Take the mask off and
there sits “vengeance is mine,
sayeth the Lord”
as we roll up old Dot Avenue
Red Line is working again
and self-defense has become
vengeance is mine sans Lord
over and over and over and
again and again and again
I draw those peace labyrinths
all my array of chalk colors scribed
on our oh, so American asphalt
walk alongside the Boston Common
once burial ground for the indigenes
too, just like the dead indigenes
who identify with Holy Land rocks
like we’re all just born of earth
life made out of all that rock:
take away that earthen mask
and the soil is living flesh
from rock hard bare Earth.

 

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.