I cannot ease your pain
Include suffering in your expectations
Conscious existence in full contains
Elated joys and sorrowful lamentations
Gene G. McLaughlin 2017
I cannot ease your pain
Include suffering in your expectations
Conscious existence in full contains
Elated joys and sorrowful lamentations
Gene G. McLaughlin 2017
It all gets ahead of you
It all gets away from you
All of it happens so fast
It’s not like the eternity
Once pondered and pictured
When you were as high
As your old man’s knee
It’s more of an avalanche
More of a storm
More like a dog’s leash
Taut with a Doberman
Raging and barking
Hurtling forward
Chasing a rabbit
That you cannot see
Momentum pushes you forward
Despite your best efforts
You can set your mind still
Through the passing of moments
Yet you still feel the engines
Churning below you
Which can’t stop for anything
That pay head to nothing
No matter your wishes
Despite this soliloquy
I’ve slowed naught and nothing
The train slows for no one
No stops ‘til the end of the line
So I’ll fill up my world
With the tools to learn
That the sound of the engine
Can be kind of calming
Maybe even relaxing
Even if it cares nothing for me
Gene G. McLaughlin 2015
I cannot ease your pain
Include suffering in your expectations
Conscious existence in full contains
Elated joys and sorrowful lamentations
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
I understand nothing of your grief and pain
There is nothing I judge equal that I call my own
No stand to take or ground to gain
Your sad song wails over the voices of the joyous
Drowning out so much of the quiet pleasant music
That wraps itself around the world unknown to most
So much chatter of what is missing or not possessed
Lonely hearts and half empty shopping carts
Wandering through the Wal-Mart past midnight
Beneath the smiley faces and fluorescent light
There is beauty in the spaces in between
Seen only by actually looking
Never does it preen
Call out for attention
Seeking condolences or complimentary mentions
The moments existing within themselves only
Devoid of all of the trappings of
Of society and camaraderie
The strings and sinews of you and me
In the night I hear the yells and howls
Like bird calls trying to draw meaning
Out of the cool chill of the sky
Nothing comes forth and the dark spirits
Settle in denying this and that and filling
The gaps with questions and doubts
Hope is the worst thing that came out of the box
It is that which breaks us first not sticks and rocks
So much work so little reward given
For all the devotion to the libraries of ideas
That consumes and dooms us
The song sings to you now if you can pause to hear it
Gentle strings and the Zen beat which is always there
It all lies in the elimination of the white noise
So then the white noise can truly be heard
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
Life is never empty of pain
Value empathy not insularity
The path to balance writ plain
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
Hatred is created by self narrative
Narrative is human to the core
To find the way to peace
Create stories in your mind no more
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
There are dragonflies
In my earliest memories
There are no clever thoughts
No grand ambitions
Only their loud hum
In the heat of summer
The taste of sweat
Upon my tongue
The feel of damp
On my neck
The river is near
Giving and taking
Sleeping then waking
Frothy then serene
The mountain is near
Giving not taking
Bending and breaking
Its peak still unseen
There is my mother
Provider of food and love
There is my father
Before me and not above
We are of here
This valley
This land
We are from here
Our family
Our band
All I know
Is nearby
Or at least as
The bird flies
The river knew my name
When I was baptized in it
The mountain knew my name
When I walked upon it
I became of here
In my crib
As the wind blew
Through it
I cannot forget
The hum
Of horseflies
Nor the pain
Of their bite
Nor the pull
Of the river’s current
It’s inhuman might
It all escalates outward
It all internalizes inward
The river takes me elsewhere
The mountain fades from view
When I am motionless
I can hear the dragonflies
Humming there still
When I am motionless
The river carries me there
Once again
The mountain’s peak
Still out of view
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
The opposite of pain
Is acknowledgement of pain
The path to control
Is the acknowledgement of none
Fate’s not my future
It is what I’ve done
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
The waterfall knows no equanimity
In early spring it rages
From the remnants of melting snow
In fall it is bone dry
Depleted
From the heat of the scorching summer
In winter it is still
The water cold and iced upon its rocks
The effort is
Throughout the seasons
To keep the waterfall in your mind
From early summer
When it is steady
Calm
Flowing
The water will escape its state
It always does
As will you
The effort is holding
Equanimity in your mind
When late spring is gone
And the water is a storm
Or drought
Gene G. McLaughlin 2014
Wickedness born of scarcity
Scarcity born of need
All entwined in a circle
Wickedness meeting with greed
Love born of sacrifice
Needs of others more than self
Hand extends to a stranger
Holding charity and nothing else
Empathy is the light that is endless
No scarcity in its domain
The light shines brightly forever
Opposition of apathy and pain
Gene G. McLaughlin 2013