Tag: Poetry

BlueRidgeMountainGirl

She’s got a coexist bumper sticker
On her hybrid car
She’s had seen Widespread shows
Where things went way too far
She don’t believe in Jesus
But acts like she does
Because a ministers daughter
Is still what she was
In her younger years
She had some trouble with blow
It’s the nights that get late to fast
It’s the people you know
She does lots of yoga
To smooth out the nerves
It usually works
Least it maintains her posture and curves
She’s got a daughter she loves
And ex that she don’t
She tells her parents she’ll marry again
But she knows that she won’t
She’s got good intentions
In actions and deeds
A job and a small ranch house
Most of what she needs
She’s got a boyfriend
On alternating weekends
He spent time in the desert
He’s quiet and still seeking
An answer to what happened
Or at least a good night sleep
He doesn’t complain much
She don’t dig to deep
They watch a movie
Or make shrimp and grits
Sometimes they hold hands
Watching the cats clean for ticks
The mountains are quiet
They have few opinions
In the hills behind her
There grows mint and wild onions
Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Words Like Thunder

Words resonated more

Before they were written down

Crashing like thunder

Confined to only sound

Now they are echoes

Lost and found

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Digital Karma

Digital karma

Swirling in motion

To stay in the center

Requires eight paths

Vigilant effort

A heart ever open

Resilient skin

Nothing is past

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Reason

I was wrong

I changed

Now I’m better

Didn’t know

Was taught

Now it’s true

These are things of wonder

That reason can do for you

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Is It Possible For The Heart To Be Broken From The Start?

I was born with a melancholy smile

Knowing I was different after just a short while

Nursing from my mom

I knew soon her lovely tit would soon be gone

Oh I knew it would all soon fall apart

Is It Possible For The Heart To Be Broken From The Start?

I met a little blonde haired girl in my first year of school

Knowing even with her inviting smile soon I would be the fool

Before touching her blonde hair

I knew she would run away so scared

Oh I knew it would all soon fall apart

Is It Possible For The Heart To Be Broken From The Start?

I went to university knowing all would go so bad

Knowing all the hope with my heart would turn to the feeling I’d been had

I told my lover of my soul’s true passion

Yet she laughed and so so quickly I was soon out of fashion

Oh I knew it would all soon fall apart

Is It Possible For The Heart To Be Broken From The Start?

Now I walk on the winter Sunday beach of middle age

Yet another doleful lonely page

Oh I wish I could even feel some genuine rage

Yet I know even that attempt at truth would be betrayed

Oh please tell me this might get just a little better

If it gets any worse

I will think my birth was my curse

And the taste of the hemlock will be like bittersweet wine

No one will miss my passing, but I’ll be fine

Oh I knew it was destine to all go wrong

Why did I ever wait for its ending so so long?

So I put my words in this pitiful parting song

Yet I know no one cares so you can all just move along

Is It Possible For The Heart To Be Broken From The Start?

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

22 Years

I.

When my father was my age

He had 22 more years left

He looked at the future

As an endless array of choices

Without death as an option

It was though

For good or bad

It always is

It is the boundary of

One’s vessel

Not it’s ripples

Across the inward ocean

It is hard me to view all of this

As an infinite journey as he did

Knowing what I know

Yet I will fight to view it so

To shrug off the knowledge of

Where the path to the ocean

Meets the water

Making 22 years into

A trans infinite journey

There is an eternity between moments

Endless ripples between the ripples

The ocean is never still

Even when there is no motion

Looking out from the shore

At the path’s end

II.

Sometimes there is a feeling of nostalgia

Even in the moment

It is an eerie flicker

Where you are looking back fondly

At what is happening in the present

There is no substance in the nostalgia of the now

There is only the ringing echo of actions as they happen

It is not the ripples of the action

It is the sound of what occurred

The feeling of the moment

Humming as it passes

The old and the new

Cauterizing at one particular point

Neurons dying

It always haunted me

Not from sadness, but from the dull ache of pain

The instant nostalgia of the now

It hurts from hunger

The desire to horde

The moment

The experience

To take something from the moment

That can not be taken

Because it is not mobile

The pain of attempting

Is tangible

What is created in the mind

Pales in comparison

It is the word that represents love

Not love itself

I was trying to win

To make a game of experience

To keep a score of consciousness

As if it were Monopoly or Risk

The ache it created

Persisted even as joy occurred

Over 22 years

III.

The past 22 years

Are recorded

As scraps of

Ancient paper

In the zipped pocket

Of an old leather bag

Receipts

Itineraries

Detroit

Dallas

Denver

A life once lived

Depicting only details

Of places and times

Flavorless

Yet true in a way

Having been there

The fading papers

Create a distance

That doesn’t occur

In my mind

Signaling and

Pushing me into the present

I shake my head awakening

And step out into the current timeline

Once again

IV.

I did not know I loved myself

Until I stopped in the moment

It is hard to exist

Without ghosts

Echoes

Memories of TV episodes

Passages of books

Lies you told long ago loves

Truth’s you put in drawers on slips of paper

The moment is always there

Throughout time

It does not hide from you

You can step into it

I do not always love myself in the moment

It is not permitted

Or perhaps not possible

There is no grand revelation at the end

Just one purposeful breath after another

No nostalgia

Just survival

Not 22 years

Just today

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

I Am Just

I am just a sad outsider

With my sad outsider art

I am just a graying sailor

Whose ship’s been torn apart

I am just that tinge of sad you feel

When your love lies sound asleep

I am just that piece of you you find

When you dig in darkness deep

I am just that dried piece of blood

From a wound so long ago

I am just that person who you find yourself to be

But who you don’t seem to know

So wrap you arms around me

Hold me close and tight

I am just what I am meant to be

So don’t try to fight

I am just that patch of ice you see

On the road way to late

I am just that boy who never showed up

And made you sit there and wait

I am just the bourbon on your father’s breath

Before the back of his hand

I am just the dark and cold places

A soldier kills in for his land

I am just all the things you know yourself to be

But next actually expect

I am just the thoughts of Jesus

Before the nails came and his body was wrecked

I am just the tank in Tiananmen

And the boy whose facing it down

I am just the friendly bartender

Filling the drunk’s glass without a sound

So wrap you arms around me

Hold me close and tight

I am just what I am meant to be

So don’t try to fight

I am just a sad outsider

With my sad outsider art

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Charleston Dancer

You were always so elegant

Moving in ways

That I could barely comprehend

That I could never hope to replicate

Always seeming to understand what movement

Meant what to who

I never knew the code

Knowing of the structures

Society and the latest dances

For my feet would never learn the steps

You made bowling seem like ballet

Conversation a form of art

You made banter seem like diplomacy

An actor always knows their part

The world you knew is gone now

Echoes now only remain

The song slowed ended

With the last fading refrain.

Mills Brothers no longer on the radio

A time I never knew

Murrow no longer on the radio

The war is finally through

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Walt Whitman Likely Thought It First

If I think I thought of something

Walt Whitman likely thought it first

Or at least it seems to me

When my self esteem is at its worst

Eventually I realize

My measure as a man

Should not be how Walt lived

Or where he took his stand

It should be my own past

Do I rise and face the day

When my friends and love’s face losses

Do I run or steady and stay?

The constancy of comparison

Wears one’s own art away

Modern media’s consumption

Might be too high a price to pay

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013

Know You Were Loved

This all happened

Despite our best attempts

The world closed in around us

The world became too big for us

Both at the same time

Intention was not part of this

It was just the flow of existence

Know you were loved

Do you believe us absent?

This is not the truth

We are still here

We just can’t navigate

With the ease or the agility

That we once could

Know you were loved

We do not keep secrets

Even if it seems that we might

We are silent on subjects

Because we know nothing of them

We would share all we had

If we had the information

We have the inclination

Know you were loved

There is little among our possessions

We would not let you take from us

We do not hold them dear

Those things are plastic and paper

If we hold them close

It is because they remind us of you

Or some other memory of you

Close to our hearts

Know you were loved

You were loved in the first thought

You were loved in the creation

You were loved in all the moments

You were loved in all our breaths

You were loved in all our failures

You were loved in our sometimes successes

You were loved in our last thoughts

Until the very end of us

Know you were loved

Gene G. McLaughlin 2013