honey boy, honey boy

honey boy, honey boy

you’re a demigod, honey boy:
            a refrain of affirmation

though dulcet still
            you’re just human

learn not to rely on sight
            because it’s only clear too late, looking back

follow the scent trails your past lives left
            to find the primordial behind your memory

what you need is vision and maybe
            that’s how you lost track of questioning

everything, about your creations,
            too busy trying to make a statement

but you are compassionate and clement
            content with your worlding

you empathize with those heavenly bodies
            sewn together by dogma and myth

though where the two meet they typically don’t
            mix so you hold them tight with honey, boy

you see it’s less tacking more fusing
            honey less saccharine more musing 

you’re a semi-god, honey boy:
            repeat the spell until it lingers after you’ve gone

but you really can’t afford to wait
            for the magic to happen

things are tough in this economy—
            the words don’t come like they used to

there is no speech to describe
            a being without context

nothing for those without
            whose only vocation is language

you put in your morning coffee, to help you
            get through the days that pass too slow

though you know you’ve got to work
            for your honey, boy

if you want to catch any flies
            now ask yourself

if your poems suffer
            for you or if they simply suffer

you and your buzzing
            your Pandora’s box, a swarm

you are more than your chaos, honey boy:
            a chant to bring you calm

so be careful not to drown
            like an insect stuck in your honeyed tongue, boy

it might not be too bad of a storm though,
            people are quite polite about the weather

at most it’s inclement, unmerciful
            say it’s raining cats and dogs

instead of saying you can’t see
            for all the raging in you that you just can’t forgive

and the flood is frustration, resentment inundates
            but legends too suffer through the dog days

so pleasure in your skin
            humming like sunset honey

boy have faith in your shining
            and your combs will be full

of the sacrifice you can’t yet savor
            yes, you may struggle to wade

through the clingy excess
            of verbiage and ritual so that in the end

of this litany you will believe
            in your sweet invocation

so if you have something to say
            say it with honey

boy if there’s nothing to say think back
            to how that nectar tasted

you are your own worship, honey boy:
            recite this when the skies run out of testimony

John Q. Mars is a Black and Queer writer, with four poems in Indolent Books’s online feature, What Rough Beast. He is twenty-one and was born and raised in Winchester, Virginia. Mars is now an undergraduate student at New York University, living in Brooklyn. He is majoring in Linguistics and studies poetry and foreign languages.

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