You can’t believe anything they say
So why not just duck way down low
And wait until long night goes so day
Light and the sun rises so slow aglow

They bow right down to put their heads
In the guillotine waiting for a someone
To pull the lanyard for blade to descend
Down upon their own necks easily done

They roll across the floor of bitter time
And lie there looking up empty at us all
These vacant stares that almost rhyme
With the cry “No Ceasefire” at genocidal

Ball where they all dance that old war dance
As babies die for lack of incubator’s chance.
                 (at life)

 

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.