On being a bomb in the belly of the beast

Ticking and clicking
my heart and my heals find a synch
that sinks even the most hopeful floating
boating bordering battle ship war fare
fuses
refusing
to give me more time
I tick tick tick toward the frontline
of Corporate America.

what does a woman
who is thrift store suit and smile by nature
and laugh like thunder
do in a world
where wit and wisdom in the form of mistakes past
are as outlawed as her naturally guffawed laughed?
And I ask … Can a zebra change her stripes?
I find myself camouflage in a sea of khaki: the colorless corporate jungle
we fumble at the feeding trough
tick tick ticking under our zebra hides
hiding from all we feel inside
looking like lions
tryin’
to simply get a sip.

I tick

and shift / uncomfortably when my true self emerges
I see my reflection in the surface
and get nervous / to be discovered at the wrong end of the food chain
KNOWING both the zebra and the lion are the same ... in that they go where the water is.

I swallow this
ticking
stripping
every explosion from my fiber
and chameleon myself khaki
unhappily
wandering in this lobby, like it is the belly of this beast
and every sense of self-awareness or inner peace

is replaced
with

BOOM!

Sonnet of Adversity

adversity - your thorny crown doth pierce my brow

where blood and sweat and furrowed fret
road map my face -
grace beset
by the chasms of strife
life recounted in crows feet & tree score
my skin - an abacus calculating cracks
multiplied by the square root of mishaps
the crows tracks
mock my endurance
squak at the assurance
that relief
and peace
are far from now.

crayons and eye lashes

i
am a dreamer
and my wishes
and imagination
and desiress
are a culmination
of crayons and fireflies
my aspiration lies
amongst a field of whispers
where hopes are seeds
sewn by eyelashes.
The blinking creates waves against the breath of my vision
if you listen
the blinking sounds like
"shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

The dreams are secrets
fabled not to come true if spoken
hopin'
we blow our prayers into the wind
like eyelashes off finger tips
a dream is but a wish
the hope is but a prayer
and the whisper of the blinking is the sound of the vision being born.