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

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

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.” – Hunter S. Thompson
 
Ok Hunter.
I’m in.
Not even gonna put my safety harness on or brace for impact.
Not even going to blame anybody if this all goes wrong.
The safety inspectors all retired and their replacements are on strike.
I’ll wear the helmet, but not the googles, I’m already not seeing too clearly.
There’s no football until September.
I’ll make it until then.
Nope nobody smokes cigarettes anymore,
but we got more beer than you can shake a stick at and weed is legal all over.
Oh the rides starting.
I’m just gonna close my eyes when we get to the top.
Gene G. Mclaughlin 2016

Red Raw Orlando Sun

Red raw Orlando sun

Lays our failures plain

Kneeling all as one

Souls burdened with pain

Filtering words of sense

From the anger soaked insane

Gene G. McLaughlin 2016

Undiminished

Time is not a zero sum transaction

Somewhere

You exist young and undiminshed

Everything echoes

All at once

All the time

I choose to hear your laughter

Gene G. McLaughlin 2016

Anatta

You like sand

Not like stone

Self like blood

Not like bone

Wind moves water

Wind wakes waves

I am the foam

Crashing upon

Cold crags

Gene G. McLaughlin 2016