About three weeks into one of the many jobs
the boss, some short, white woman,
stormed up to me like she meant business.
"You don't act professional!"
she screamed in an emotional rant.
"You don't dress professional.
Your humor isn't professional either."
I stared at her in silence,
occasionally feeling my eyelids blink.
When she finished, I asked a question,
"Can you define the word 'professional?'"
She stormed away with the ferocity
in which she arrived.
I was back on the job boards that night.

They want a professional
Serious
Uniformed
Individual
To conform
To company
Policies
Hair trimmed
Beard gone
Shirt tucked in
Socks long
Black shoes
Scripted interaction
Lacking satisfaction
Just sterile reactions
A perfect attitude
Till I am a
Twin of
The men
And women
Who work with me

It's strange how
there are pros in golf, medicine, and even body language,
but no one will admit that they are pros at
tracing the lines on their thighs from old scars
or knowing their hands’ feelings when they see an ex’s face
or dodging people’s inquiries about their wellbeing.
There are unrecognised experts
in all fields of sorrows and pains in our human experiences.
Shame that those most familiar with the least explored topics
tend to give up or give out
while those least familiar attempt to drown the veterans’ cries with
I know how you feel
You’re not alone
It’s okay
I understand
And we who know best
smile and nod, thinking forward to when we will be home alone
thinking backward to
all that was
all that is
and when it was simpler
and before this.

bewildered that this text
this forgotten scribe
uplifts the feelings
i try so hard to bury inside

this scribbled stanza
relieves pressure and pain
slowly allowing me to
stop reliving the shame

words once read
in black and white
submerged in emotions
high, light, and bright

letting your painted face
in my memory vault fade
ebbing in the distance
while these words continue to invade

funny is that our feelings exist
so playful and irrational
yet followed zealously
feels greater than feels, professional

*s.q.

Muse :
"Move over fool and watch a Muse Master
at work"


      In the blackness of my soul
      I sit listening to far off thunder
      As inside it also rolls

      For long long seconds
      There is no sound
      Then begins the brumble bound

      Quicken flashes does my mind's
      Hindsight cause flashes white
      Of the truth hidden by the night

      It is perhaps then I stir
      And begin to think of you
      A soul's ***** as if a burr

      Then the truth will crash
      And I slow count to ten
      Before I hear rumble within

      Then comes a calm
      No more flash or sound
      I have burried my thoughts of you


Me :
"I don't know ," I say. "Maybe by tomorrow's
light . . . . I'll have a say ."

Then the muse did stare
With such a cold cold glare
All the fluids in my glass froze

There she was
Then she wasn't
And she vanished
Into the cold thin air