Stuck there in that cement quicksand
and wondering how we will ever get out
when they tell us through the speakers
do not worry you won’t sink too far down

Head under that sucking churning mess
beneath you and around you this fine line
dust swirling curling in that water while
you can feel the bottom that is dropping

Out beneath your flailing squirming feet
and it’s just like those long gone old days
who never really were the trains ran right
on time until they just didn’t until right now

We are always there waiting the moment
when the next shoe drops into an endless
whole under us all alone and all together
there we just are with no way to get away

Clay pigeons in a this very, very hot soup
bubbling with the conspiracy theories and
strange brew concoctions that so abound,
leap just the way that our stuck feet cannot

We desperately need to dance and to sing
sing sing sing to our human freedom feet.

 

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.