I Ching 36

I throw Darkening of the Light
with no changing lines so stuck
in this rote role I just go around
great blister on my second toe

Still no other shoe to be found
until the television starts talking
to itself the rain is falling, falling
this deluge that isn’t going away

I’m doing my very own Christian
yoga and it’s like Kali the mouth
has become the deep conscious-
ness cave of bellowing four winds

That issue from tzimtzum zazen
the place of the living awareness
that will allow us the simple grace
knowing what we don’t have to do

This world burning away the trash
in controlled burn completely rash.

 

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.