I can’t stop thinking modern in these modern times
the long 500 hundred year half millennium so at end
I find E. Indian villagers on Youtube.com who watch
Charlie Chaplain who they have never seen before so
there is the little tramp romping in old movies made
over a hundred years ago, this tiny man harlequin of
many patches with bowed cane for a quick slap stick
with which he dances everywhere he goes relentless
miniature doll who pops back up when knocked down
and synchronous with the resistance way outside and
beneath if not actually also at once above mainstream
and who keeps on coming back again, again survives,
he lives so even ancient Indians farmers for thousands
of eon years can see, oh, he’s the trickster, the coyote-
jackal that can eat your heart floating as a feather long
the beach and up the boardwalk over the fields above
the plains deep in the canyon and through the caverns
up in the heavens away in the blue of end time modern.

 

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.