In the crisis the cross of ideas crucifies all the extremes
but even more those caught in the most ferocious stance
become least able to respond to what is most urgent so
the power elite of whatever parties are all cut off in bubbles
maintaining the establishment, the system that must go on
while the dissidents who so faithfully did what must be done
to protest the Empire of bases are stricken with contempt
for the palsied society that might actually find a way to change
out of current ongoing collapse caused by collision confrontation
of human ideas and the facts not on but in the ground of being
it self, the way it supposed to be actually is that God that says
I AM since society is always changing what was can never be
that way again what will be will be as it always has technology
will not save us never has the power of the powerful just assures
that initially they will use the new for their own aggrandizement
only late will the people discover the new world that we all create
with our own inventive creations in form of persistent movement
that will invent a new way of life so that’s why it’s the “conservatives”
who see the movement in the tide of human adaptation to new tools
as everywhere rising there is this great flood carrying them all away
in waves while the visionary radicals of liberty through equality
are standing so tall so all alone in the mob midst great collection
of tribes, this picaresque novel thing of people who born of necessity
just keep on keeping on part of the developing larger living process.

 

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.