Dog day haze

Meadow lazing

head of red clover calls me

to pluck a floret and suck the sweetness from its stem

the way my father taught me

sensual amazement

sun rays flay the bare body

heat me as meat, to remind me:

all flesh is death.

Warp and weft of DNA

unweaves and we decay

give me blood and body

of this hottest ever day

lead me unto its breeze

wafts of sweat scent

hay earth yeast

heifers suffer their heat seeking,

needing to be bred.

I milk this clover spicule

in remembrance

of the many times

I broke by kneading,

palm heel pulls me

apart in a lust which

urges my hunger to rise

up like soft dough

to be pounded down

There is a certain darkness

in the way a flower lowers

its nectar to tempt the bees,

the way it will not trust

the wind and instead

grows pretty petals for seduction

But the bee finds benediction in the innocence

of its appetites, more than

just a proxy for plant sex

We cannot choose what in this life

feeds us, only notice

what the stomach needs to intumesce

I myself am nurtured by the sticky sap

of erotic debasement

theatrics of the apiary.

How I crave the sting

In my meadow reverie

I oil my lips with beeswax

reality unravels

and I revel in fantasy

I lie in hoary stems of clover

giving over to my wanting

nibble berries,

rubbing them to rouge nipples

close eyes to sky

spread thighs in a smile

anticipating buzz the hive supplies

Let the swarm find me juicy,

mob into a mattress, bed me down

for a million little piercings

My pink points enplumpen

pucker up for the pricks

I feel the fear

but covet the pollen

sticking to me like

seed on a bee's knees

The swarm comes to teach me to

delight in the bite, to savor the sting.

Let the hive have my hide

make the red slits welt, blister, lips split for seeds to ease entry, slip of the bee barb, thorns thrust deep into skin.

I take them like mad honey, tasting as a toxin to shock my senses, a delirium,

a yum in the tummy,

bitter, sweet as danger-drive

flagellates its way into the egg of me

Pain is a god that creates me in its image

opens aperture of dream to deliver me

Naked, crying, birthed from my own stung wound

I swell into a new world.