Reading Myself

Like thousands, I took just pride and more than just,
struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;
I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire-
somehow never wrote something to go back to.
Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers
and have earned my grass on the minor slopes of Parnassus....
No honeycomb is built without a bee
adding circle to circle, cell to cell,
the wax and honey of a mausoleum-
this round dome proves its maker is alive,
the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,
prays that its perishable work live long
enough for the sweet-tooth bear to desecrate-
this open book...my open coffin.

 At the beginning he is saying that like many people he had too much pride.  I do not understand what wax flowers are i googled them and it just showed a bunch of websites that teach a person how to wax flowers. it might mean that he is done with things that will not die because wax flowers are stuck the way they are forever and he does not want that. this also might connect with the end because he says the stuff about perishable  work so he wants the work to be able to die but he hopes it will last long enough for someone to appreaciate it. I like where the poet compares a bee hive to a life-long work of art. That when you are working on something so long that you become so into it that you cannot separate yourself from it. The thing you are working on so hard and trying to make perfect becomes your coffin. Like the bee that works its whole life on making the hive that it dies in it and becomes almost a part of it. this is what the author is saying that when an artist or poet or writer is working on something so hard they will eventually not be able to stop and when they die they become a part of it and that is what they are remembered for. Artists of any form are remembered for their works and that is why their works become their mausoleums. The thing you come to see when you want to see someone but they are dead. All artists want their work to live on long after they are gone and that is why he says that the bee hopes its perishable work will live long.