Someone on the train gets up and goes over
To the intercom to question why we’re standing by
And amazing miracle he actually gets an answer
That there is a disabled train downtown that has cars
Waiting at every station and this poor soul, this
Innocent voice of inconvenient inquiry just keeps
Asking why this is happening so finally exasperated
I tell him they spent all the money on tunnels and bridges
(for the cars) and put the debt on the MBTA public
Transit system so we’re riding on worn out rolling stock
Controlled by an ageing switching system and again
The money spent on those tunnels and bridges real
Purpose was not even getting people faster to the airport
But again actually to rewire the financial district so
Boston could be a could be (again) a 21st century city
In global gilded age of mass extinction caused by climate
                         Collapse.

 

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.