Oh, God, oh Gawd we’re in deep trouble now
who has never swum against that current
who has never been sucked down
by the suction of the clinging muck
deeper and deeper down, down
down and down, down, down
like a ship sinking
from bow or
stern
How
strange this age
that refloats the old myth
of the Titanic as if the ancient predecessors
of the Greek Gods the Titans left their heel prints
in icy foam always somehow ahead of the Mercury winged
feet of our airy electronic beam culture that broadcasts its hubris flapping
self through the electro-magnetic storms that come and go with the solar winds
that blast up out of the thermal fusion furnace of eye hole sun
The stars are eaten by the rolling waves of this roiling Earth
and the people are spit out the tornado of their own vanity
and unrestrained busy ever so busy super-stimulated desire
“Programs as driven as you” the sign on the subway says and
“There you go again,” as the president of the ‘80’s boom , zoom gloom
used to say and we, well, we are just disappeared, vanished as in
“first he disappeared and then he vanished”
the great redundancy
the people
the vanished
or is it no longer always needed
or
WANTED
DEAD OR ALIVE
the people
the Disappeared
People
Who just don’t know
(and surely it will be maintained)
just don’t even want to know as it’s all exactly
what they want and everything else is just dross
which these elitist bastards the nerds, geeks and those
others are attempting to impose on us in order to turn the rest
of us into the same sort of losers they have always been and, of course,
will all ways be
Sail on, sail on sweet sailor mate we’ll be the one who rode the greatest wave
that crashes down and wrings itself out flat and spent upon the infinite beach
of dark teeming void, this black hole cavern space that has fired us in the furnace
of suns , gigantic suns that blasted us across galaxies and pulled us together only
to explode us again and again refining and recombining and redesigning this world
in which we live and live and live a life that seems more convoluted now that all the relativistic
wrinkles and labyrinthine spirals that twist and turn our poor minds on their strange dark
difficult paths that have left us grasping at logic and struggling with the consequences of our
ever proliferating creations.
The COSMOs, the cosmos so brilliant so deep
this great gravity that levitates away so far, so fast so free
within its pristine, crystal form and expanding diamond of explosive storm
the cosmos, the cosmos where our life clings so desperate on the dusty sides of solar debris
this cosmos, this cosmos where we must live, oh, sail on sweet sailor blown in gusty strides
like skipping stones hopping from wave to wave only to sink down into the wholly sacred deep
so far below the sparkling blue oh, too, too conscious skies so far above the teetering horizon
line of our tripartite cosmology slish and slosh, splish and splash that is us above and below
on and under that sacred bath where thoughts and dreams come and go up the funnel and down
the down the whirling vortex around and around in the roaring hurricane down and around the black
hole weighty drain, here we are, there we go D.N.A. gone insane to find all its possible forms and grow
through every sign-if-i-cant stage of baby eyes, wobbly toddler steps, roving childish hands, multi-sited
global cultural tasks, hormone driven desire, long term adult relations, the wisdom and understanding
of age and death.

 

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. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.