Dead languages in an encrypted world
Floating on currents of textual seas
New syntax and context unfurled
Ideas carried by the digital breeze
Massless data of New Babylon
Still growing ziggurat of a modern age
Non-physical ideas carry on
With or without the page
Language united with math
Following the binary path
What or who does it benefit
If anything or anyone at all
Are the data’s flows sinister or beneficent
Are its actions fair or foul
– Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
Gatsby develops Android apps
In the modern day
Daisy has a reality show
That’s a career in a way
Tom is the son of patent lawyer
Who went to Duke to play lacrosse
Nick is still choking on whiskey and words
As his body pays the cost
The world still glitters in the distance
The LED screen cuts down on the glare
It all seems so charmed
Until you finally make your way there
Nostalgia fills the empty
Where music fills the night
I’d say I saw them dancing
But the word fleeing seems more right
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
Do not abide
A lack of grace
In the world
Find it
In small things
Grand plans fade
Crumble to dust
A bee in a flower
Can sustain
Gene G. McLaughlin 2022
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 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
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