It won’t go away now all by itself;
it chases us through the city streets;
it personified itself as that troll elf;
its pointy ears poke up from beneath

The bridge of core common daily life
watching us wherever we can ever go
recording any sign of resistance strife
seeing us in our homes as their only foe

The big boomerang backstab blowback
as we get hit in the back of our sore head
by what ‘we’ did on their overseas track
in our most intimate people place instead

We can only duck it as we try to recover
from the previous assault over and over
they drop the big one as they slow hover
right over our head that is so, so very over

This imposition from way high up above
this rain on our down trod personal parade
this big fat dirty deal shitting like an old dove
who imposes this scapegoat madman tirade.

 

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.