Mad Honey

I didn’t  get bees until violence.

Until the battlefields bittered

Our pollen, its gun-powered honey

Collected from colony to colony:

The Lebanon to The Ukraine.

My mother’s metallic spit. Her tongue

In the mirror. The grayed burst coaxing

Her larynx, invisible. A mandated moment,

Its promise to history. Along the Black Sea,

War was waged, reddened.

A hallucinogenic tint to be measured,

As always, the dose makes

This syrup, poisoned. A promise

The bees dead someday, just like us.