Drenched in this haze,
thoughts fog over,
racing for first place
on this toiler’s agenda

When did a day’s quota
morph into the barely bearable,
dismissing into hiding
the center of my conscience?

Highbrow schemes milk my
dreams of creative serenity,
sourcing these gifts
for political twists and antics

Operating in degrees of
FRANTIC
because self-definitions hang
in the balance of public acceptance

My tasks…
frame it, mold it and package it
for consumption by the masses,
facilitating ineptness into logical discourse

This voice,
straddled by sacrifice to
deliver someone else’s vice
with beautiful embellishment

Distorted weight on what’s valuable
in eyes that can’t really see through
the smokescreen of my penmanship;
my art bastardized for a paycheck

Not a mid-life shortchanging, but a
tool for navigating shifting waters in a
draining well of opportunity where
shallow breaths and thick skin are commodities

But these native sighs are heavy
and this veiled film, so thin; tenderly
living within, defiantly existing without…
two realities yoked to one heart

I’ve never not thrived in duplicity;
advancing and retreating,
the spoils and the victor,
the lioness lamb whispering roars

All of them, witnesses to the quiet
power of these keystrokes;
deafened to the thunderous passions
of these thoughts

Muffled praises for this dripping
of residue they cannot compose
fall faint beside this screaming soul,
composing words they will never hear