Simple finally, whatever it was and
may be well ever be just as it was
but you just don’t care now anymore
you just don’t know and just won’t go
and whatever the loss won’t find a gloss.

It comes at you in pandemonic rush
so that this is just the way it is now,
a lobby full of faces cutting smiles
and eyes down, beaten heads down,
the hard life of the streets unredeemed
by hundred million dollar lotteries
un-graced by Andy Warhol celebrity
untamed by the wildness of fame.

No, the bombs falling over there
And things going so very, very well
            Over here
            Over there
doesn’t make it any different down here
      no, not way down there
          way down there
            down, down
               there…

 

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.