All these years living at the end of the line
out in old Dorchester still actually, only the
original English settlement on that big Bay
of all the tidal islands a half a long century

Going in and out of that peninsular center
where those Puritans put down their souls
so commercial beside the spring bubbling
so pure out the wet side of their Beacon Hill

Where somehow I cling regular as I lay out
my labyrinth designs in nothing really but
mere dust chalk on my Veterans for Peace
sweatshirt in ever greater rainbow visions

This guy tells me he’d like to help me extend
my labyrinth designs all the way up the walk
toward Park Street Station and I smile to say
“Yeah, why not?” never knowing what could

Happen, but still sure my Peace Labyrinths are
more relevant than ever albeit there‘s nothing
or no one who seems to believe that right now
more urgent than ever oh, oh stop the Bombing

Stop the Bombing a voice that’s inside my head
keeps repeating a great anthem chorus singing.

 

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.