Our ‘elites’ model the old colonial horse races
with the object to knock the opponent off &
leave him in the muck on the way to the finish
line, oh, so very free and clear and so all alone

Attempt to close off all the lanes to nomination
leave us with the same old two party of lesser-
evilism where both candidates were so obvious
puppets of a professional master manipulations

Mere knee jerks and burrowing ticks sociopathy
that main requirement to preside over in style
demolition derby public health serial disasters
pandemic of endless lost planet embossed wars

Backing the nuclear heavily armed stupor powers
into geopolitical corners turning steed wheeling
dealing with ye olde fossil fueled sorta a system
environmental ecological devastation that comes

At us viral and digital-fungal and with a bacteria
galore a flying highly circus circling round globe
they couldn’t be so superficially more different
while at core they are galloping stampeding away

To leave us so far beyond and lost for very good
way behind on the collective rent and everything
else that really does matter these days two horror
story men wouldn’t know compassion if it bit them.

 

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.