We must stop, finally, completely
as it is possible to become immobile
in a world that spins in more ways
than we can ever, ever begin to know
if for no other reason except to mourn
the lost opportunities of most 4 decades
of lost possibilities crying out from
the counter revolution that dominates
our poor resource starved, diminished lives
dying for the manure of imagination
and the waters of flowing creativity
stored in the sacred centers, very insides
but dammed and damned by the quest
for the perfect home, the ultimate ride,
the safe community, the exclusive place,
the perfect job, the good life, the American dream
the one thing we all want but no one we know ever gets
a life that doesn’t require the destruction of others –
the fireflies blinking in the record heat
the amphibians jumping off mountains’ tops
                                             for the rising rain clouds
the butterflies that can’t flutter to the other side
                                                             of the causeways
the tiny creatures without whom we cannot live
                                      caught in the fossil fuel furnace
that finally forces even us in our frenetic farces
to finally, completely stop, become immobile
as it is possible to become in a spinning phosphene world.

 

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.