There he is waiting for me in the day program hall
the hardest homeless not helpless full time warrior
against all those mother fucking pieces of holy shit,
shitbag cunt bastard abusers of the needy and poor
who snakey sneak their way through social services
chasm between what people so need and what exists

So this honey badger wolverine of unaddressed abuse
and unforgivable neglect has finally experienced love
in the form of his Doctor’s, or Doc’s 7 month old baby
little girl whose great eyes have smitten his black hole
of angry complete emptiness to leave even he wonder-
ing that he of all people could be feeling this fine way

So now he has written what he calls his only real poem
but slips back into his long convoluted reconstructions
of all the horrors that have been perpetrated upon him
& indeed to all trapped within all the poor house walls
of staff who always back each other, & supervisors who
won’t listen, & structures that never, ever could change

But all he has to do is re-read his piece, his only one poem
of the irresistible, yes devastating little beauty this Ember
and he glows again, his Jack Nicholson-like hardness melts
and his face and eyes light up like Ebenezer Scrooge alive
after the final angel, final night with hard gray lined face
gaunt with diabetes, taking on the hue of health & at least

Momentarily he is for once fully alive, and he is able to see
what he never ever saw before so intense he is ready to kill
for that small innocent being who could make him feel so
much for just this one short time in his incredibly long so
long miserable 52 years what he never thought he could feel
oh, such wonder and joy, in the simple total love for another.

 

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.