for Indigenous People’s Day

Here we are in this mad house,
this great institutional structure
of the insane, of by and for the mad
the crazy, the psychopathic sociopaths.
Even the platform for the sacred
the Cathedral of the Church seems lost
in a tide of literal bible proportions
and without a vision the people will die.
And they are dying. Dying for the Dance.
Dying for a Chant. Dying for the Word.
They’re locked up on death row for murder.
They’re wrestling with hell in dementia land.
They’re trapped in the wrong neighborhood,
went to the wrong school, failed the exam,
couldn’t pass the test, lost in the shuffle,
didn’t get adopted, abandoned, left behind,
when all along we’re there with everyone together
at the four corners, at the center, radiating
all the way out to the curved beauty
all around, everywhere participants
or viewers all involved in the all one big thing
each in our own individual collective way
dancing as we watch the dancers as we
sing with the singers the great sound Creation.

 

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.