Sunday, of course, trying to make Koffee Klatch I cut across the wide
          slow curve
to make it straight to the doors of Ashmont Station looking over my
          shoulder
just in case a bus swings in to park by the entry inside of which I can see
          inside
BRD — board and know from experience that I can’t make it any way I’m
          thinking
as I hear the warning sound the train makes just before they close the
          doors to
the one I need to make to be on time IT”S TOO LATE the world is total
          chaos
looting riots in S. Africa and people shot down protesting in Columbia,
           great floods
washing away whole towns in Europe, the N.W. in drought and on fire
          and the U.S.
and Canada both empty reservoirs bleached walls never seen before and
          the people
whose policy exacerbated all of this horror where 20% of the world’s
          tiny children
on a diet that stunts their growth and prevents their full development,
          same world
still in pandemic that has shut down the global economy as a huge new
          surge under-
lines the way in which capitalists have imposed commercial special
          interests right over
the public health and we’ve had a full half century of this horrendous
          stupid shithole
policy and over we go one cliff right after another forever war, oil spills,
          regime change,
judges making law up out of wing nut fantastic theory of what gets the
          base stirred up
the absolute perversion of justice (Guantanomo Bay justice) racist,
          fascist political hacks
there they are nin-com-poops on parade in their black robes soaked in
          their mealy mouth
bullshit so they can’t even know how ignorant they really are
          constitutional originalism
of white supremacy and foolishness like what judge does not understand
          that sedition
and insurrection is a threat to any system of law much less, oh so much
          less of simple order
as I see the train pull away down the tunnel and then wait until the next
          train pulls on up
and I get on and along comes my wife furious at me because
           she’s carrying twoheavy bags
(I asked her if she needed help before I left and she said she did not) but
          I should have known
I was in violation of her family rule all hands on deck to help with
          grocery chore everyday
                                      LIFE another CRISIS

 

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.