Angels

Angels drip wrists over pine skid compost bins
hands reclined over last year’s dead leaves.

As a kid the devils sent me down to kid hell,
it’s amazing how they knew exactly what will tell

And tell and tell until you’re never really quite the same
and heavens is so far away and, well, God is dead

Actually makes all too much sense and vinegar piss
passes through like an aching Greyhound bus home

Long after home’s not to be found wanting to get out of this place
and back where I belong inching through life afraid of what

Never happened and seemingly still dazed by the fatal blow
and never the same again after the fall, yes, the utter fall

Into the asphalt black night until, finally, there are choirs
at the four quarters singing and saints joining in and clapping hands

Up a shell white drive while angels drape wrists over
pine skid compost bins hands reclined over last year’s leaves.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.