Going back over this past weekend’s challenges in writing at least a poem a day, I find that the day 15 challenge for NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo is to write something regarding the middle.  Which middle? Apparently, any middle will do.

I picked up my guitar and strumming, I thought on this elusive theme.  Laughingly, I could not help but accidentally stumble over the half-forgotten chords of a song from long ago – “Stuck In the Middle With You”.  If memory serves me correctly, this was a song by some early 70s band called something like Stealer’s Wheel.   As my half made up words filled in for long forgotten words, it came to me that a lot of us sort of inflict purgatory on ourselves. We might call It flexibility or state that we believe life is simply fluid  and always in flux.  All the same, we keep on keeping on in a state of self inflicted purgatory as we wait for our lives to unroll as best they might.

Self Inflicted Purgatory
by Michael Romani

Woke up this morning, sleep filling my eyes
Looking over my poetry, realizing what I recognize
That too many ideas are born from an empty mind
With too many questions having answers left to find

I suppose it's better than the connect the dot memes
Passed on and lived on by those on the edgy extremes
Everybody seems to be stuck in their habitual themes
Having long ago given up on living for new dreams

Nothing escapes us but the depth of our real selves
Nothing evades us but the truths not found on shelves
There's an intolerance for the shadows of philosophy
In a world where choices of anger or beauty come easily

To think too deeply is too think too much and ominous
In a world longing for childhood recalled as luminous
It's the sort of thing that makes a thinker wince
And for those caught in the middle it serves to convince

That the themes running through lives serve to unite
The threads of evil and dark with goodness and light
Serving as a sort of self inflicted form of purgatory
Except for the few who illuminate the way for the majority

(c) April 17, 2017 Michael Romani