Learning not to speak

Learning not to speak
In the corporate jungle
Or tumbling down those
Glass-slipper, serendipitous slopes
Of wild-west office parks
Elegantly architected
For sliding bellies
And cold-blooded living

Where barely a snowflake
Has the time to drift into view
Occasionally, wonderfully
Before self-extinguishing mid-flight
And casting a great rift
Through the tunnel of my vision

Where I fancy I’m dissolving into
A gentle rain of blue flames
Dispersing aged misanthropic mists
Permeating life sublime…
It’s the opposite of reality
But I’m persisting, unwittingly

Until integrity rises from the earth
To guard this being
From brutish bards bearing
Arrows and agendas and
Conjuring up smokescreens
Of blame and shame and other games
Of the corporate cube-farm-elite

I’ll throw a discrete penny
for absence or presence
Rather than surrender
This essential knowing who I am
That rose from learning not to speak
Over and over and ever
Until I spoke.