So much of life is just gravity:
All day long we’re pulled to the center
then all night long the Earth holds us prone in embrace.
This is our only real world home:

I was sick for about 2 years because of gravity
pounding my old bones on those concrete hospital floors
until my poor aging spinal vertebrae were all so sore
and the old injuries of time just ached.

This caused nerve pain that constricted my chest even more
I would cough and cough and it would stab me in my neck injury
from falling in the walk-in closet after my ex told me she was
          leaving me
(with my son, of course).

Heart torn out I collapsed the next morning in the closet.
Now that trauma constricts my lungs and my breath when I cough.
Somehow I can never get all the phlegm out. So it’s no wonder
I had walking pneumonia for months on months: that’s what
walking pneumonia is slow drowning in your own fluids.

Life becomes a recovery that must never end
(that is at least if you do not want to end).
Resurrection is real and daily.
Resurrection is a daily occupation.
Resurrection is just the way it is:
And so much of life is gravity.
(Heavy Man, Heavy)

 

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.