Not only has everything
been transformed by the virus
but everyone is strange change, too

Pandemic response everywhere
the cult of the individual deal
spastic in this digital daze

But it’s still up there anyway
flapping neurons in a dread swoon
deadly seizure at core central

Control where we really need
now some thing else other self
at once mortal and oh, so human

Yet it has a life of its own
and we are it and it is us
and that’s the meta-physics
            of IT

 

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.