I turn to see who it is walking next to me
and you are a frail faint distracted version
of your former self who does not notice me
and you are not you and I indeed am not I

And words do not mean what they meant ….
for the world we once lived in is no more
and what we once gave birth to has become
norm even if it is not our position of power.

So, yes, I realize that we all must pass away
and that eventually everything that seemed
of such overwhelming importance will just
be forgotten even as you who were so great

Are merely a shell of your so vice-like grip,
your memory that held a whole world still
can no longer find a definition that you had
once always ready on the tip of your tongue

So all you can do now is sit quietly so as not
to allow your anger to explode and they tell
me that you have even fallen asleep in middle
of your own program formerly so important

To you and looking at you I feel my weakness
in not being able to do anything halfway since
I’m either on the bus or off the bus as I wish
I could just walk along beside you old friend,

My friend, I miss you, I see you but realize we
may never again touch hearts, friend, I never
intended any harm and yet you, friend, are no
longer you and I may never again really be me.

 

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.