Everything I Love Is True . . .
Feel free to complete the poem in comments, I would love to hear what people have to say.
Stories All the Way Down
There is an idea called binary opposition that comes out of structuralism. I don’t know that anybody studies structuralism anymore, but in 2016 after 10 years of social media it seems relevant. Social media is narrative building on a global scale that has never been seen before. Humans build narratives constantly and on Facebook or Twitter we can build them together 24×7. Binary Opposition says that two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. It is what we see on social media every day in the arguments that go on and on and on. Every post and argument extends the narrative which sadly is extremely boring and disheartening to most of us. If one side doesn’t have enough people to tell their side of the narrative it can be easily accounted for and efforts can be ramped up by bots. An equal measured binary response. In the digital age there are no lulls in the narrative or no intermissions. At this point I don’t think we are defining what each side of the narrative stands for. The structure of the narrative is more important than the content. The structure defines the elements of the narrative itself based on the corridors of human cognition that we can’t even see. We can’t seem to stop the narrative. The momentum is too great. Maybe someone can tell me how this ends or gets reset? I am not sure we know. This is new territory. Maybe I’m telling myself a narrative and none of this true at all? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s turtles all the way down, for humans I think it’s stories all the way down. Personally I am going to do what I always do when I am clueless about the world or depressed. Pull out some old world narratives and read them for a few years. Books. At least most of those narratives have beginnings middles and ends.
The Other Guy’s Version of Empathy
The subject was pain
Not related to you
Only what me
And mine
Have been through
Empathy is
My needs met
With little
Or no
To do
From you
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
A Day in Autumn
A poem that feels like fall to me.
A Day in Autumn-
After the summer’s yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.
As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.
Whoever’s homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city’s avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
I Come To Take Your Hate
This I write
To make true
Decency is not lost
Love is not diminished
Grace is not absent
I come to take your hate
I will turn the hot stone
Into a cool wind
Fire only consumes
Remakes the world
In its own image
Of ash and ember
This I do
So that you may know your own sound
Breathe
Hear your heart
The beating
Of the engine
Hear the blood
How it flows
With quiet force
The sound
Of your fingers
As you gently
Rub their tips
Together
This is the sound of time
Without the weight of years
This I give to you
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
When I Was A Ghost
When I was a ghost
Songs sounded like sorrow
The aural recognition
Of time fading away
But
When love shaped my form
I knew the song was melody
The joyous exclamation
That then is always now
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
I Didn’t Get it Henry and Wish I Didn’t Get It Now
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness… is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.
– Henry James – 1914 – on the day England entered WWI
The world always gets turned upside down
I see that and know it
It’s the way everything works
Always has worked
It’s a cycle
I studied history
The facts are clear
Cause and effect
Random occurrences
A trampoline of ups and downs
Forever
Intellectually Henry I knew it
I thought you wrote real pretty
But then I moved on
A footnote, an addendum, something that happened
To someone else
but I didn’t get it Henry
and
Wish I didn’t get it now.
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
The Subtext
I wish I could show you what
I see
But
It lacks impact
Without context
But
As a hint
Love and light
Are the subtext
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
July 1st, 1916 – One Hundred Years Ago Today
One hundred years ago today near the Somme river in France it was 52 degrees and clear in the morning. British historians call this day the First Day of the Somme or the Battle of Albert which lasted until July 13th. It was part of a greater battle they refer to as the Battle of the Somme. The British Fourth Army was one of the participants on the first day of fighting and when night came they had taken 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of which were men killed in action. It was near 80 degrees when a truce was called to remove the dead from the battlefield. It was no longer clear, smoke filled the air. The Battle of the Somme would last until November 1st, 1916. British losses alone were 481,842. The are are other periods of bloodshed that compare. Verdun. Stalingrad. Dnieper. Today does not mark their passing though. When analyzing the battle of the Somme for a victor military historians consider the results inconclusive. The 1.2 million causalities over 4 months was not enough to settle the argument. More would be needed.
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
The Terroir of a Thought
When I am struck
By a feeling or emotion
That is not consistent
With what it once was
I recall
The terroir of a thought
Includes time
An instigator of change
Gene G. McLaughlin 2016
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