Staring at machinescapes
Fractal music in my head
The inflammation of my spine
Confirms for me I am not dead
A priori me
In the wind, dust, and shadows
A posteriori me
Weighing and measuring my battles
Knowing what I know
Without knowing the reason
The eerie absent answers
Feel like my mind committing treason
I accept the betrayal
My cognizance shoulders on
Knowing some framework exists
Both before and after I am gone
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 wolf sees the man as meat
A means to hunger’s end
The x-ray sees the man as bone
What he is, but does not comprehend
The fly sees the man as stone
Ancient beyond the fly’s years
The worm waits for the man to be soil
Oblivious to any and all of his fears
The soil is a measure of time
Under the gaze of a blazing unforgiving sun
The worms live in the layers of history
Where everything silently dreams as one
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
We didn’t know each moment we were living and dying
Or what aspects of each the passing days contained
Our audible reflexive sighing
Our distant nameless pain
Darting between joyous moments of whimsy
And some cold and gnawing dread
Cognitive dissonance dancing
In the grey mass floating in our heads
Memories strung together as moments
Unique in their singularity and scope
The sum of our combined expectations
Equaling our constantly cycling cynicism then hope
Gene G. McLaughlin 2021
When I heard the echoes of the choir
I wondered whom they sung to
Was it a present loving god
Or fading ideals they still clung to
Did they sing endless songs to joy
Choral anthems of light, rebirth and flowers
Were their voices raised to dogma
Honoring and preserving structures of power
Were they all just howling
Like the night’s wolves seeking grace
Were they drowning out their thoughts
Of the things they would rather never face
Or maybe the voices of the choir
Include the sum of these things
Voices of dreams hopes and desires
Blended as the choir sings
Gene G. McLaughlin 2021
Once we were kings
But did it matter?
Once we were kings
In our hearts and songs
Once we were queens
Purses and fortunes grew fatter
Once we were queens
Ignoring miscalculations and wrongs
Once it was morning in this land
Yet it was never as bright as we believed
We never realized it was by our own hand
That means to deceive were conceived
Morning in America
Has always and never been the same
It is only the measurements and criteria
That divides our nostalgia from shame
At the top the world all still moves
The weight of the world still spins
Those who might approve
Are them who claim benefits and wins
Maybe stand for something?
Or maybe choose to don’t?
In the end there is no need to worry
The self anointed kings and queens won’t
Gene G. McLaughlin 2021
Someday I will be long dead
And someone will think of me
They will be no one I can hear
They will be no one I can see
In this time I shall feel nothing
Existing only in memory
May I exist as hope
In this future mental interaction
May I exist as love
Despite my corporeal retraction
May you feel me rise through you mind
A wave redirected by refraction
Through life’s tangled mass of possibilities
Pointing to a bright new direction
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
A short poem for you fall mushroom lovers-
Mushrooms are the ghosts
Of forest floors and fallen trees
How does meaning demand to grow
Among the moss and decaying leaves?
Does a lineage link the floor and canopy
Via roots and sun?
Is the bolete a forgotten memory
Or the birth of a new one?
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
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