Our last words and the decrescendo of these
windup toy bodies.

Was it me who told you that
we're all just like the bees?
Your last words were 
funny and simple
just like we all want to go.
Oh love did you notice
that we're slower today?
I told you 
WAKE UP
and you said sleep
and sleep 
and sleep 
and sleep--
So we came to-- down tempo again
and in the dark of someone else's living
room.
All the pollen 
from the apple trees we neglected
to pollinate was caked
 on our eye lashes and
there were tangled nests 
of dead blue berry bushes at our feet--
You said
It smells so quiet.
Unhurried we had let all the fruit die
as widows--
And we both died as widows with each other--
ate the bushes to hide the crime--
And so I said 
decrescendo with me my windup toy boy--
there's no more apples for you
to make believe that I tempt you 
with something other than the loneliness 
of watching everything die so slow--
It was autumn that reminded me how
much we are like bees--
I know you only hail me queen
because you like to think I'm your
mother. 
I have all your last words
written down on the inside of
my wrist-- these are ball-point
pen prophecies-- I don't
wear your words as tattoos 
but as memento mori 
I write each 
down as fast as I can but
the drones talk too loudly over
each other and I draw each word
out of their mandibles
while they croon about flowers
and lost blue berry bushes.
Each worker bee is still wound so tightly 
one by one
from the chiming gossip
of God's king ring.
He keeps the foot steps of a janitor--
swings our rythyms like tamborines
on his hips when he does his rounds
in our neck of heaven--
the one we make when we sleep
together and feel each other breathe
more and more like a violin--
lie belly up in bed waiting
to be assumed.
Your last words came to me 
when I was trying to hear 
my own name over each slick clink 
of gear and cogs and noose taunt spring
beneath these wings-- oh yes need I remind
you how much we are like the bees?
Yes there are less of us now
and too many trees
too many apples 
too many wind up toy boys who 
call us queen and then forget our names--
I brush my fingers over the 
hole in my back where our master
had wound us tight-- 
I don't want to forget that  
we have been part of the same
decrescendo-- kiss me like a violin
and don't pretend you will love
me like anything but another windup toy--
that's what boys do.
Your last words were funny
and simple like us.
No I won't tell you them,
they're for me to write
on my wrists and you 
to speak once
when we come to in the dark
of someone else's living room.