Now it is time to go on the Peace Path.
It turns out the stone-age iceman of the Alps
was actually murdered with his whole tool kit.

Everyday another American dies
in the stupefying heat of Iraq.
We’re all stuck in Mesopotamia
with Mammon gnawing at our heads.
Nimrod is whetting his chops.

In order to prop up the market they’ve built
a great Babylonian tower of accounting practices.

If you aren’t looking for work
you are no longer unemployed.
Workers keep disappearing into the mouth
of this Labyrinth economy.
At its center is the Pentagon.

But as we spiral down, down
the spiral of redemptive violence
becomes the Path of Peace.
We look over to discover
the first family trekking up out of Africa.
Next to them appear the 12 tribes
escaping from the Egypt, the Pharaoh, and slavery.
Together we wander for 40 years in the wilderness
until finally, finally we reach the Promised Land
where it turns out we’ve been all along as we
turn, turn, turn once again on the old Peace Path.

 

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.