When your own totems appear dark
across the quick waving hands of tips
of trees and under the shadow bushes
emergent so sudden in the empty park

Or on the completely empty back street
of all the thoughts of evolved revelation
partisan decades lost in indoctrination
as fossil fuel-ish wish and empire meet

The end of history stills sits in dismal wait
an illusion wanting to become a prophecy
a spear to pierce all this cloying sophistry
technology assuming the final role of fate:

As in the dark ditch where the river runs still
the Milky Way flashes a limit to human will.

 

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.