Even as peculiar particular child I always loved form
as if the stroke of bat or arc of ball was more, ever so
much more than the score or indeed the whole game.

We could play and play for long days of hours but when
it was all over and we’d kicked the can and so come over
with rover or finally made it home in the end zone then
we’d remember not victory or defeat, who won or lost or
even who hit the winning home run but just the way the
ball and bat and the hands and the eyes all came together
as if by an act of God or just the law of a primal universe.

I lived my whole life for those wondrous arcs and curves
when the happenstance of daily existence just coalesced
in form of poem or physical performance piece and now
like a child juggling object from hand to hand for sheer
joy of absent-minded repetition that no social privileges,
or honor, or material reward, no sexual favor or especially
monetary bonus can match the ecstasy of form coming and
going arcing, curving back to the center from which it came.

 

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.