Sometimes I see the end standing there like someone
too suddenly gone just like that, you can’t believe it
and then you have to go on as if nothing happened anyway

The hawks gather on the Common for the weekly peace demonstration
and it’s so warm the heckler returns and the one who said Hillary will win
comes back to admit “Yes, I’m a Trump Troll” so I hear as he balloons away
Troll, Troll, Troll your vote down the keen mean stream
Verily, Verily, Verily strife is such a screammmmmm!

The wind goes supercell on the Gulf Coast
The Earth trembles under the plains of Oklahoma
The West Antarctic calves Manhattan ice bergs
The ocean bleaches its coral necklaces
The mountains run out of glaciers
                     because they no longer reach the sky
The crows follow you to the new place to come flapping over tree line at dusk:

Dark birds gather in and around the White House
The counterinsurgent generals from the invasions
And still ongoing occupations with the puppet rulers
And metrics of mercenary money always spent, spent
The shark tooth nose bone cannibal lawyers (Federalist?)
Projecting, always projecting the business of the take no prisoner(ers)
World changer(ers), the go getter(ers), the challenger(ers), the pacesetter(ers).

And you know, Gnostic know, there it is
There are no miracles in a secular world
Over here over there, over there over here
When it’s all one thing sometimes you see the end
It all comes home exactly the way it was done
Standing there like someone too suddenly gone.

 

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.