My thoughts are too big for my narrow skull
and my dreams are blown away in a rush so
now it’s all so desperate this terrible still lull
that has left us with absolutely no place to go

As they try to drain an ocean of congealed hate
w/ private individual teaspoons of this strategy
just like the strategy that was always too late
as the prisons burgeoned & high court tragedy

Metastasized through decades of dark money
& institutionalization to the very highest level
this absolutely deadly combination of phoney
& the inane that expects us to bow down grovel

Before their blatant racist, corporatist screed
enshrining the control of those few over us all
but beyond that actually invention crazy creed
of the guns as ultimate duck walk torture crawl

From anything that could possibly now resemble
an actual rule of law into their total lawlessness
assassination and murder as torture assembles
into a legal phalanx in a complete flawlessness

The people and the biosphere on which we depend
death cult capitalist propaganda Wurlitzer machine
ugly racist fascist holy Supremes bullshit that rends
systemic response to our ongoing collective decline.

 

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.