I think our eyes are aliens
Our ears the souls of snails
The nose a mermaid’s mouth
Our tongues the whiskers of whales
Us which came and combined together
Willed ourselves to become one
To think, to feel, to perceive
For promised aware enlightenment
Of which it turned out there was none
The promise was a temptation
A ruse, which came to deceive
Now our minds burdened heavy with consciousness
And a past choice for which
Our combined evolved hearts do grieve
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
The world tries to hollow me out
I respect the world’s prerogative
Its capacity for the positive endless
Its pursuit of the negative flawless
It’s ceaseless attempts to consume
The I, the who, the whom
Tracking ruthlessly on my scent
Form of
Food, taxes, utility bills and rent
On the worst of days
I drift away
Most days I just sway
Starting to protest, to say . . .
but I know the snake knows anyway
The devouring serpent
Is aware of
It’s destiny
Soil
And oil
And meat
Becoming that
Treading
Beneath our feet
Today though
I am half swallowed
Head turned toward the sun
The snake and I as one
I do not face the snake
Making the bastard wait
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
I went looking for my form
My individual aspect
Didn’t find it on Facebook
Despite my best intentions
Wasn’t on Twitter
Checked my DM’s and mentions
Wasn’t in the digital ether
In the mist of one and two
Then I dug a little deeper
Almost all the way through
I found it dwindling and neglected
Dusty and asleep
To my overwhelming shock
It was made of meat
Sinew and bone
Blood making my heart beat
It was not of the virtual alone
The narrative had over taken me
The glowing luminous binary song
But the longing did awaken me
Seeking appeasement of the wrong
Shaking the dust from me
I did slowly arise
Taking an account of me
I slowly opened my eyes
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
Right thoughts
Right words
Right actions
The absence of nostalgia
Is the beginning of today
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
We of this dull and prosperous society
Where organized money fills any gaps
Where any space between things
Has long ago been mortared and closed
Healing done on that which is not sick
We have little time to think on our sorrows
Or joys before the next of them come
Both parades of extremes
Spinning our heads and bodies
In constant motion
It is hard to recall
The world before this
With late night TV test patterns
Storefronts that dimmed for the night
Long distance plans and landlines
Letters and longhand writing
When space and time between things
Still existed and our minds could keep pace
With patterns presented before them
Now we flicker and buzz
Overloaded with mournful loss and hopeful possibilities
We never take form
Because there is no space between
That still remains
Nowhere to settle for a moment
To take our full forms once again
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
Her arms are bound, but she will not be kept here against her will. She did not come west all those years ago to die in some God forsaken cabin raped and killed by some monster in the woods. The winters were too hard and days too long for that. She looks at the shotgun and tries to decide how to have it mounted when he comes back in the door. She will shoot backwards looking in the lone mirror in the cabin if she has to. She will have one shot and damn it she will make it count. Her husband and son will not come back from Cheyenne and find her missing and not know what happened. She will live.
To those who feel wronged by the Confederate flag lowering tomorrow take heart. Those of us for lowering the flag know that the minimum death toll of the American Civil War was 625,000. It was quite possibly 1,000,000. There were bastards, hero’s, no accounts, saints and sinners on both sides. The wrong side of history has room for many. There is one important fact we definitely know. We know that every death on both sides lead to Emancipation. Emancipation is the moment this nation began. Every sacrifice on both sides is remembered. It gave birth to anything great we are or will become. Our nation is the sons and daughters of Confederates, Unionists, Immigrants and Slaves. When our greatest sin ended we all began. Grace to all who made Emancipation possible. It is not forgotten.
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
I have few resources
Often only kindness
And the will to not be inured
To the sorrow of the mourners
And the cries of the injured
I shall not keep to silence
Nor allow bigotry to be ignored
I shall seek no answers in violence
In pursuit of grace much can be endured
I shall make a quiet strong alliance
Between peace and love letting both be heard
In a voice even, but full of defiance
Against wrong thought and action
Committed via both deed and word
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
Note-
Something I wrote to remember both how sad and outraged I was last week in South Carolina, but also how inspired I was by the survivors families in Charleston and their capacity for grace and forgiveness.
I got nothing tonight
But the summer heat
No feeling
But pavement burning
My feet
Only the ache
No
Deceit
Flesh singed
Like Meat
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
The bear went over the mountain
To see what he could see
And all that he could see
Was the other side of the mountain
Was all that he could see
So the bear took a long slow moment
Atop that lonely mountain
He thought of all his wanderings
Where all his winters brought him
This mountain was a mountain where
Maybe his moments could have meaning
If the bear he so allowed
The next mountain might have something
That from the bear was hidden
A sacred secret knowledge
The bear would finally make his own
His paws dug in the dirt and dust
His fur felt the warmth and sun
His bones they came to realize
The mountain knew the same things
As the next did and the one before
There were mountains to be found
By stillness and not by climbing
By the staying and not the roaming
The bear went to the top of the mountain
The bear called the mountain home
The bear climbed to the top of the mountain
The bear became of where he sat
The bear became the mountain
Together they both grew
Into another mountain
For another bear to find
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
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