the Public on Death Row

Some-how I end up every time
out front before it all breaking
path to nowhere but still every
one where they are trying so, so
hard not to rock the boat not to
even bother anyone there it is
really triggered by some seem-
ing passing event word said &
then made out of the moment &
out of the probabilities of those
exigencies of the existing state
conditions ethnos ethnic ya race
always every way especially race
non-existent ever present haunts

All this hectic scramble they make
us all live in this hierarchical chaos
pyramid of astrological desert time
space continuum great field theory
of mass and gravity ever so grave
we look into the eye in the wide sky
oh, why they then so always appear
when we quit-stop thinking about it
something else blessed special state
and you have to say something & out
it come and there it is and it is so you
who said it who knew it felt it & then
couldn’t keep it in anymore bursting
out you try to keep it in bounds but
it has its own way while you, you, you
are it now and it has will have its way

 

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.