Fragile Dreams Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Sad at work as foreign language texts are outsourced
to private companies by local Language Units and I'm
left without a steep mountain to climb - or stormy seas
to traverse, without a new challenge I drive myself out
of my mind - much worse than exterior threats leaving
my inner citadel intact since these internal revolutions
entail my conscience attacking my work ethic

For not fighting to relieve all foreign language problems;
without taking note of the fact that there is no work and
it's difficult to challenge myself as nothing is relevant in
terms of my ideal of beauty & improving the life of other
people, my help in other languages led to such righteous
indignation by a colleague - I was shocked into realising
I don't meet the standard of officials gifted with

Repressed imagination & unencumbered by emotions to
conquer official forms without boredom - whereas for me
texts are a minefield of provocative ideas and my reaction
is so irrelevant to our bureaucracy, the air seemed to turn
toxic: I humbly grovel in gratitude for the privilege to earn
a salary to pay for my children's education; also the Lord
& Master of the Crocodile Castle can't understand

Why this crocodile is losing the emotional battle to survive
in the over-regulated world where I'm just an anachronism,
a dinosaur that should have been extinct before the advent
of the modern assembly-line patterns which destroy unique
feeling, individual expression - and fragile dreams…