“A Maze” so many say although
there’s a growing number who
will say “labyrinth” so I must say
“usually called labyrinths now”

These Current Age days of rage
genocide, ecocide and pandemic
with death the first four horses
of the Apocalypse so persistent

Keeps coming back ever too final
appear even in our bible study so
after church we are drawn back to
the Isle of Patmos and the terrors

Of Middle-East become West Asia
empires copper, bronze, and iron
not so far from Crete where Greek
myth of the labyrinth and its half

Man half beast, head of a bull-body
of beastly human great grotesque
I, all one thing, portray modern day
labyrinth of peace and human rights

Right there on fossil fuelish black
asphalt around old Boston Common.

 

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.