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November 2018

Tomorrow Is Tomorrow Is Tomorrow

Tomorrow Is Tomorrow Is Tomorrow

(Veterans, Armistice, Remembrance Day)

 

Before, before, before

We’ve had war

We have it now

The great one did not end it

How we wish it had an ending

 

Now we are met

Eleven, eleven, eleven

Eighteen

In war, a number that has twice the meaning

 

And should we meet

We should remember

Forget the selling

To apply the real moment

 

An awful, unromantic time

And we tried the poets

Planes flew, pilots without parachutes

Holes in fabric hulls

Not-yet-synchronized guns

To shoot through propellers

Or set in peril upon wings,

Stronger than what held them up

In what became an unfree sky

 

Tanks inviting death

Outside and inside

Crews just as like to die from the machine

While combatants swing away

From an unbreathing, steel hull

 

Mustard gas that creeped into the soul

A cost was paid to use

Or to have it eat the lungs

Of enemies we no longer knew

A new indifference to war

On its satanic way to tested strategy

 

And in the trenches

Was there any glory

As the unknown war

Wore it away to dissolution

 

Not that there weren’t stalwarts

Loyalty to earn a heaven in a moment

 

The great war

And it was great

So the letters say

And the poets try us, still

And we go to them

For in the letters’ words and the poem-lines

There is truth

In faithfulness

To family at home

Timeworn or sudden friends who are next to us

Who will not last the campaign

Nor will we

 

C L Couch

 

 

(image)

A cross, left in Saint-Yves (Saint-Yvon – Ploegsteert; Comines-Warneton in Belgium) in 1999, to commemorate the site of the Christmas Truce. The text reads: “1914 – The Khaki Chum’s Christmas Truce – 1999 – 85 Years – Lest We Forget”

 

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Commemoration of an armistice.

 

Commemoration of an armistice.

Remembrance, acknowledgement, and honoring of all veterans from all wars, everywhere.  What do the warlords care?  They care for strong backs and arms that shoulder fearsome guns.  But in a democracy of feeling, the rest of us know individuals.  Hopefully, we know their stories and we tell them.

What do I know?  I know their service is a wonder.  Their sacrifice a heartbreak.  Their strength shoulders the mind.

I went to Gettysburg in late December.  I felt it the saddest place on Earth.  How many open battlefields have we?  How many can house or canopy the service of the dead?  The preservation of the living?

Yes, there’s Flanders Field.  Somme and Gallipoli.  Israel and Egypt in week-long wars.  Massacres in India and China.  Killing of indigenous that maybe should be classified as war.

Why do we have war?  Elihu Root claims that it has to do with keeping peace, an irony of iron substance.  The New Testament asserts it’s because we ask amiss.  We ask for things we cannot have.  And so we take them.

I don’t know.  I don’t know anyone who favors war except in movies.  I don’t think real people do that, favor war.  We fight so there’s an end.  We fight so that the fighting stops.

Will there ever be a battle in Antarctica?  Can we keep one place clear?

I hope we cherish veterans of service and of war.  And the peace they promise.

 

note

This is from my journal entry for the day.  I wrote a poem, which I should post.  Not because it’s great but because it’s timely.  When I wrote about the day this way (excerpt above), it seemed appropriate, too.  Hope so.  Hope you’re all, veterans and civilians, really well.  If not, I hope you’re better soon.

 

 

https://albanyvisitors.com/explore/veterans-day-parade/

The Albany’s Veterans Day Parade is the biggest Veterans Day celebration west of the Mississippi.

 

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A Thousand Stories’ Ending

A Thousand Stories’ Ending

(https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/08/us/thousands-oaks-california-bar-shooting/index.html)

 

How awful is it

That in counting human tragedy

There never is an ending

Twelve more die in California

By someone who had the privilege

Of guns

 

What was the motive

What cares

The family of the cop

The officer is lost

It’s almost absurdly dangerous work

With the luxury of weapons

So profuse

 

Twelve stories finished

Horribly

How many more will radiate out

Exponentially

To make a nautilus

A spire

Changing more and changing more

Outward

Over time

Making a circle of

Finality, regret

 

We despair

Over the Philippines

And Indonesia

Ukraine

South Sudan

France

Venezuela

And in many parts of the USA

 

Time will tell us nothing

The victims’ lives are done

There is nothing more

 

C L Couch

 

 

(CNN)

The gunman, a US Marines veteran, arrived at the bar on Wednesday night with a pistol, officials said. He shot an unarmed security guard outside the bar, then went in and continued shooting, injuring other security workers, employees and patrons, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said. Ian David Long, killed 12 people before apparently taking his own life.

. . .

The casualties included a veteran sheriff’s deputy who was nearby talking to his wife on the phone when the call came over the radio for an active shooter.

“(The deputy said), ‘Hey, I have to handle a call. I love you, I’ll talk to you later,’ ” the sheriff said.

Sgt. Ron Helus rushed into the bar as gunshots continued; he was killed.

(image)

Los Angeles Times

 

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Hump Day

Hump Day

(be nice)

 

One term

Fall term, I think

There was a student

Amanda

Who came into class each Wednesday

Declaring it was hump day,

Which was a good thing for her

(declaring it, and it being Wednesday)

 

In a fifteen-week semester, most of

Another week was done

I imagine in all our versions of work weeks,

We can relate

 

Amanda, then, would help us understand

Wednesday to be both an arch day

And a day between

(good work, Amanda)

On either side the keystone lay

Half the week

Even one weekend day on either side

If we accede, traditionally,

Sunday as the first day

 

We learn that there is symmetry

We learn that there is none

And there is virtue,

Even wider goodness

In each way

 

But here’s something cleanly halved

With a marker in its place

Unevenness is fine

But in the middle of each week

We may enjoy appreciable halves

In the count of days

 

I write Thursday, by the way, which means

The second half of the week is

Sliding into weekend

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Wilson44691 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15414176

Dromedaries in the Negev

 

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Victimhood

Victimhood

(a reverie, a study)

 

Evil is too easy

Is it really?

Maybe on the inside

A quick turn, then stay

In that direction

Me, first

You don’t exist

Everything is fodder

For possession

And control

The very stuff of the universe

Should be mine

 

And then it’s gone

I have nothing

There’s a lesson in legacy

The tyrant is forgotten

Except for notes that tell the truth

And finally

The evil ones are burned

Like autumn leaves in the backyard

(how it used to be)

Effigy and memory

 

And was this easy?

Yes, and lazy, too

Everything subverted to

A contract with the luck of the devil

A genie who grants wishes and

Scratch-like

Always laughs the last

Because the house of hell always wins

Once entered by

The gullible who think

That profit is a plot

Hard work is another matter for

Good people

The suckers, so I always thought

The despot

And now I am ash

Blown off the foot in the tread

Of someone righteous

Whose agencies are angels

A surrogacy of judgment

 

My victims

Lazarus

Living in a better house, the house of God forever

While I diminish

To a speck

And then am nothing

No matter left

Nothing

 

C L Couch

 

 

Christopher Michel

Ramesseum in Egypt

 

1

So Many Things Have Thorns

So Many Things Have Thorns

 

Saint Paul had a thorn,

I understand

Sometimes I feel as if I’ve swallowed

A rose bush

And the thorns now pierce the skin from

Inside

Watch out, don’t get too close

You’ll hurt yourself

 

C L Couch

 

 

SimonMettler at Unsplash

 

1

Allow Me

Allow Me

 

Let me introduce myself

I’m the one who’s on the other side

Of the story

No longer can I qualify the

Hero set on a horse

Questing for a sword with which

To win a realm of

Sparkling towers and one to be rescued

Inside

Who might instead

Rescue me

(I’m not that good at feints and lunges)

 

Maybe I could serve as a

Wizard (fine word from Arabic,

because the calling is exotic—would an Arab

ever find me exotic?)

I know little of enchantments

But when it comes to mistakes to

Learn someone against,

Yes, I’m there

It could be fun to mentor someone who could be

A monarch

Or a tailor or a teacher

Or a plumber or any child to

Grow up someday

 

I imagine, too,

It will break my heart

As all good teachers feel

With a loss

Or a win

 

C L Couch

 

1

Weekend Warring

Weekend Warring

 

It’s Sunday, and I wonder

What to do

Where does an outcast go

To Zoar or another city of refuge

Will I be taken on

And how do I breathe the air

Of those who had abandoned me,

Now empty

 

It’s a search for something

A church without a church

See the steeple

Where are the people

A confessing place

Otherwise, an empty chapel

Would do well

Or a ruin of a larger place

Where faithful life might have been teeming

Once

And no longer

Through caprice

Of ownership or demographics

A tall room for birds now

Maybe those who listened

To Saint Francis

 

I don’t mean to hide

I am energized by people

As sometimes they have been by me

Even though they took too much

Last time

And what is left is wondering

And, yes, wandering, too

 

A walk outside beside a grave

A columbarium, mausoleum

A museum to the dead

Though I think it might be good

Remembrance

And for the living,

We who are outside

Not even looking in, anymore

Each of us stays in place

Waiting

Attending

 

C L Couch

 

 

Leon Martinez

 

1

A Little Hermeneutic for a Saturday Morning

A Little Hermeneutic for a Saturday Morning

(1 Corinthians 12:17)

 

If all were an eye

Which is a phrase I heard

(maybe in translation)

Then the body would have

Nothing else to do

Beyond looking

 

Sounds dull and

V R notwithstanding

Two-dimensional

 

Only when the body is all active

Is there interest and

Engagement with all the creation

That’s around us

 

And with the Genesis maker

We can say

(we have mouths)

That this is good

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Edgar Degas – High Museum of Art, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28897481

 

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