The Beast Breaks Free
      By JoHannah P. Green

Recite the majik canto
"This job is not my Life. This job just pays the rent!"
Driving on the 4-lane, M-F, morning-and-evening
      battlefield
metal-rock pours out the windows.
      Mortar Fire
from the little, 6-cylinder, ruby-red tank.
"This job is not my Life! This job just pays the rent!"

Each track, an attack, slams into the unsuspecting, the slow, the weak-
      ahead, behind, beside.
Each salvo rips apart the cage of my anger,
      ahead, behind, inside,
until the breath fills my chest again.

It alarms and annoys the
troop-carrier, mini-van, dead-fish adorned
Enemy-
Midwesterners, soccer moms, bankers,
high school cheerleaders with yellow daisies
      stuffed in
the speakers on the dashboard.
Their shocked looks
evoke a wicked smile
from my Inner Beast,
(outrageously happy to be free again.)
"This job is NOT my LIFE!! This fucking job just pays the RENT!"

We scream along with the metal bands
and caffeine and adrenalin pulse hard
through the speakers, through the throat;
rip apart the image of Employee-of-the-Month.

In the drive-thru, the hidden, Goth-Rocker-Vampire Beasts-
imprisoned in the tiny space-
leave the push-open-window-thing gaping wide.
They smile
"I love that song!"
They get it.
They get why the Gray-Hair sings along
to the metal tracks.
"THIS JOB IS NOT MY SOUL!
THIS JOB JUST PAYS THE RENT!"
Their Beasts smile back
biding their time.

Recite the incantation again.
"This job is not my Life. This job just pays the rent."
This outside doesn't show
the Beast that lives within.