Seesaw Margery Daw up and down
lifted high & spinning fast around
they jump off & so we crash down
beetle brow consternation & frown

Sitting on our bad contused behind
all the clever trick knee jerk binds
scapegoated all at once only we know
somehow someway anyway right now

There does come judgment last chance
shadowy desperate figure offers dance
of the seven veils of his sexual advance
the last temptation of ministerial manse

House of ill-repute once a Supreme Court
land of free & home of brave besieged fort.

 

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.