“I told you so” is rarely helpful
but completely inappropriate
in time of existential threats:
each turn a new face of death
Glaring back as each reflection,
window or polished metal grins
with intent malice of hard cruel
visage of imperial machination &
I’m still recovering from pandemic
that isn’t over and this huge raft
of violence at the other awful end
of what just began as I was born
And I’ve been protesting ever since
somehow going off with the other
guy to spy on the gang we left behind
and getting lost trying to catch up
To brisk hiking Dutchman in Detroit
and Saginaw a small child who wants
to walk just like grown man wherever
he might go trouble in troubled times
And padding feet walk on through
such a wicked world looking for light
in the falling darkness of end times
madness asking “is all hope really lost.”
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.