What could “free” writing actually mean
When all that is we’ve actually now seen
To be a very, oh, very authoritarian meme
Of world twisting, dastardly lying schemes:

There’s not a thing that’s free in any of it
And certainly nothing to free us of the shit
That’s filled up our minds with the sediment
Slowly filtering down from the developments

We had nothing to do with, yes, and nothing
To prize loose our circulating thoughts frothing
Forth in a free flow that still pushes and tosses
All these concrete things ever so liquid gushing

Out of the welter of our over whelmed minds
As we struggle in this complete corporeal bind.

 

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.