This is over here and that is over there
so don’t even try to make a connection
unless you want to face plaintive rebuke
that has nothing to do with that nothing

Over there, over there where where where
is now so over here, over here where live
all of us and now it seems, too, all of them
oh, us and them over here and so over there

We turn around and get turned upside down
and it’s all globalization turning on that spit
so we all breathe air and drink the same water
with pictures of the currents in air and water

Molten centers and bolting meals fat chance
of somehow being the one to discover the way
to transcend the slim advantage of mere words
to cover this resplendent churning uni-verse.

 

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.