Last night I listened to Marshall Mcluhan
way back in mid-1960’s revelation time
on 50’s conformity regimented lifestyle
bred of depression and WWII global war

That built that military industrial complex
so congressional revenue in each district
this vast national orgy mandated spending
the lifeblood of nation, giant flood of blood

Half the world’s population under sanctions
vast medieval siege of embargo blockade
China’s people 15% of the world population
trade war with industrial giant U.S, created

With annual hundreds billions in investment
over 3 decades until now since that old Trump
got the trade war going it’s all nowhere good
while the new war is just like they had, just

Had to have another when they just ended
Afghanistan even as the U.S. was still stuck
really in global pandemic economic shambles
poor houseless encampments everywhere

A MassCass of mass addiction fentanyl over
dose of the folk carrying narcan around every
where there these hordes of poor besieging
doorways and cluttering the Common malls

And never ever before such levels of mental
breakdown we will never know how many hurt
covid brains lost it because so many mentally
other are cut loose to go wandering on through

Their own desert of delusions and all this fear
everywhere fear of this cold war regime scheme
everywhere everything again for another war
this machine that must go on, and it will go on

And on even as Mother Earth is burning turning
the last time they burned the witches now they
burn Mother earth herself, the forests are burning
and the oceans go acid, oh, our very last chance

Frittered away on the neo-con war hawk next war
this life-long ‘cold’ war always going hot, hot, hot
and the more they fight the weaker we all get war
nothing like a war to Trump every anything else.
           (no Trump pun intended)

 

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.