Musing
1.
Dear Melissa–daughter of
Deborah, Hebrew for bee,
From dbr, linked to words for truth and word–
Whose own name glows
Translucently as honey, or the amber
Embalming that famous Baltic bee
Since fifty million years before Alexander
Tried to have his corpse preserved in honey,
Translucently as we say love
Must glow, must glue, must be,
Won’t you bee me?
2.
Because it's all lubricity,
As slickery Emerson puts it.
Sleeping Beauty awake
Is Slipping Booty is Nudis Verbis.
Slips of the tongue
Are sips of the truth, or nips,
As your tipsy Thomas didn't doubt.
So, well, the tongue trips
Between lips, skips
To nibbles, leaps slopes,
Lopes, loops Alps,
Slops betwixt,
Stoops to anything,
Sloopsmooth and slaphappy,
To hips, to lap,
And, sapping itself, lapping
Itself, licks slick
The very apsis.
But then the tongue's an asp,
An asp that lapses,
Falls to the facile,
So lisps and limps
(However limpidly)
To sleep at last.
3. (melismatic)
melissa meliss ah listen to me listen new me a melamed listen a my list less meli alas than lisztian melos melis alias a lissome lass lest I be less be lost beeless a mull is a mull is a spicy thought see thought sigh and see spot spy seathoughts beethoughts with honey with moon honeymill honeymellow oenomel mell us melicious melissa
4.
We need a dash—Dickinsonian?—of censorship–
To cut—to lace—the Yensership.
Let’s cut away. Let's have our aches and Keats them too.
We’ll bruise the sheets—and then we’ll shoot the breeze.
These rudderless ships in the sea of language,
Shuddering rips in the wake of ancient songwage,
Bees in a blow, only mean I long for you
And make what beelines I can in the way of pleas.
— Stephen Yenser