meanwhile Hieronymus Bosch
wasn’t so dumb afterall
as he looked into the afterburner
of the prophetic tradition
and saw the eye of the sun
in his own eye
where Adam and Eve danced
under the tree of life
in the pristine garden
free of sin and before guilt
and without fear of snakes
or each other
the ground they shared
was watered by the fountain of life
with a place even for death
a world blooming and bloomed
a world which flows over
the borders and into the millenium
where the bodies twist and intertwine
in every pattern and combination
where the waste of one stroke or seed
is a tragedy of lost opportunity
a blessing and joy of finite soul slipping
into endless fiery night

 

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.