My big brother John four years older
than me was old enough to be aware
of the beatniks in the so late 1950’s
grokking Charlie Parker/Thelonious

Monk bebop jazz wild scream voice
horns that seemed to me to be pain
cries that still echoed from the world
war that carried parents generation

All over the world which in long days
of childhood was so much more tiny
than this great planet of forever war
that goes on and on and so unending

Forever as even old, clueless politicos
know they must eschew it but instead
hapless clown faced and oh, horror full:
an evil devil clown of Stephen King book

Has somehow supplanted poor Clarabelle
in this scary new place they call America.

 

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.