Only repetition can even make meaning
Out of the long slog from there to here
Driven to synchronously start writing
With my manna Black Seed Writer peers

Just as I have been walking Haarlemmer-
Hout…woods where my greatgrand’s cousin
Went to walk and last days remember
The clear sound of kinder voices buzzing

In the great eating hall of orphanage weeshuis
Where previous incarnation old man’s alms huis
Statue of bent age begging quiet as a mouse
Is back up on facade of Frans Hals art house

Had been brought inside out of sun and rain
But now has bolt in back to fasten him again
To wall of art museum just not to fall again
Down upon our swirling heads of human pain.

 

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.