or there’s no accidents in a perfect world

In my poetry workshop for the homeless (at St Francis House)
the story of the Eskimo invisible shadow people
who won’t attack anyone who can’t defend themselves
(naturally as I somehow planned without planning)
brings us to the conundrum of the endless war in Iraq
and without effort the participants tear it apart and
soon it’s tangle is stripped and shredded between us
but then from across the table come the dark eyes
that ask “what do you think about these gay marriages”
and there is no happy ending to all the things we think
about what men and women are and can do together
while God, well God must be looking down
on all that we have done and yet God’s forgiveness
must be more than any of us can know and
there are no accidents in a perfect world
when our right wing fundamentalist president
foments sadistic sexual humiliation in his prisons in Iraq
while those (must be) Godless gays line up to formalize their love
in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

 

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.