When we were kids, regularly, nature turned on herself in the radioactive glow
of those nuclear family Mom and Pop times and grew into various stages of
                                                                                         giganticism:
giant ants, giant dinosaurs, giant gorillas, even a giant woman to match
(I guess) a giant man who must be found to be her giant, monstrous mate.
Certainly that was quite a large man, indeed, in that frogman suit you saw
jump into the scary depths of that dismal dark Black, Black Lagoon.
And it was a very, very large Blob ready to eat the whole of the last small town
in one huge influx of acidic gall in a digestive orgy of post-war development.
In those days we took our time making our own fast food and it cost much less
on multiple levels both split level and what we paid with our arteries and hearts.
Yes, it was all so much simpler divine when so much so many now think important
was not even really imagined yet much less an, oh, too really probable possibility.
We could argue about anything at all and no one could prove anything until later.
We often stayed up late at night for no other very real reason except to talk.
We wandered around the house playing games and interacting with each other
while the old idiot box talked to itself in the corner where we had left it to its own
                                                                                        devices.
Here at the other end of life it’s like they think they’re the only game left in town
and we can’t possibly have a brain in our heads if they don’s tell us what to think.
They commit one crime against humanity after another and pass them off as if they
were a virtuous circle patting themselves on the back about all the wealth they create
and what a great seamless garment district of sweat shop factories and fatal toxic and
instantly obsolete baubles to hold in front of us as Ponzi scheme bubbles and boarding
house reach into every pocket of resistance which only grows as the thought machines,
all tactic and technique, tell us what to think about what they already told us
and its all under the umbrella of national insecurity which trumps human rights,
accountability (especially) and, of course, (perish the thought) justice never justice
because you can be assured you will never get any justice at the heavens forbid Justice
                                                                                                                    Dept.
And the Supreme Court which in my youth became a respected institution when it
finally ended Plessy vrs. Ferguson is again what it always was before a rubber stamp
for corporate and libertarian wish fulfillment that selects a president who lost the election
and makes persons of government created fictions and is naturally racist in its racial
                                                                                                                  blindness.
I t would be purely fascist except at least Hitler conquered territory and everyone got jobs
And now they treat the people’s pensions as if it were a carnival auction as the wages keep falling and falling
and all the jobs are contingent, part time, and/or temporary.
Oh, what a wonder now that we’re all free agents and the draft is economic and we all
have so many choices and there it is: the economic and legal pincer action —The Bush/
Cheney Regime and It’s All One Thing, Obama and Harvard and the Federalist Society,
The Global War on Terror (GWOT) and Structural Readjustment,
All One Thing All, One thing All One Neo-liberal –Neo Classical Thing,
All One Gigantic Monstrous Thing

 

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. Today marks his one year anniversary as a poet columnist for Oddball Magazine.