the hive mind project: A ten page diatribe against the Dark Mother. An analysis of the Electra Complex.

yesterday was my last day of summer semester. i delivered a speech on why "Crash" is a racist film & a presentation on a project on...sylvia plath...and honeybees....and cheating jaguars...and daddy-complexes...happy apple pies...and such.

consists of ten prose poems, heavily informed by Sylvia's (yes, first name basis) "Bee Poems" & also "Daddy" & "Lament" in conjunction with her journal entries (mad, mad stories, domestic consolations, rough & tough Ted Hughes, etc.) Other sources were research on bees, attempted research of Otto Plath's dissertations & my own poems.

Excerpts, fancied lines:

1. Intro (erasure)

"fight against a simple-mindedness, a narcissism, a protective shell against competing, against being found wanting To write for itself, to do things for the joy of them.

What a gift of the god?

Create Queen: a mad, passionate Queen. Immediately I want her husband to keep bees, and I know nothing of bees. My father knew it all."


2. Maestro of Bees


The sting of bees took away my father
who got sick in a minute & wouldn’t see a doctor (I am alive & so-there!)
and I’ll never speak to the Queen again

He survived the honey-flavored cancer
and wasn’t he lucky? isn’t it awful that (the blood hive-holed my brain)
the sting of bees took away my father

he rots in a grave he barely paid for
bee-bearded near death, the man had tantrums (a shot went home, a sniff of cocaine)
and I’ll never speak to the Queen again



3. the only one...huge enough for me

"The women lie down for artists.
The mad girl (only a silly girl) scars her legs with nails
through her hands. The stigmata, I said, frozen.
Lesson learned & bang smash on the mouth

Chased by red-gold Whiskey Macs. The bandeau
Is blood-soaked. The wimple, bruised & I
Stink of decaying orange from the vandal.
“I shall keep,” he barked, my blood"



4. The Beekeepers

"We were interested in starting a hive, so I dumped the babies in the factory past a row of orange stucco cottages that flood whenever the river rises. We felt very new & shy within a yard of miscellaneous Devonians in raincoats, bulgy tweeds, shirtsleeves. I had not thought to bring a sweater. I stood for a moment, on the bridge-end.

The man in black is the rector. He carries his dark felt head. The midwife is in the blue coat. She too has a black box head. Everybody had screening. I felt barer & barer. Have you no hat? Have you no coat?
I have a boiler suit. "

5. apple-pie happy

"I was getting worried about becoming too happily stodgily practical: instead of studying Locke for instance, or writing---I go make an apple pie, or study the Joy of Cooking, reading it like a rare novel. Whoa, I said to myself You will escape into domesticity & stifle yourself by falling headfirst and fast into a bowl of cookie batter. And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper’s (no less!---and I hardly can believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen."

6. The Contents of the Black Box

"She came with sugar candy. She smelled of vanilla when our morning gruel, coffee was black & bitter-edged & diabetic, He needs it, honey, twice a day.

He’ll keep you in a cigar box & twenty-five just like you (rather crude) until you’re planted in the family plot. Escaped the panzer-man, did you?

O & isn’t he the bees knees! Fourth husband material, indeed. You know, in bed, he smells like a butcher. Sure, he’ll write a book to you. Saying “sweetness, sweetness” to the gas chamber with you!"


7. The Red Queen's Race, The Requeening Game

"I put on my red-hot shoes & join in the swarm: the race of winged, unmiraculous women, those spasmodic tricks. Some Dody bird, who I took for long dead, explained the rules of the hive:
The Red Queen needs no pawn to defeat the black rooks.
The Red Queen hears no backtalk from her cell in the mute sky.
The Red Queen is your competitor. You compete for the hive."


8. The Queendom of Dreams

"Waking, I can't help longing for lost Edens, but I am only an outlet blocked as with wax.
The Queen is waking in a constructed cell built by too dreamy a drone. It’s sure to collapse, a suffocating cuddle death. A caged & wild pulse there at the center, but I know now that my ribs aren’t broken.

My pen fell from my hand after two aspirins & I fell asleep: head swimming off “The Island of the Dead.” Strange visions read about: “Why Men Desert Their Hives.” The hive is a black box. The hive is an algorithm.

Electrocution in tinfoil veins, a new satellite shot into stars; The planet halted & at once I was lifted up, died in my stomach & fell forward, hung in middle of a room, someone twirling me about. Faceless crowding & I spun & they spun: surgical, distant, stellar. Me & my experimental predicament."


9. The Cellar Jar

"a.m.
I have my honey, a jar of it.
I will sleep through the wintering. Better than shock treatment.

p.m.
Today, you made a fatal decision. And you vacillated like a nervous seesaw-- gulped, chose blindly & immediately wanted to reverse a decision which is speeding into finality now already on the w of mails, minds &secretarial files. You are an inconsistent and very frightened hypocrite:
you wanted time to think, to find out about yourself, your ability to write, and now that you have it: practically 3 months of godawful time, you are nausea, a stasis. You are plunged so deep in your own very private little rote forbidding and enormous.

Your mind is planned, diagrammed for you—practically the way it will be at Smith next year: and just now that kind of security seems desirable—it is just another way of absolving you of taking responsibilities for your own actions & planning, really, although now the issue is so confused it is hard which choice would take the most guts: and which kind of guts. Marcia i you are doing neither: the woman at

you can now learn it—you won’t have it this good again, baby. "You



i think there are probably three people who read this, so you three, i need something to do with my time for the rest of july & august, and i am going to spend some time crafting or working on visual representations of poems, prose, etc.

With that in mind, if anybody would like to be the recipient of any sort of crafty, zine-esque, versions of any work on this blog, or would like to read full versions of the plath pieces, it would not only give me something to do and give me some new & keen editing eyes, but make me feel super-duper.

email me: nikkimarss@gmail.com

hi, deidre!

Louis comes around


sometimes, I let him lie to me
while I am clicking sounds for money
he says it was easier then to find a house
he says mine reminds him, the red reminds him
of the 60s



he hums shoo-be-doo-be-doo through a talk box
it’s an ancient art, he says playing a single note
he has vocal paralysis, whatever that means
he’s on dialysis too.


Louis remembers his voice and the 60s
when he built an empire with fake jewelry
and fell off the truck bell-bottoms
he remembers Carson’s and green
where gold was



it was easier then a record, an empire
he hums shoo-be-doo-be-doo in my bedroom
all that jive, he could sell it.



I believe he’s lying
how about another round?

Sweat Poems

chance-composition, found phrases, sweaty things

many thanks to kristy lueshen; time spent with her in summer heat inspired many of these delusional moments.

1.
it makes me so anxious, om, inclusion monotone
and besides, I decided to forget all about drum circles
when I realized my, om, my fear of form,
the need of a fixed line

still, I would choose the well-worn circle
of all of these afghans
that have been your insides all winter
the ceiling fan, om, is not working

2.
I meant to dock, yes sir, but never to melt this way
wilting like the heads of flower children
in a wasteland garden apartment

I cannot blame them

for the particle floating in my teacup,
turned misnomer, isolated on its own layer, made from fine bone
and today, the wind only carried fuck sounds


3.
I know now that my ribs aren’t broken
just fragile boxes above my pelvis
stuck up on the fourth floor in a plié
my doctor told me not to worry
oh my, he doesn’t know enough about cartography


4.
the new wave is now a western

commute to cupcakes with a heavy queen
a sludgy morass of familiar power,

sanguine about the big fly by tree lines
bring bread just to be safe, a psychic feed
walking away from the apostolic, there is no superior street

my mother gave me these hands,
but everything wants to fall out of them

Nu-Clears

Many, many years ago,

at a Goldwater rally:

A daughter of a union buster twirls a lock of golden hair. Across the room, a judge's son is wrapped around her finger. She glances a repulsed glance and exacts her gravity. Electrified, he thinks to himself "we have to be close enough for this force to effect us."

 

He collides with her

and the two discuss their Barrycenter:

"In your heart, you know he's right," he reads from a pin on her mohair sweater.

"It's just nice to meet another so like-charged,' she gleams.

"Together, we could power the stars," he croons.

 

United by the State, they became Mr. and Mrs. Nuclear.

 

*

           

The planet then was a violent, boiling fireball. The Nuclears felt quite star-crossed, the nightly news citing (nightly) a nation divided at their name.

"The American way of life in peril! We must build a solid foundation. We, the Pillars of Creation!" recited Mr. Nuclear.

 

A shudder, an eruption. From deep inside the young Nuclear body, a strikingly photogenic Sun emerged first, followed by his glowing sister, Moon.

 

*

 

The son, born of some stellar explosion, was the light of the Nuclear lives. The faint young Sun promised to shine brighter each day.  But soon the wayward son began to disappear at night, stumbling through the garden each morning.

"I floated across the ocean in a golden bowl," the Sun explained, but the Nuclears’ nerve wreckage found no fix in their son's excuses.

 

They followed him once, to the edge of world, watched him descend.

"Every dusk, I am ready for death," the Sun cried.

They could no longer look into his face.

 

 

Moon wears a different face each day. She wonders if this makes her featureless, wanders low in the afternoon sky, waiting to be seen.

Some evenings she's dressed all in white playing hostess, making the rounds with a tray of sugar cookies. Her hips move just like those she came from.

Her mother too was a performer, a glittering goddess.

She drives the boys crazy, bathes in the lake.

Many have died from not protecting themselves from her.

 This dark side of Moon still wears the footprint of a man, still bears his flag.

 

*

            And Mrs. now with cancer and Mr. attached to a tube, there were ancient urges unanswerable and modern pressures mounting.

  Ahhhhh! to be continued AHHHHHHHHHH!

 

everyone on division street is wearing a fucking stupid t-shirt today.

could you
please describe
the dent that
forehead made in the bathroom door?

to write a haiku for you: go steam boy!

craft seminar: constraint poem

i decided to work with japanese forms: dokugin/renku renga, haiku mondo, sedoka, katuata, Traditionally a renga (and its organs: hokku, waki, daisan) is a collaborative effort, each stanza coming from a new, different voice. The multiple voices of my solo renga come from: Steamboy (anime film, unrestrained), Dylan Thomas (drunk laureate) and "The Communist Manifesto" (landscape of "Old Europe")

the constraints i took on then, were primarily the decided syllable counts for each line, stanza. follows traditional 5-7-5, 7-7 (with plenty of slippage)

from risk comes progress
my cogs, my human engines,
just a little more?

one valve! now two! three! now four!
a bit scalded, but that’s all

bones ground into bread
a brass valve to open skin
soon a Great Exhibition!



enemy to ash
what I seek is up, up, up
will you come with me?

thus is written in the book
the stubborn man, his dunce cap



the book of rays and angles
pistons in his blood (I swear)
is that the postman back again?

the parcel: the ball, the plans,
the news of your dead father

smoke signals steam chase
pregnant with mineral pressure
from atmosphere, jaws

even if hammocked in air,
the man with the handlebar
is nothing to hold onto



O’Haras deal arms
convinced that machines fight wars
they live by their guns

Scarlett makes trembling dogs of men
you’ll call her Miss O’Hara



father steel from steam
this ain’t Niagara Falls
where did father go?

under the thumb of money
extreme densities, extreme pressures



alchemy, a cult
the world waits for steam castle
not faith, not sorcery

shimmering gift of the gods
mankind released from toil



costly inventions
from inside the royal coach
am I to tremble?

fish men fear a submarine
internal contradictions
Columbus was not for this world



escape steam castle
and explore our english parts
which me do you like best?

the heir of a balloon race
a little demonstration

a ticking steam bomb
diplomats, great gobs of em!
bow down before science



bring up the pressure
find those elder ribs
the world is waiting for this?

the thing that smashed our house
we must kill the steam castle




by air land and sea
buy all three, get a discount
what is science for?

to make people happy here
the nation must be preserved

you must turn the wheel
ride the wire, flood with the window
to unmourning waters



a fleet of tempers
new cathedral battleground
where is Her Majesty?

she’ll see nothing at all of
steam troopers, aerocorpses



cross imagery
a spectre haunting Europe
you’re sure it's not birds?

battle wagons can’t climb hills
god help us all, it’s starting

quintessence, progress
Scarlett umbrella, a target
there’s a man in this machine!



fire in the belly
a kind-of commodity
are you forgetting?

threats to the next century
from risk comes progress, father



a low-sitting star
born from air: steam and new clouds
what we seek is up up up

maniacal, monacled
a world wide feeding frenzy
for the steam head

never mind the bridge
the city in its shadow
how did you get here?

hell boiled, a stolen gun
a son set free. go steam boy!



a hand trying to crush me
we stand in my delusion
could it be, a carousel?

something nice for the children
the crucial moment, a lift



Scarlett, the damsel
in the control seat
could they have seen it?

steam shatters, steam soars
steam clouds freeze into steam faces

the story of the honeybee and us: segments.

Poor honey suckers, foulbrood America, no one warned the end of the world? so sit and sip what is sweet--too soon toxic from female floral parts

 that flora,

she must have called to you. convincingly of age and wind-whispering just so ripe and ready for foraging, that under-the-skin-buzzing.

  and rebuzzing, she sold her sweet roadside. even when some chiseled corporate body, urged chastity. some saviour he was, that a foolish drone with salvation leaving the corners of lips pursed and long-chapped.

he submits: “make your business waggle”

hums- - -“with whatever drone I encounter.”

Colony Collapse Disorder and Pollinator Decline

Statement of

May R. Berenbaum 
Professor and Head, Department of Entomology
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
and
 Chair, Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America 
Board on Life Sciences and Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources
 Division on Earth and Life Studies
 National Research Council
 The National Academies

before the

Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture
 Committee on Agriculture


U.S. House of Representatives

 

Berenbaum, who hasn’t been sleeping well,

wonders at "The birds and the bees."

Through her muzzle cries, "Bloodsuction!"

charges, "Insecticide!"

promises, "Reverberation!"

 

 Noticing suddenly their no-air-neck-ties, Berenbaum’s audience applauds the apocalypse.

From 2006: reported losses of 30-90% in American beekeeping operations. Environmentalists and beekeepers were first inclined to attribute to known agents of death: parasitic mites. But inconsistent symptoms suggest increased stress, a new and unidentified cause of death. This phenomenon that threatens American eco-systems, food supply and bankroll has been given the name "Colony Collapse Disorder," or CCD. 

A lesson in honey being

diet: honey, nectar, pollen or royal jelly (for queen morphology) secreted from the heads of workers

communication: chemicals, odors and so-called 'dances'

social classification: euSocialists:"What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee."

 hierarchy: the ruling class (fertile females) the doomed drones (fertile males)  and the working soldiers (sterile females, child laborers)  

Worker Bees

"we work but not for ourselves"

we are all-singing, all-dancing

born fully-formed and winged

newborn bees patrol and clean, grow quickly into

nurses to new larvae, feeding warm wax or royal jelly

until they can secrete wax from own bellies, chew it soft enough to mold

into a hexagonal cell: rebuild the honeyhome

the honeymakers:

nectar sucked from flowers is passed from older mouths to younger.

drive off unwanted water with flapping wings, cap and seal with beeswax

 

(perhaps this is none of yours)

myself as honey bee: in the wake

With a start in honey-comb bed sheets

Where I am queen of nothing,

Inhale my fight-or-flight or sip an ethanol sleep

And know it makes no difference. Still,

I do prepare for a wing-slow.

If I avoided chemicals, or could, my head might hang honey-colored,

Though now only a haystack, combed daily by fine and bared teeth.

At the back of my hive-holed brain, there is a soft collapse this morning.

“The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.”