Lioness Tales

“I’m strong,” she writes.

“I’m Helen Reddy on steroids,
and this lion roaring off my skin?

It’s got muscle.

It’s toned and tanned and acerbically
aerobicized, and yeah…

Leo’s cut.

I’m cutting,
and sharp,
and biting,
caustically inviting,
lying…

Low in the grass,
lurking,
loitering,
inventing prey.

That one?

Easily picked off.

Spinning class
out my ass,
forgetting my past
is easy,

when I can taste blood.”

“I’m strong,” she tells herself again.

A badly spaced sonnet? (With a bee in her bonnet!)

Somedays, the mirror-mirror tells a lie
Hiding all of the scars that lay inside
Each scored and etched behind her cold dull eye
Remembrances of cheapened, un-earned pride
Revealing nothing more than false veneer
It casts the vampire’s shadow on the page
Exhibits in an outward fit of fear

Its own grotesque and badly hidden rage
Safe in the shelter of the alcove’s niche

A bitter refuge lair, nevertheless

Let no-one please unveil this grim pastiche
If only she could lighten her distress
And even though she kept pressing delete
Remember, rhymed acrostics are so sweet

She's a Very Freaky Girl

She rules her self-appointed jungle,
while a mumbling gaggle of followers
fan her flaming tongue,
itself a forked whisperer of vanities.

She glows with painted on courage,
orange on black, a tainted truth,
she purrs at her own petting,
wraps herself around her own gloating,
never realizing she is queen of the freak show.