The pandemic matches the moldy ancient myth
of the labyrinth where our youth just have to be
sacrificed to the half-man half-beast at labyrinth
spin center of the deadly congested imperial city

Where the folk go to escape the empty back water
of the outlands of isolation and neglected decay
and only the one Minos (ruler’s) loving daughter
has the moxie to imagine the new liberation way

But that’s the corollary hidden human backstory
the spider woman whose powerful strong thread
so fine and connected and overflowing herstory
is this redeeming innocence so thoroughly lead

That the rest of us who have now gathered again
in our mega city global coastal combined portals
of computer wired virtual digital moving matter
have been left so herd immunity absolute mortal.

 

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.