And finally I see it all
clear as the sun in outer space
it’s all transparent now
whatever they refuse to see
whatever they omit to talk about
Like a bad penny or plug nickel or counterfeit bill
screams look at me! look at me! I’m strange,
I’m odd, I don’t make sense
I’m the question waiting to be asked
and there will always be an all too many few like me
going why? why? why? why?
is the relevant, is the strategic
is the structural and the environmental
disappeared to the land of the unmentionable
set up as an unquotable straw man
put into a stalking horse form
and never ever allowed its own voice
that keeps on asking anyway
all the relevant, strategic, structural
environmental, contextual questions
which cry out from beneath the bottom line
somewhere under facts on the ground.

 

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.