Beware the last sting
Eccentric like bees
Fetch’d in honey

Because no excuses
Because hives should be immortal
Because green tea and blueberry short stacks
Because they can remember chewed lips or if you wear your hair loose
Their face cannot be erased

Because it’s like playing Where’s Waldo in a dazzling floral adventure
Schools of fish, flocks of birds, colonies of termites
Because we hope their black and yellow suits don’t fall into our Sprite
We can befriend prodigies or play Monopoly, forced into bankruptcy

Because our five-eye fickle freaks thrum the same strings
Because a swarm is an exposed brain
Because we observe a dark cloud of pudding with nerve endings
Bees to hives, neurons to brains
Because colony meetings are where decisions are made democratically
Because hearts and brains have different opinions
Get them out of my ears
Because I’m alone in a bee loud glade

Because let’s talk bees
Because smelly feet litter petals of the cosmos
Tromp and probe, combing the whispering domes
Because why are their footprints kept on file?
For let’s not forget their serial killer motives

Because our scaly armor strips their line of defense
Wasps with a deserved reputation
Because nature’s own pest control
But who doesn’t like peppermint and clove?

Because a meteor shower of traffic routes
Scanning              Teases               Free-rein
Dips           Evades
Because the poetry of distance is brilliant
How do they not slip on the pearls of snow?
Because a flight around the world is an idea cavity 

Because we play the wheel of fortune
Because it depends on where they buzz
Because the exquisite chemists dilute our sores
Where is the lifeguard as we ravage through nectar? 

Because in every woman there is a queen
Because sometimes we have to adjust our sash and crown
Why are we served Welch’s when there is royal jelly?
Because we value collective genetic legacy
Because who can reject a queen in her hierarchy?
Because the throne is velvet
But not everyone sees red

Because when will we share their fate?
Poisonous fumes fill hollow trunks on a cool summer night
Because bumblebees know the concept of soul and zero
With saddlebags full yet no one to go home to 

Stumbled into an alternate world
Bumblebee, where are you? 

Without bees, goodnight availability and diversity
Without bees, goodbye fortress of pastries
Without bees, good morning to a teaspoon of caffeine
Without bees, hello human hobbyists 

Because we find our way like a toad, heavy and slow
Because the same sun will glow
Balled up in a cage, bruised
Light as an empty hive 

On our knees
We are the poor bees