the Blob, the thing, the thing
that came from outer space, God only know where
a streaking comet from beyond imagination
a center that envelopes all the other centers, the Blob, the BLOB

I watched the Blob yesterday and Steve McQueen was in it with some brunie queen
(who reminded me of my wife when she was 20).
They sure were cool driving around the Hollywood sets of a small town Main Street U.S.A.
already then being engorged by the automobile suburbia that was the big boxy street stream
American Detroit muscle cars that bore Steve and his brunie queen only the youth, the only youth
that can see with the innocence of adolescent desire the monster that is growing
with first some old fool who pokes at the vessel fallen from the sky of the universe
and is enveloped up his arm whose doctor and nurse are quickly dispatched
until dozens disappear in supermarket and cinema
until the whole diner itself is engulfed
and only the victims in its basement epiphany
discover that nothing can stop the BLOB except CO2
the global warming gas when the last scene in the Blob
is the blob frozen by CO2 fire extinguishers from the town public high school
(where were those school vouchers then when we really needed them)
parachuted onto the North Pole just the size of its dozens of small town victims
even as we realize, oh, my God, but CO2 caused global warming is now predicted
to melt the polar ice cap in just a few years by 2020 or something like that
the Blob of suburban energy waste is trying to melt
the Blob, the Blob is coming, the BLOB is coming
RUN, RUN,
run, run, run, run.

 

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. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.