1 April 1996

I have been slowly going through boxes of my old photos, cards, art supplies, random junk.  Today I came upon a beautiful journal I received as a gift in August 1995:  SARK's Journal and PLAY!BOOK. I really didn't make good use of it, but folded inside the back cover I found this poem I wrote in the Beehive, the computer lab at SCSU.  It is printed out on the paper that was typical for rough drafts, the kind that you have to tear the edges off.  I have actually looked for the poem a few times since ethioPifinn began.  I was a naive 20 year old, versus the naive 37 year old i am today. Makes me smile- I hope you enjoy it...

1 April 1996

XXXX XXXX

(i scratched that part out. i'm guessing it was addressed to a boy)

I am in this hive and the Queen Mother is coming to eat me up.

My mates are all buzzin and shaking--mapping out the path, telling

me where

they found the nutrients

but i'm no vega, give me meat

I need something to move my wings and I

need to eat--not be eaten.

There is the Great Fear because question lies

around the next bend keeping me

from ease and completion...

Just Ask is the advice and 

cleavage is the fence.

Blonde cleave and all that---

somebody get me over the roocky rapids

i mean rock solid rapidly

fallen,

falling

head over heel, hand over fist

sleeping waiting wanting   watched

wound  so tight that the  it,

that I

stop and go only far enough to be almost

There.

And the honey makers have made the honey and they are

Being Eaten

through revision and larger words and smaller thoughts.

The buzzers aren't buzzing they are screaming

and aren't mapping  out the path  the

Path.  The Path is long made

and the buzzers are lost and unsearching

and the hand touches  up,

not touches  UP, but moves upward for the source

of the thoughts   and

the strokes and the line.

But the buzzers are flying over me and flying backward

I am

--am moving   slowly and with wings-on-loan--

not of my own accord but via post...

Post is flakes of morning,

not mourning  but rejoice wit the 

strength  and power  of the unseen  wing, navigating

carrying  on in the

HIVE

post is the nourishment   of the carrier and the sender and

the, 

Well the idontknow,  the

Well.

Of life, of love, of the nonhoneymakers,

of the new winged,

The Newly Winged.

Alighted in the cortex not the stomach of

the dewinged

we fly so that we may not be dewinged and this

is why this jumble,

jingle, jangle, jingle

and the mirror is clouded

and full and does not reflect the

buzzers

in hope  in the upward

thoughts  the

jumble  desists for the

need of silence and 

of escape, not the same, not even similar.

How do the others move on without the

jam, the traffic, the

questions of impossible contem-

plation...

so do they have it, not It but

the snag  the hitch, propelling

yet grounding

The Flight,

it is all about the flight and

the company we keep along the way and

so she, so

I

write and ease the mind and rest the weary wings, no

wings-on-loan

i provide no fuel but

rest the sea legs, fry the flying fish

and put away the hooks,

or the Books,

they are the same.

The words come and remind of the Wellness

and the breezey open field.