The Reagan Era has been actually the Age of Nixon
awkward politician with ever such a nervous smile
sweat on his upper lip and 5 o’clock shadow cheeks
kept Vietnam going seven more long years, oh, so
long it went on and on genocidal racist oh, forever
war more war and here we are more than 50 years
late and later watching daily horrors in Israel/Gaza
whole families precisely executed by smart bombs
whole families killed with U.S. made assault rifles
little kids and hungry fathers and mothers looking
for food shot with big tanks and drones and snipers
who target the heads of children not five years old
as the troops make videos and compete in horror
contest of who can commit most outrageous crime
& we can’t but think of My Lai massacres, Vietnam
so many My Lai massacres, oh, Nixon laid foundation
Reaganites put up the superstructure and here, here
we are, the whole world is watching again and again.
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.