MAY I THINK OF A PERSON

Rindon Johnson

Eye

When the moment comes and you

become not the children sleeping but the

one putting the child to bed or neither,

putting yourself to bed, over and over

quietly and without protest, another day

anxious towards the grave, sure,

inevitable, but what to say to the men who

steal the future of the one in bed while

you sit up and wonder, where COULD we

go to possibly be safe, we SHOULD go

now and get settled but there is no where

to go or to run to, that they have not

already thought of or destroyed.

Eye, Eye

Take off your hat then, think about the

guns you will have to shoot like Lisa said,

one day it might have to happen, Watch

the Fellini film where the director’s reality

crumbles around him (I’ve always forgiven

everything in the men eye love, or been

taught to love), Go ahead then, Excuse

me do you mind if we hear what you are

thinking.

Eye, Eye, Eye

Think of the bees who had a large hive in

the hole of the oak tree at the summer

house, while your friends were getting

secondary degrees and putting in hours at

jobs you were at the summer house,

watching the sun set over the water, to

everyone’s chagrin at the summer house,

watching the rodeo with bare feet on the

cow hide rug, letting the sun blind you a

little bit watching the sun set over the

lake, calling the rattle snake guy because

you saw a rattlesnake, worrying the trees

might have the oak disease, shooting

arrows in the clearing, clean mouse shit

off the little tractor, chopping firewood in

your underwear to feel important,

watching the bees in their hive from the

window in the kitchen, One day because

there is going to be a wedding soon, your

father tells you a man is coming to take

the bees away, The man looks and

realizes that the bees cannot be taken

away, They are too aggressive, their hive

too large and too valuable, Watch from

the window, he goes to his truck, wearing

jeans and an apiary hat - he brandishes

the spray foam - and with bees flying

everywhere around him, he fills the hive

with spray foam, fills the tree with spray

foam, the bees fly around him not stinging

as they are in shock, he fills the hole with

white, airy, toxic, nothing and then he

turns to give a thumbs up, They’re dead!

We can go on living, Later the whole area

burns because it is very dry there, where

the summer house is, the summer house

burns down and you long for it 9000 miles

away in the European cold you stay up

watching videos on Twitter, this road is ok

that road is not, the firefighters save the

garage but lose the house, You return a

year later, everything is green and the

oak tree is still there with yellowed, old

now spray foam, bees entombed where

they dwelled, Think of the scene in the

hive, nowhere to run where the foam does

not touch, chug all the honey, fuck the

queen, enjoy the darkness, starve

together, in thirst without pollen, They go

on living and us, sure, us, Eye, Eye, Eye,

Eye.

Rindon Johnson is an artist and writer. He is the author of Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People (Inpatient Press, 2016), the virtual reality book, Meet in the Corner (Publishing-House.Me, 2017) and most recently, Shade the King (Capricious, 2017).