Here come the de black robe judge
so bloody-handed and oblivious
rarified and such funda-mentalist
speaking to us from very very far

Above any possible thing vaguely
human they enter our space from
the past and skeletons proliferate
in the State parks Halloween nites

More pressing than Santa Claus gift
that can never satisfy all us any more
with pleasures ever more and more
perverse this escape a future so gone.

 

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.