Check out Waterbug Hotel performance from the Middlepoet archives.

Middle Poetry

Originally published in Take Magazine, April 2004

Burrowing

Below the crust

Towards the core

As doors seal

The capsule

Glides towards

Millions

Amidst a shell

Of electronically

Charged ambition,

Defeat,

Hunger,

Starvation.

Blank stares

Wander

Along the trudged

Floor

Grease smudged

Windows

Musty air

Always avoiding

Blank stares.

Asian

Bible readers

With raver pants

Six-months pregnant

With a receding hair line

Who haven’t shaved in years

Spend

To carry them back

Towards a Tuesday morning

Only to emerge defiant

In the face of terror

Relying
Upon the beauty

Unveiled behind the tough exterior

Of the blonde law student

Perhaps it is sad.

But she may

Erase

The terror of my moment

May keep me in this capsule

Until I can ask

For her name

Thus the beauty

Of the rumbling

Tumbling

Ways of transit

Burrowed beneath

Prideful

Defenses

If only for a minute

For a minute is all we had

For a minute is all we have

Rumbling with pop icons

Rumbling without

Shoulders to cry on

Rumbling on towards Babylon.

She will study to be

Enlightened

The old lady will continue to be

Frightened

When that which is different

Next to her

Sits down

We are all different

But when

We stop

We are scared

The underlying thought

Is there.

The tunnel rumbles

Back and forth

Towards chaos

The tunnel rumbles

Back and forth

From

Chaos.

Middlepoet is the former Poet Laureate of Jersey City, NJ. He is a two time recipient of grants from the Puffin Foundation and a semi-finalist for a UCLA/Pen Fellowship. He currently lives in New Jersey where he is working on a collection of poems entitled The Book of Middle.