Mmmm youth yum yumm
the omnivorous jaws of global
forces of economic domination
have been with us quite a while
now we still all think of cities
as great urban graveyards
where the bucolic virtues
of pastoral and agrarian life
are perverted by the clutch
pollution, dirt and germs
and mmmm youth yum yumm
are devoured in their innocence
and ignorance
and the hairpin turns
of this citified globe leave
them crashing in their addictions
and drowning in bacteriological debris
and clinging to the flotsam
of their pulverized social craft
and desperately clinging to rotten life rafts
of traditional values while this
Labyrinth in which we have always lived
this global economy of life
slashed by species loss
and gouged by bulldozers and chainsaws
eroded away by floods
burned out in flash fires
salted with petro-chemicals
scooped up in giant nets
and over run with alien creatures
transported on the passages of commerce
and blown up by the engines of war
but still they keep coming
and still they are supported
by this gossamer chain of relation
this great cataract of exchange
this matrix that at once supports
and encapsulates all of us
so young on this bright green
blue and brown spinning bubble.
Mmmm youth yum yum.

 

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.