They have always written poetry
Even without 401K’s
They have always made music
Even without health insurance
They have always painted landscapes
Even without tax credits
We have always loved each other
Without government approval
Take us over
We will meet you on the other side
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
Listening to the Replacements
Rain is coming down
Yellow Walkman in hand
Mud and dirty ice crunches
Under each tired stride
There is no pleasure in this today
Only the comfort of routine
Yet it gives little respite today
Searching for something
In between the rain
Looking for the cold
To bring true words
To my frozen lips
In youth we struggle to find
The simple paths
We run down cold roads
Hoping to lessen the burden
Of our uncertain futures
Where little is clear to us
And we have little guidance to
What we are or what the blurred
Images of our future selves
Off in the distance represent
In later years our burdens
Will be concrete and have numbers
Solidly affixed and attributed to them
The finding of the paths
Are no longer romantic runs of longing
In the cold winter rain
But carpools and commutes
Cubicles and colonoscopies
Where we know where our path takes us
And do not have a longing to find the way
But to leave it
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
The words get twisted and repeated
They bounce and imprint
Over and over
Their meaning was clear
In the sick heat of the fever
Sometimes sounds echo
Will not leave
Until they decide to fade
Is this how it starts
I guess if
It were starting
I wouldn’t know
The key is
Ignoring that
Which is not real to others
Because it’s all real
To you
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
To know the heart of the holiday
Is to know snow
And cold
As where it is dark
The worst is yet to come
Around fires
The bold sit
Drinking beer made in summer
The taste of wheat and citrus
Upon their tongues
Warming them
They gather
As they always have
Little was known of
The man behind the rock
In the cave
In the early times
Yet
No matter who the day
Was named for
People always gathered
When the shadows grew long
The cold is the thing
The dark is the thing
The reminder that summer
Is a blessing or aberration
And even winter
A warm exception to the rule
In late December
We acknowledge
How precarious
This all is
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
The garden was the garden
When all was stone and still
The dead spinning rock
Is sitting in the sky
And something decides to be
In the cold dead
Cosmos of black
Something chooses to move
The grey black silent stone
Slowly grows blue and alit with color
Trudging forward stone to water to bone
And then it is
And then it moves
And then it thinks
Ever in motion
Always afire
Can anything which has chosen to move so
Ever be still again
In the effort to pull back
There are rewards
The gift of the stillness
Was the definitive self knowledge
Not obscured by motion
And to constant hum of knowing
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
Sunflower
Behind the house
Across the dirt road
It is a husk of its
Past self
Seeds scattered on
The ground before it
It is cold
It will grow colder
The sunflower will sway
In the wind
Be bitten by frost
Its death not the end
Of its decay
In the dust
Snow and frost
The seeds shall take shelter
For many
Things are born
On the cusp of deep winter
We know the seeds make a promise
Yet we cannot hear the promise
Drowned out by the winters howl
We wonder if winter and the sunflower
Have a covenant
Where its decay
Is only the beginning
Of the story
Gene G. McLaughlin 2005
Sometimes I listen to the radio
As the day slowly drifts away
Sometimes I talk to the cats
As they stare at me with perplexed eyes
Sometimes I make love at noon
As the sun shines bright above
Other times
The moments
Just get away from me
Sometimes I drink coffee
As I sit on a shaded park bench
Sometimes I look at graffiti
As they wash it from the brick city walls
Sometimes I drive to the drug store
As the cars grind all about me
Other times
I just wonder
Where it all went
Life is not a narrative
Life is not a song
Life is the inanimate choosing motion
The formless fog grown quiet and long
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
We are an army of some
We are an army of none
We are the troops of self doubt
We are those with and without
We are the agents of change
We are the with-standers of pain
We are the bringers of wealth
We are the seekers of health
We are the ninety and nine
Awaiting the moment and sign
We are an army of some
We are an army of none
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
Love I was gone before I met you
Checked out, shoulders slumped, resigned and blue
Now I am all in since I met you
Awake now, head raised, aligned, and true
Simple graces to you love
May the air be sweet and clean
May you life consist of
Things true to what your core means
Quiet and ignite
Dampen and alight
Fight and quell
In the middle
All is well
In the end I have nothing to give you
But everything you’ve always had
Plus
Me
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
Sometimes the words come easy
The thoughts run free
But the rain is falling cold
The sky is mean and dark
There are sad times to the north
And I got nothing to say
Sometimes the glass is shattered
The precious is no more
But the air will grow dry with comfort
The sky will be clear and bright
The healing will be slow
And I’ll have something to say
Gene G. McLaughlin 2012
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