(Al Qaeda) 2007

It’s all work and real work is all play
so your knees move over your arches
while the clenched toes palm the floor
& floor is the round head earthly delight
which curves away forever day & night
the weight shifts heel to toe, toe to heel
contrapuntal our eiffel towers just teeter
front to back and side to side add a curve
to come around the segmented bend since
we are the real base, people become media
masses so that when a great base straightens
its spine our whole world discovers backbone:

And it’s not easy, no it’s very, very too hard
to become upright under all that repression
and we’re afraid, everyone who feels is afraid
but it’s only when we allow our selves to feel
that we can experience the beauty of a truth:
it’s so easy to perceive only lies to be possible,
it’s so dreadfully convenient to forget what is
known when we can stand here so vulnerable
on the supporting curve of this sphere of life
where so many generations stood up in order
to get us here all such free people, as must be
our children, too, who stand on that base and
stand up for the people in those media masses.

 

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.