Prickers

The passing of time

Perforate us with laden moments

Stinging like prickers

Upon the flesh

The eyes of others

Reflect upon us ourselves

Swirling emotion and expectation

Blotting identity on the skin and soul’s canvas

The passages of meaning’s creation

Are forever barbed and confounding

Yet down the shrouded twisting path

Lies joy

Gene G. McLaughlin 2024

Back to School

Dread hangs in the air

Of this free and violent land

Our eyes constantly gaze

To what’s in the stranger’s hand

Sometimes we don’t dwell on

What has happened and what soon will

But then our thoughts are refracted

When the light grows way too still

Those we love

Those we don’t

Those we’ve met

Those we won’t

We are the audience

We are the participants

Both victims and perpetrators

Despite our reticence

They say freedom has a cost

This we all know is true

I suppose how you judge what it is

Depends on what the word free means to you

They head back to school

As fall approaches in the air

May the strangers inscrutable gaze

Be looking far from there

Gene G. McLaughlin 2019

Other Times

Sometimes I listen to the radio

As the day slowly drifts away

Sometimes I talk to the cats

As they stare at me with perplexed eyes

Sometimes I make love at noon

As the sun shines bright above

Other times

The moments

Just get away from me

Sometimes I drink coffee

As I sit on a shaded park bench

Sometimes I look at graffiti

As they wash it from the brick city walls

Sometimes I drive to the drug store

As the cars grind all about me

Other times

I just wonder

Where it all went

Life is not a narrative

Life is not a song

Life is the inanimate choosing motion

The formless fog grown quiet and long

Gene G. McLaughlin 2012