                         Too much.

I’ll be finding a way though

‘cause it’s too quiet now

And my feet are too stationary

and – there’s a bee in your house

I’m always scared to be stung

because they die when they sting you

If you take out their poison pin

- pop! -

out go their belly bits!

Just like that,

their soul goes splat.

Just    like     that.

---

Published in Route 57.