Tag Archives: work

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4

Time waits

while I run

This ferocity of action

charged by expectations

only a madman can measure

This treasure – gifted curse

of accommodation

Pockets too deep to

not pay the costs

Cashing out this well of

blood, sweat and tears that

I remit with a smile

The meanwhile, as meager as it is,

gives way to tender moments and

fits of fury, competing

to be my resting place;

mere seconds of redemption in an

ongoing whirlwind of others’

and self-imposed demands

Wants get met under the

delusion of necessity, the

compromise of humanity, the

sacrifice of sanity

But I’m still thinking…

Annoyed and intrigued,

wagers pour their pockets into

the kitty riding on my survival

I hear their whispers

I know their bets

I feel their air,

but won’t breathe it in

Those clouds are too high

and too low for my sustenance

Not for sport –

Existence is an art; drawn and

choreographed by circumstance;

painted and performed by me

I always have a choice

Yoked

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0

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