Book ends usually feature the same motif but in reverse mirror image
so in history the end of the last crisis becomes the prophecy of the next
which by the forgetting of the generations makes what was so deeply im-
pressed by the horrors of the last monster mash slowly lose its impacts
washed away by time until all the bad behavior of gansta banksta past is
just part of the woodwork while then the wallpaper is splattered with blood
& guts of the people slow heated to a boil again as the system systematizes
it all same old story NEVER AGAIN never again indeed that will never
happen they say over and over again to what so obvious simply needs done
as the center pumps out life blood to the imperial periphery while right
there the infrastructure of family values is raped and pillaged and ignored
to death so nothing works while we have the greatest military in the world
ever as they cut food stamps and end welfare as we never knew it and the
streets are populated heavy with veterans and WAR comes home in form
mass shootings mixed with mass suicide when whole country in little bits
and the Death Cult been trolling everyone for the last half century keeps
on piling on HA! HA! HA! here’s a talking point at your throat and here’s
another one hot off the old wing nut hate propaganda machine and look
at us with innocent eyes say what’s bothering you, you don’t know what is
in our hearts, in our hearts where we never dare go holding onto something
so deep in our hearts where there we’re connected, we’re All One Thing in-
extricably just us connected to them Book Ends: can’t have one without the
                                   OTHER

 

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.