I go around pretending I’m really O.K.
and in fact I’m still getting much better
again watching the national train wreck
floating by on white-top ocean of hubris

Rising high tide as I walk along the edge
of the water line of Neponset River wet-
land marshes I never saw this many tiny
lighting bugs twinkling in the blackness

Of the night I came out of concrete tunnel
where the trolley tracks cross over head
to see the fireworks in Quincy 4th of July
smell of fireworks explosive rite in my nose

As if I was in Iran with those school girls
bombed by tomahawk missiles on video
death trip triple tap strike just watch it
hit in real time of Current Age conscious-

Ness concrete but also virtual reality flash
before my eyes of a head shot young male
worker pulled from his car in front of his
wife and daughter put in cuffs to bleed out.

 

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.