Honeybee | Teen Ink

Honeybee

May 28, 2023
By alxanrra BRONZE, Beverly Hills, California
alxanrra BRONZE, Beverly Hills, California
4 articles 6 photos 0 comments

Empty walls
I've grown in height only to see nothings truly changed
The quiet cocoon makes me sick
Only echoes of the fan churning
But her noise eats me up inside
And the pound of speakers’ bass bursts my drums
Trapped in a hive
hexagon sky wore shades of grey
The color drained when you left
I search for it;
in my head buzzing buzzing
to parties, to the bottom of red cups, to reflect in tunneled vision to go hookup, hoping life
will grow greener
Time was so slow when we were small but now I can’t catch up to it
so I’m never where I should be
Fields of winding roads, seemingly limitless
The paths all blurred now; days don’t end yet pass like minutes
Strung together long before, when time and I diverged
I don’t know where I stand
The clobber of my cowboy boots on concrete
The burning in my throat bearing the scars of the last match
The dried-up tattoo ink crumbled in my skin
Click Click of the oven starter to light her cigarettes
The tired sound of my voice and the fresh flick of my pen
is all I have
Just a facade that right now’s eternal
Dancing bees all around me
On days we decorate the clouds, lost we call out:
come find us
A crushed red lipstick lights our way
Thick and through vengeful youth
I search for my starving soul
And feed it salt
It sticks you down to where you don’t want to leave
You don't even realize it's you they prey
And I was just fifteen today
but I'll be twenty-one tomorrow
My home vacated, now I’m lost

Cement memories haunt this place shrouded by sh8t
but the cycle remains
Empty fridge and empty promises
but it all seems pointless now
Stinging away through the white noise and yellow glare compulsion calls to me
Ruthlessly consumed with the idea of a solution extreme
but there’s no conclusion
so fly
honeybee


The author's comments:

The poem “Honeybees” concentrates on feelings of emptiness and searching for meaning. I was inspired by feeling lost and trapped in my own environment. It reads to the audience like a confession to create intimacy and authenticity. I juxtaposed symbols of my identity like cowboy boots to abstract existential concepts such as finding a definable purpose. 

The fragmented syntax and enjambment illustrate a feeling of disjointedness and disorientation. The structure also makes the rhythm one of breathlessness and urgency as lines spill over each other to create a sense of restlessness and desire for ascendancy.

The symbol of bees represents other teenagers as a desire for identity can lead to a group mentality and loss of personalized meaning. Bees both trap and free me with their instinctual pursuit of pleasure, leading to stagnation. However; the honeybee in the last stanza concludes the poem with a plea to “fly”. This conveys my sense of restlessness and yearning for something more. This honeybee represents my response to life’s absurdity, as theorized by the philosopher Albert Camus. The only way to escape the inherent meaninglessness of the universe is to rebel and live in spite of it.


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