or the last thing in Pandora’s Box
and the most dangerous is HOPE

The dread election already selection
of ever more endless auto succession
of ever worser and worser politicians
of competing party sycophants of rich
(and/or famous) genocidal factions
of the empire fractious shards social
division the sharp glass and steel bits
in the flicking whips over our heads
that drive us slaves who exist in the
bilge pits of the pull, pull, pull you-you
miserable slaves you get out and vote
to save the Democracy you’ve never had
this machine (Dominion?) of the machine
of the political state where, yes, vote (or
else) you know what you’ll get you, you
you know elections always have those
consequences they keep talking about
that you can pretend it doesn’t matter
but as facts down on the eternal ground
get worse and worser with the long airy
formulations of officialdom ever more
frightening and precarious high pillar of
abuse falling ever so hard upon us below.

 

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.