sad bees

sad bees surround the porch with their wings drooping in the summer rain looking for a dry place to call home amidst the endless floods
ferns sprout from the mud, growing other smaller ferns from their leaves which grow little micro ferns from their own leaves after that
this particular house was full of mustard packets
that the resident had collected for his entire life as well as several preceding generations
the problem was that there was never a reason not to have more mustard packets
they were one of the few things in the world of any value that were absolutely free
other than the trouble it took to grab and transport a handful of them
and so a long standing tradition developed in the family
but the current generation and his father and his father's father did not like mustard
still they thought that they must carry on the mustard collection in the name of their own forefathers or foregreatgrandfathers as the case may be

the bees did not know about the mustard house
this was a coincidence
and as far as i know bees are not especially fond of mustard anyhow
though in honest i don't know
i'm not sure if anyone really does know
whether bees like mustard or not
i certainly haven't tested it
nor have i ever
before this moment
had a desire to seek out an expert of both bees and mustard simultaneously
to see if he or she ever thought of combining their two disciplines into one, single life-long study of the relationship between bees and mustard
if in fact any such relationship does exist

i mean personally if i had to take a guess
i would guess that they do like mustard
of the sort that winds up in packets because that shit is
probably loaded with all sorts of sugars and syrup
fortunately for the mustard house man, most of the packets remained sealed and odorless
thus concealing the mustard's existence from these swarms of drenched bees who only sought a place to dry their wings
unfortunately
the mustard man did not know this
and the presence of a hundred and twenty autonomous swarms of bees surrounding his porch drove him to the first of all conclusions a man in his position must make:
that this must be the mustard
what else could it be
there is a troubling correlation when only one man in the world
has the inclination to maintain a generational mustard packet hoard
and that selfsame hoard is surrounded by countless ravenous insects
they were there for his inheritance
they would devour it and leave him with nothing left in the entire world
a different man may have inquired of himself whether it was preferable to have nothing or to have an endless supply of something that tasted to him like a skunk had rubbed its anus on a green pepper

but not this man. he was raised in the mustard and by god he would die in the mustard if he must

having said this aloud, the mustard man ran to his bedroom slipping on mustard packets the whole way and opened an old chest in which he kept among other things the other things being mustard packets a shotgun and a tennis racket conveniently placed next to each other
the shotgun he loaded with beeshot that he had on a whim purchased upon first learning of its existence and the tennis racket he left in the chest because he did not possess enough extra hands to carry both and surely something called beeshot must be effective against bees

he ran through his kitchen and observed out the sliding glass doors the bees using their stingers to cut tiny holes in the glass like cat burglars
they were beginning to pour into the room now and he unloaded his beeshot at them which was effective
in the most relative sense as it did hit a few bees but the swarms were endless
they poured through a hundred thousand minute holes in the glass and walls and ceiling
teams of sappers burst from the floor followed by endless files of them
they zoomed down the fireplace and surrounded everything

and when there was no more space for a single bee in the entire house
they sat down and went to sleep out the rain waiting for their wings to dry
and as far as he could tell not a single one of them touched the mustard
he checked
moving from room to room to all of his various hoards and they remained undisturbed
now in addition to the mustard packets he had a hoard of bees to look after and avoid stepping on which was going to be impossible and he had a sinking feeling they would turn on him as soon as he did
but given the number of beeshot shells remaining to him he could think of nothing to do but lie down on the one open spot of floor in his house of mustard and bees while the rain began to fill up the world with itself

the bees would surely leave when it stopped
but it never would