For over a decade now on both the left and the right
they’ve been asking where is the “PEACE” movement
the holy swiss cheese to go with the ham in the meat
grinder of the endless invasions and occupations that
used to be called the “War on Terror” but now has no
name since the “new” administration, the “Obamites”
as I call them attempted to rename the mess (as I think
we all think of it now) but that new name didn’t stick
so now they all (the pundits and PR persons) don’t call
it anything except to comment that it has no name so
making it I guess the ‘No Name War’ which goes on &
on nobody even knows how many countries fought in
as nobody seems to know for what strategic reasons &
discussed by no one and with weapons none will admit
exist so heavens forbid that anyone should require an
accounting of cost (not to speak of benefits) because
no records are being kept even as meanwhile a hand-
full of dedicated activists confronts the publicly proven
war criminals wherever they stand up to spread their
endless lies which are dished out to maintain endless
war everywhere I go I see the old hippie PEACE signs
of which I still possess an old 1960’s poster with lovely
girl with flowing mother earth hair wrapped around it
which, of course, is actually the old “no nukes” symbol
made by combining the flag semaphore positions for 2
letters inside the circle of life that has now become so
ubiquitous, again everywhere on kids t-shirts and hats
school book bags & lunch boxes & yes party favors both
in inner cities and distant suburbs all somehow choose
it until it becomes the longer the endless war goes on,
this as I said unseen fad, that just grows among our kids
who never knew that the ‘Moral Majority’ had waged a
4 decades long campaign to label it “SATANIC” & that
the counter culture it is so identified with is anything
but the only possible “alternative” to this so relentless
mercenary fact of torture and murder which torments
their present as it all but kills their only possible future.

 

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.