Another Lugubrious Poem
Behind my reading glasses
in my left breast pocket
with my calligraphy pen next my heart
there’s a note from a street kid named Bias
asking me about a program
that may not be ‘appropriate’
plus the agenda of the last meeting
of our Cafe American,
and the three continuing poems
of my Pine Street shelter friend
just mugged again at Downtown Crossing
for the two packs of generic cigarettes
bulging from his two shirt poc-kets.
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.