I’m just glad I’m old
and getting older all the time
you couldn’t pay me to be young
it even looks like I might
manage to live long enough
to see how it all turns out
and then turns in again
it’s blowback in our faces
and over every shoulder
and underneath it all I’m praying
like never before for my little
buddy who pushed the sit and stand
up, up the hill I sing
the song of the Volga boatman
heave hooo, heave hooo
heave! ho! heave! ho!
heave ho heave hoooo
three score and plus one
and here I go up the hill
again I’m just so glad, glad, glad
so glad I’m old and getting older
over the hill on the hill
where the Dragon over the Midwest
has become the nautilus pediment
the top down International Monetary Fund
World Bank structural readjusted empire
the empire is so colonized
while the colonies over there
are now so over here over there over here
and I’m just glad I’m old
(but I might just see
how it ALL ONE THING
turns out)

 

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.