As they wrap us all up and simultaneous
seal off global empire colossal overreach
they strip back the many veils of curtains
exposing the long colonial project history

Hysterical, a natural catastrophe exposure
that takes me all a way back to childhood
when I can remember so vivid the old case
of Rosenbergs in the square electric chair

Why did they strap a nice lady with glasses
like Mom in that device who had boys, too
like Mom except they all were so mad at her
and this thin frail man what had they done

But the next thing I know there it is again
they’ve taken over the t.v. screen which we
only just got, for long tedious, contentious
congressional hearings House Un-American

Committee for torturing witnesses Crucible
becoming a play oh we’d never do that again
but press the right navel of a volatile world
Holy City on a hill and presto, change-oh-oh

It all lights up like a forgotten dry Christmas
tree run out of water just waiting for finish
me off so that then I’ll finally be done with
it , oh, with the bombs raining down on Gaza

And I wrote Gaza Is Our Guernica so, so long
ago it seems all the way back, back to what?
Cast Lead mowing the lawn become making
Gaza flat again as they actually talk about it

And summon up Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki
and it’s such a classic colonial imperial project
neo-colonial, indeed, looking ever more colonial
colonial all the time on very date of anniversary
crackdown of the 1960’s Columbia occupations
of office buildings they bust the Columbia kids
students protesting Gaza genocide for setting
up a tent city in front of their own library what

Overreach I think of genocide, ethnic cleansing
in Gaza and attack dog zionist hasbara assault
influencers complaining about the anti-genocide
demonstrators scaring them! who have terrorized

Us all over and over again with their ugly bullying
from name calling to physical threat taking over
the word anti-semiticism to cloak their very real
zionist AIPAC anti-semitic genocide crew, whew!

 

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.