No where in the constitution does it say you have to be a productive member of society.
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
Someday I will be long dead
And someone will think of me
They will be no one I can hear
They will be no one I can see
In this time I shall feel nothing
Existing only in memory
May I exist as hope
In this future mental interaction
May I exist as love
Despite my corporeal retraction
May you feel me rise through you mind
A wave redirected by refraction
Through life’s tangled mass of possibilities
Pointing to a bright new direction
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
A short poem for you fall mushroom lovers-
Mushrooms are the ghosts
Of forest floors and fallen trees
How does meaning demand to grow
Among the moss and decaying leaves?
Does a lineage link the floor and canopy
Via roots and sun?
Is the bolete a forgotten memory
Or the birth of a new one?
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
A Halloween/election/all of it poem about my least favorite new monster of 2020-
There is a rhythm to the movement
As your finger taps the screen
There is reverberation lingering
A sound that isn’t what it seems
A buzz, a beep, an alert
At least that is what you first hear
Then gradually a sense of hurt
Combined with a slowly growing fear
It is the howl of The Doomscroll!
As the noises of your devices build
Deformities of truths and lies unfold
The zeitgeist dreadfully distilled
Created by mistake
Now driven by its own volition
We all live in its wake
As the world we know is riven.
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
Everything was unfortunate
About midway through the day
The hope you had earlier
Didn’t have the wherewithal to stay
Whether by genetics and chemistry
Or too many drinks the night before
Your staring straight ahead
Trying to corral your thoughts once more
Your mind jumps from one thing to another
Anger, then guilt, then loss
Then hunger, then thirst, then nothing
Then your past actions and their costs
You dwell on it for a while
What you did to harm others
Words you could have said different
At a significant point or time
What you did to harm you
Were you ignorant to your potential?
Were those chances your prime?
Yet . . .
Your considerations are not the now
They are not even the past
They are a recreation
That will drift by and not last
It is difficult to see this
As the memory fragments
Circle your mind
The brain is fastidious in its efforts
To create boundaries and bind
The things you owe to yourself
Are both significant and unclear
They are not gained by rumination
They do not grow closer with fear
There is value in a quiet moment
With eyes facing toward the now
Today might not represent your soul’s meaning
But it might just lead to the creation of the how
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
Let us look at how we value violence
As a path to behavioral societal corrections
As part of necessary sacrifices
Let us assess our own silence
By measuring the connections
Between our comfort and its ever-raising prices
The costs stem from the choice
To view violence as a problem’s viable solution
Without acknowledging to the maimed and the buried
There is never restitution
We make the pivot to violence causally
We put it into games and entertainments
We view it as a path to power and strength
Instead of as one the souls most damaging contaminants
Sometimes judgement is the mirror
The sentence a song you hear in your head
Now the singer’s voice is growing clearer
Lilting the names of the dead
Maybe you know one among them
From Fallujah or Ferguson
From Aleppo to Attica
Maybe your fist is clenched
As you look upon the protests
Maybe your heart is wrenched
Seeing the agony and the tears of the oppressed
Maybe we start today
Acknowledging a scale that weighs our choices
And that the price we might pay
Is our loved one’s silenced voices?
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
Merchants of anger
See no color
Hear no melody
Offering immediacy
Gritted teeth
Clenched fists
Ease of blame
Vague contours of control
Outlines of outrage
A road of broken concrete
Leading to a tire fire
In their statements
Evidence a faraway promise
If even thought of at all
Profit and power
Wash over them
When they steal your joy
Hollowness aches inside them
Disdain burns in them
For signs of growth or hope
In any of you
I will let you name them
You don’t need me to
Perhaps you scoff at me
Turn to them and indulge
What they offer for a while
To feel something
To fill yourself with
To provide meaning
Despite its acrid foul flavor
I know though
If you pause
You will realize
You are crying
For what you have lost
It is yours to take back
Your mind is forever changing
But that mind is forever yours
Gene G. McLaughlin 2020
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