Poem: Tunnel

 

Tunnel

 

in the wet-almost near night,

the scuttle of cars turned slick and elytrous. 

people within the thoraxes gaped from glassy maws,

soon to become morsels,

transported down.

 

i could feel the misting

on my almost-moist palms,

a smog of grease, money and sweat,

only a smidge of rain

to tantalize the global-warming drought;

to make staunch farmers

bow under the sky’s falsely soft underbelly

and plead.

 

so much rage behind the scenes,

the rage of entrepreneurs and enterprise;

of the pied-pipers of production,

who drew sale-hungry shoppers

as if herding rats, all of them headed

into the tunnel to reach a shopping mall

that suffered from a plague of little demons

called ‘electric sockets,’

 

so many more sockets than stars,

so many watts, much brighter than all of them;

 

and maybe that was the pith of problem,

how everyone could believe in the city,

embrace a bling that outclassed the constellations,

those specks so bland in the cosmic blasé.

yes, the shopping mall, its factory-sized stores,

filled by the labor of sweatshop workers,

that’s what gleamed relevant,

that’s what burned so bright,

down down down through the tunnel.

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10/3  .. "drew" replaces "draw"  (getting old, tired... dumber)

9/22 ... "draw" replaces "drew"  

9/10  Fixed typos, changed a preposition