All Bees sing the same song.

Bebé ☀ 23 ☀NYC. A poetry blog for my favorites and my own. 

[beesong]

[borjen]

EURYDICE I So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the live souls above the earth, I who could have slept among the live flowers at last; so for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I am swept back where dead lichens drip dead cinders upon moss of ash; so for your arrogance I am broken at last, I who had lived unconscious, who was almost forgot; if you had let me wait I had grown from listlessness into peace, if you had let me rest with the dead, I had forgot you and the past. II Here only flame upon flame and black among the red sparks, streaks of black and light grown colourless; why did you turn back, that hell should be reinhabited of myself thus swept into nothingness? why did you glance back? why did you hesitate for that moment? why did you bend your face caught with the flame of the upper earth, above my face? what was it that crossed my face with the light from yours and your glance? what was it you saw in my face? the light of your own face, the fire of your own presence? What had my face to offer but reflex of the earth, hyacinth colour caught from the raw fissure in the rock where the light struck, and the colour of azure crocuses and the bright surface of gold crocuses and of the wind-flower, swift in its veins as lightning and as white. III Saffron from the fringe of the earth, wild saffron that has bent over the sharp edge of earth, all the flowers that cut through the earth, all, all the flowers are lost; everything is lost, everything is crossed with black, black upon black and worse than black, this colourless light. IV Fringe upon fringe of blue crocuses, crocuses, walled against blue of themselves, blue of that upper earth, blue of the depth upon depth of flowers, lost; flowers, if I could have taken once my breath of them, enough of them, more than earth, even than of the upper earth, had passed with me beneath the earth; if I could have caught up from the earth, the whole of the flowers of the earth, if once I could have breathed into myself the very golden crocuses and the red, and the very golden hearts of the first saffron, the whole of the golden mass, the whole of the great fragrance, I could have dared the loss. V So for your arrogance and your ruthlessness I have lost the earth and the flowers of the earth, and the live souls above the earth, and you who passed across the light and reached ruthless; you who have your own light, who are to yourself a presence, who need no presence; yet for all your arrogance and your glance, I tell you this: such loss is no loss, such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls of blackness, such terror is no loss; hell is no worse than your earth above the earth, hell is no worse, no, nor your flowers nor your veins of light nor your presence, a loss; my hell is no worse than yours though you pass among the flowers and speak with the spirits above earth. VI Against the black I have more fervour than you in all the splendour of that place, against the blackness and the stark grey I have more light; and the flowers, if I should tell you, you would turn from your own fit paths toward hell, turn again and glance back and I would sink into a place even more terrible than this. VII At least I have the flowers of myself, and my thoughts, no god can take that; I have the fervour of myself for a presence and my own spirit for light; and my spirit with its loss knows this; though small against the black, small against the formless rocks, hell must break before I am lost; before I am lost, hell must open like a red rose for the dead to pass.

H. D. ( Hilda Doolittle )

[wordsnquotes]

i am afraid that if i open myself i will not stop pouring. (why do i fear becoming a river. what mountain gave me such shame.)

Jamie Oliveira, “Erosion”

[endless-unfolding]

You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me—I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that’s how I knew I loved you. Because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end—

Louise Glück, from “Marathon,” in The Triumph of Achilles (via a-pair-of-ragged-claws)

[beesong]

I am struggling to rise; recover myself from you with all the thirst of a sailor adrift at sea seeking solid earth drowned in the horizon. Alone yet surviving, scorched by circumstance and sun, I know I will never mend the shattered girl I was nor be innocent again. I’ll heal, instead, like the shore yield myself to the tides and allow the waves to smooth my shards to soft stone before returning whole again.

Bee

[beesong]

You say I have changed; I search for the difference inside the wealth of myself, like a cashier with a short register counting and recounting each transaction with you to find my debt. As if I could owe you anything. As if parts of myself are belongings; Things I could thieve from you. I  know now I am guilty only of growing. and I will gladly bear witness to myself proudly from the screen of your surveillance to watch myself evolve into someone you hate into someone I can love

Bee

[beesong]

Poet’s Lament

I.

A Failure I close my eyes to myself put away all the ruined words stash them deep inside my sockets past those rolling white balls glistening and wet as far as they can go

I want to never see to never observe myself again

II.

A cannibal I pull my tongue out that wet stumbling piece of useless lying meat dice it up to chew and swallow it

I want to never speak to never address myself again.

[beesong]

For Nicolas

I told him I like songs in acapella.

I said I like people the same too, unrestrained and honest.

He smiled, flashed those white teeth at me and strummed a few chords on his guitar abandoned it as he sang, his voice still so raw yet so good.

He was good, too much like all the others had been. Grown boys not yet men, not yet finished into their bodies; sheltered and uncorrupted

I could see the child still lurking within him. A little boy enamored with the myth of heroes.

He sang for me, this good boy, a line or two about how the japanese repair broken things with Gold.

Swore he’d do the same for me bring my pieces close bind me make me whole within his self.

He tried.

He confessed one day, before he left, I took too long to to let him touch me.

Ah, he wanted to fix me, and I had never asked him to.

[beesong]

Karina Amalia

When you leave,

the dog is disappointed and sometimes, so am I.

I think if we had time-- more time-- together I think we could be like astronauts in conversation exploring endlessly in our blackness until we found rogue planets sharing our mutual universes where we could rest and share secrets in a void without fears of other ears unwanted yet always listening.

I think if we could find that planet I could tell you more about my life: share my pain with you like marker on your life map outlining minefields for you to avoid, and share my joy with you like lines, highlighting paths, flower fields for you to wander. And maybe learn to be a braver speaker with you as I learn to be a better listener.

For now, we are both stuck on solid earth but I can still hear you, Sister, laughing through your tears with Sisters  on the broken bed coaching you on how to crush the men in your life like insects.

[beesong]

Carla Maria

On the cracked porcelain of the brooklyn toilet, Carla Maria, my Sister, the pretty one with bitch eyebrows and sweetheart lips taught me with makeup the mathematics of beauty, how to divide a woman into her parts subtract from her each flaw and imperfection to find her sum to know her worth.

[beesong]

The Ripening

The november I fell into myself, crashed into womanhood in the same way fruit rip from their branches without warning,       I found you with no hands ready to receive me           with no words of congratulations, I found only wishes, Mother, at your lips, for daughters to have been born sons.

[geritsel]

Oh yesss!

[geritsel]

…Konstantin Korovin

[mythgrunge-deactivated20150420]

Tell me how it is, being the sun. You could walk into a room and they’d all be watching you. They’d all get down on their knees. I ask you how it is, and you say, “It hurts. It hurts.”

R. Wright; Sunlit   (via cactuslungs)

[vidaandthecity]

Francheska

When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says decaf she means black and sugary. When she says “largate,” what she really means is “esperame.”

But who was I to try to read her. Miles stretched like king sized linens between us, I in New York hailing a cab as I tried to balance an iced latte and my cell phone all at once while leaving her machine a message.

“Hey remember me, I loved you under the Orlando stars and pressed your flyaway’s down in the sticky Florida humidity. You were so worried about your hair, but as soon as the curls sprung up I thought ‘wow she’s perfect.’ Recuerdas how I licked the salt off your arm…And how we renamed all of those bird streets into famous salseros…yeah so instead of Flamingo street we called it “Celia Cruz” Street…Well, llamame. Okay.  Please. I miss you.”

When she says sex she means sex. When she says love she means poetry. When she says “perdoname” what she really means is “olvidate.”

Forget her. Entirely. Starting with her name Francheska with a K not a C she would always say. Half smirking. Half winking. Her freckles that she covered with makeup. My favorite part of her face. Her tiny little feet and her toe nail polish which I always picked out for her. The only thing I ever picked. And our late night pillow talks when we counted space and time during September thunderstorms.

We were always off. By a mile or two, a train stop, a cab ride,  a city, a state, a state of mind, a state of loving, a state of sexing. I in the Bronx, She in queens. I in Puerto Rico, she in the Dominican Republic. If she was hot, yo con frio, if I turned on the lights, she wanted them off. If I sneezed she hiccupped.

When she says “lingerie,” she means “nudity.” When she says “I forgive you,” she means “I will never belong to you.” When she says, “fuck you,” she means “I still love you.”

So I sit here in my tiny Washington Heights apartment, on the corner of Wadsworth and 191st Street writing her a letter, because I know it takes just as much passion to hate someone, as it does to love someone. Because I know she will read it. Fold it up carefully and contemplate whether I still remember what she feels like.

Written by: Vida B All rights reserved

[sweetestesthome]

I love paintings where the paint is used as more than just color. The texture on this is delicious.

[wondersomewords-blog]

Like any other man I was born with a knife in one hand and a wound in the other.

Gregory Orr, Like Any Other Man (via wondersomewords)