Dead languages in an encrypted world
Floating on currents of textual seas
New syntax and context unfurled
Ideas carried by the digital breeze
Massless data of New Babylon
Still growing ziggurat of a modern age
Non-physical ideas carry on
With or without the page
Language united with math
Following the binary path
What or who does it benefit
If anything or anyone at all
Are the data’s flows sinister or beneficent
Are its actions fair or foul
– Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
Gatsby develops Android apps
In the modern day
Daisy has a reality show
That’s a career in a way
Tom is the son of patent lawyer
Who went to Duke to play lacrosse
Nick is still choking on whiskey and words
As his body pays the cost
The world still glitters in the distance
The LED screen cuts down on the glare
It all seems so charmed
Until you finally make your way there
Nostalgia fills the empty
Where music fills the night
I’d say I saw them dancing
But the word fleeing seems more right
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
Do not abide
A lack of grace
In the world
Find it
In small things
Grand plans fade
Crumble to dust
A bee in a flower
Can sustain
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
Today was like dust
Floating away from me
The reason I saw it at all
Is because it danced
In rays of morning sun
Promising a confidence
If I didn’t look away
I barely moved my eyes
Still, the secret was withheld
Promised in due time
Dwelling in a future moment
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
The art of the spider is patience
Its venom is held in reserve
For when the web breaks unbidden
Or if the prey works up the nerve
To resist that which nature intended
To swerve from the course of its fate
The spider’s unseen strength
Is the will to sit and silently wait
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
In an empty arcade, exists activity
None arising from life
Sounds of machines humming and beeping
Existences clear and free of strife
Bells ring to alert no one of nothing
Digital voices entice the absent to play
They can’t distract their intended targets
To attempt to chase their worries away
Oh the pop-a-shot lights
Are ever oh so bright
Offering buttons to press
Promising prizes and tickets to win
As the cabinets bathe in fluoresce
Waiting for the day’s simulations to begin
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
I haven’t a clue what went down at Calvary
Centuries ago
You can put the things in a giant endless box
That I don’t know
I do know much of narratives
The stories we tell ourselves
There are true things in stories
That we create for ourselves
If you tell me Romans might have feared
What they didn’t understand
If you tell me Judas might have betrayed
Someone he loved and respected as man
If you tell me that 3 men were crucified
On crosses plunged deep into the land
If you tell me those that had love for them cried
As the the blood dripped from their nail struck hands
I’d believe you for the most part
I know these stories to be mostly true
I’d believe you at least in part
Because from experience these thing are true to you
People have ever been sacrificed
People have ever been betrayed
Maybe one was named Jesus Christ
Maybe he died today
No narrative sustains
That isn’t one that compels
No stories remain over centuries
That aren’t written in our cells
I’m somber not from a leap of faith
That is not my road
I’m somber for the parts I know are true
Those lying deep within our code
Sacrifice, love, and loss
Things which are often represented
By a lonely hill once bearing a cross
Which many hold when their sins are repented
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
There are dragonflies
In my earliest memories
There are no clever thoughts
No grand ambitions
Only their loud hum
In the heat of summer
The taste of sweat
Upon my tongue
The feel of damp
On my neck
The river is near
Giving and taking
Sleeping then waking
Frothy then serene
The mountain is near
Giving not taking
Bending and breaking
Its peak still unseen
There is my mother
Provider of food and love
There is my father
Before me and not above
We are of here
This valley
This land
We are from here
Our family
Our band
All I know
Is nearby
Or at least as
The bird flies
The river knew my name
When I was baptized in it
The mountain knew my name
When I walked upon it
I became of here
In my crib
As the wind blew
Through it
I cannot forget
The hum
Of horseflies
Nor the pain
Of their bite
Nor the pull
Of the river’s current
It’s inhuman might
It all escalates outward
It all internalizes inward
The river takes me elsewhere
The mountain fades from view
When I am motionless
I can hear the dragonflies
Humming there still
When I am motionless
The river carries me there
Once again
The mountain’s peak
Still out of view
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
So much of spring is faith
A red flower
We were not certain
Would bloom again
Alive once more
It is the unknowns
That winter creates
Which give birth to wonder
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
The sun will burn till it doesn’t
The heart will beat till it don’t
Worry is a thing I wouldn’t
Do because I won’t
Manage the details and aspects
Of that I cannot control
So I’ll let the world sort through it’s cycles
And ease the burden and toll
Of the weight that builds up sometimes
At the base of my neck and my spine
I’ll listen to the wind, rain, and earth’s hum
And my thoughts will become once again mine
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
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