It’s difficult to be a warrior when
you’re still a practicing coward but
love is not the problem sex all too
usually is and the Great Void does

Not eat any hot dogs for breakfast
so if the Great Goddess came to tea
She wouldn’t need fashion from revlon
Or new age scents to rub on her belly

She’s be languorous as May Day and
vital to the bones of your marrow so
you’d be glad to have functioning mind
and if anybody ran away it would be you

& not somebody else just the thought
of her sitting there would conjure the
ancient vessels and bring back dreams
since she wouldn’t have to see to heal

It would all be in her hand, she’d take
it in her fist, spin it on her wheel and
weave it on her loom to sing the dance
in the round to drape the inner space of

The models of the temples they’ve never
been able to stop her though they have
changed names but never able to distort
the great weight of her posture as they
Soar away to the bright burning blue
when the sweet dark of the deep Earth
is ever so cool and cleansing its power
reabsorbs squirming ants of letters,

redeems fallen word, so that it shades
the white relief from from the haunting
of the scapegoat’s grim black message
engraved on the reflecting pool bottom.

 

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.