Last night I listened to Marshall McLuhan way back in mid-1960’s
          revelation time
of 1950’s conformity regimented lifestyle bred of depression and
          global world war

That built the military industrial complex so congressional revenue
          in every district
a vast national spending orgy mandating lifeblood oh, giant flood
          of wartime blood

Half the world’s population under sanctions feudal siege style
          of embargo blockade
of China over 15% of world’s human beings in trade war as
          industrial giant created

By us, the U.S. with hundreds of billions of dollars over 3
          decades and since Trump
got the trade war going oh, that is so good until the new war started
          just like they

Had to have another war when they ended Afghanistan as the U.S.
          was still so stuck
really in pandemic economic shambles with poor miserable
          homeless encampments

Everywhere a MassCass of mass addiction fentanyl overdose everyone
          carrying narcan
around that everywhere hordes of the poor besieging doorways
          and cluttering halls

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

Their very own deserts of delusions and so much fear everywhere of
          this war regime
everywhere everything for the forever war machine it must go on and
          it will go on, on

And on even as Mother Earth is burning when the last time they
          burned the witches
now they’re burning the Mother Earth herself in flames and, oh, it’s
          our last chance

Frittered away on the warhawks lifelong Cold War always going into
          the next cold war
the more they fight the weaker we all get nothing like war to
          trump everything else ….
                         (no Trump pun intended or needed).

 

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.