There’s nothing like a fire to teach you
about how the center explodes on out
from a tiny flame that just takes on over
the rear of the triple decker such square

Box where the three tiered back porch
becomes scorching hot wall of flame &
smoke black and choking sparks flying
up away we smelled it before we saw it

And there we were with a whole house
still standing so full of books and papers
boxes & bags of clothes with everything
accumulated over fifty years of city life

As I’m thinking about stays in abandoned
houses under construction back in 1970’s
waking one night in lightless house to see
the flames of a stolen car that leapt on up

In a vacant lot across the street what blaze
telling me I wasn’t in Bay City MI or really
even Brownsville PA any more, oh, no I was
in big time East Coast Boston wasn’t I now.

 

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.