We are caught between dueling horrors
of that open air prison that then became
a free fire zone that again transformed in-
to this concentration death camp right in

Center of the swamp in the very middle of
the peninsula where those who promised
to “drain the swamp” arbitrarily then went
and built a tent prison camp in the middle

Of a river where predictably immediately
it was flooded by a giant rain storm so one
wonders how anyone could ever imagine a
safe place in such low lying hurricane prone

Place where we all cannot help see ourselves
in the jaws of some huge powerful predator
they named to pull us under, drag us on down
to drown gasping for the air no longer there.

 

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.