tattoos on the hide of new Sec. of Defense
who wants to be Sec. of War again

The Empire has been moving to the west
for centuries devastating the poor old East
in the process of demonizing its real history
at least going back to the bloody crusades
but then they were just defending a Roman
cum Byzantine Empire (at least supposedly
since they also grabbed Constantinople for
awhile in the process) and the maritime col-
onial empires that then ensued have still got
their tentacles being extracted from recent
past of post-WW II financial machinations
(that go back at least to Glorious Revolution
of 1689 and British Central bank and a royal
claim on the slave trade) that left their past
colonies deep in debt to the former colonists
sovereignty in name but no economic control
of their own land and certainly not resources
as it all keeps unfolding, changing so very fast
in this kaleidoscopic vision of psychedelic hits
wapping us repeatedly upside the intuitive rite
side of the brain flowing out through the left
side of the body we all know it is happening as
the mescaline shrooms LSD dream experience
of the late 1960’s early 1970’s now pop! appears
as only therapy desperately needed to balance
the technological brain drain vain so chemical
revelation of where we needed to go without any
way to implement such prophecy long half of a
century holding action against the social bond
denial movement we’re all individuals now and
barely able somehow avoiding nuclear holocaust
(so far) and the oncoming out of control wreck
of the age of mass extinctions supremes brand
they call love potion number 9 or numerological
actually it’s 6-6-6 six sixty six 666 sign of the, oh,
(yes, and also it’s 666 5th Avenue New york City)
and Beast which is all that breaks our backs and
everything else that’s in the way toxic tech change
of counter-revolution and, oh, mass surveillance
as just the way it is old I Like Ike Eisenhower’s Cross
of Iron where we’ve been hung by new centurions.

 

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.