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March 2020

Midgard

Midgard

(a waking dream)

 

I am on the second floor

Hell is quiet beneath

My Middle-Earth

While heaven rages above

Is that the war in heaven?

Is hell quiet now because it’s empty?

If so, the story goes

A third of heaven’s host

Will fall to occupy the deeper realm

With Satan as its ruler

The revenant of those who sought,

Sought what?

To take over?

Simply to protest?

To bargain for a will

Like that awarded humans?

 

We were your agents, Lord

Certainly, we would have managed

Better with a choice

In how to serve

A better talent might have been missed

A calling other than created

Sorry, it could happen

Might we have the chance

To find out who we are?

No?

That’s bitter

 

We are better than the rest

The scion of light says so

How must we, then, be heard?

Where shall we go that you might see?

There are the plains

Splayed by your fingers

We will practice farther below

Then emerge to tussle with the best

The ones loved more

We’ll find out who wins

If your lower creatures love us

Then you should withdraw into

Two-thirds of heaven left

More than enough

Since perfection

And the servile need

Nothing but a pin

Or a nail

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Moshe Harosh from Pixabay

(detail)

 

3

The People

The People

 

Centrist and moderate

The silent majority

The melting pot

The inexorable movement of a people

Because for all attempts to stop us

At all borders and with barriers,

We move

We are the most

Inexorably living, anyway

Maybe rudely, maybe with elegance

Bearing style

Or dirt from head to toe from growing things

(or both)

We cannot be stopped

Nature is with us

 

Insanity might say,

We’ll stop you with a bullet

Though before it runs out of ammo

Another force will kill the guns

Horror, shame, or for despots

Lack of profit

 

There is a story of a mountain people

I mean people who are mountains

Who look down on the plains

To see ants fighting without earning food

Or materials for homes,

For they cannot make the trails

 

Only one set: for warfare or for building

The mountain people are bewildered

And are always powerful

And now must contemplate

Relearning the ants or, failing that,

Clearing off the plains (for people who are

mountains it would be easy)

Allowing other species with the skills and

With forbearance

To have the fertile earth

 

Someone is watching now

To measure up the borders

All of them

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Sierra Nevada, United States

One of the most beautiful destination in California are the Sierra Nevada Range both in the summer and winter.

 

4

Morning Walk

Morning Walk

 

I want a normal day so much

One with sunshine through the leaves

Pleasure in the shade

And also where it’s bright

 

I want a street to walk along

Houses, maybe businesses

Enough to make a neighborhood

I don’t expect a “Howdy, neighbor!”

 

But real people, living

Publicly, trying to do their best

Enough to hope that privately

Private things are being worked out

 

It doesn’t have to be my place

My home, my town

This might be only a morning long

But as a present thing, it would be grand

 

C L Couch

 

3

The Fall of the House of Jesse

The Fall of the House of Jesse

(Tamar, Amnon, David)

 

 

Tamar

 

I said not to reject me after

Because with men that is what happens

Guilt of what was done

Scorn for the receiver of the sinner’s sin

 

In a royal house,

This can happen

Maybe more so

The sense of privilege that each one bears

The privilege to call a sibling in for help with

Sickness,

A pretense for rape

 

 

Amnon

 

I must have her

Own her, keep her

As a prize

I love her body

The way she looks in courtyards

And the rooms of the palace

We are family

We are royals

There is no shame

We make the laws to follow

God made it so through Saul

And now our father David

I feigned illness, though it was close enough

To truth

I was sick with love for her

I made her come to me, send all others

Away

When she came near to treat me, I gripped

Her clothing, and she knew

She must approve

I am the king’s son

I matter more

And now that I’ve been inside her,

I feel no madness and no illness

What had I been thinking?

What we did was awful

She is awful

I pushed her off, her clothing followed

She was a covered heap on the polished floor

The servants will clean that

I’m done

 

 

David

 

I am the king

I could do nothing

My own sin forbade me

How can I chastise my own

About a crime of passion

When I have committed mine?

Crimes of

Adultery and murder

Are my legacies

Not the conquests or the

Ark or my children

The child to rule born out of

Sin—

What shall be visited upon him?

 

And so in nearly every way

I stood and sat silent

Would not, could not rule in her favor

As virtue and the law would say

(does say)

I should have

Now there will be more violence

I have engendered it

Absalom must have his way

There will be rebellion

The nation will be split

There will be war

The judgment on my sin

Brought down upon this generation

How many more children of children?

 

Where is justice?

Not with me, upon my throne

Or in my house

I have wounded my realm

Hurt all my people

I will rule

I am called

I am God’s favorite

But all attributes and actions

Are hollow

 

 

C L Couch

 

2 Samuel 13

 

 

Photo by JR Korpa on Unsplash

Electromagnetic Crown

 

4

Think God

Think God

(a three-part cycle)

 

 

Fear and Trembling

 

Something the Christian

Forgets about so easily

In a place of comfort

Where the enemy is no longer

Satan but each other

Can one have faith and comfort?

Sure, maybe faith first

Comfort without faith

Is drinking from a magic well

That keeps refilling and never

Satisfies thirst

And then there is salvation

Worked out in fear and trembling

A translation for me

Hopefully, a good one

Fear of God incites wisdom,

Which is a paraphrase of what

I hope is also a good translation

 

Awesome

Awful

Full of awe

This is what God is and

What God demands

But quietly, like a purring cat

Or doting dog

God’s insistence is, if not mitigated,

Then defined by love

And practiced

God is not the tyrant ‘til we let God be

There should be no human models

God is perfect lord

And loving in perfection

No earthly monarch has achieved this

Few have tried

Though a few

A couple of them ruling now

But what do I know, democracy-bound

And preferring it that way

 

But fear and trembling

Of the world? not so much

But of God,

I should try

So should you

 

 

Holy Metaphors

 

In my translations,

God is a spirit

God is love

And somewhere God is a lion

Not so bad for metaphors

Except they live

As metaphors cannot

 

Tame lion?

No but good

You know where that’s said

(itself translated)

Love, all love

And perfectly

And we should try

And God is a spirit

As we say, a holy spirit

There might be other spirits

I guess there are

Some good, some bad

But this one’s holy, that is,

Set aside for a spiritual purpose

 

Which is to say, then, spirit-spirit

Not addition or an algorithm

We cannot match the exponent

Though counting stars might try for it

 

 

If God Is Love

 

If God is love

Then why so much hate?

Because our choices have to count

For that, there must be consequences

This is the price for lack of

Puppetry

No strings—we’re on our own

Free to ally with

Whomever, whatever

Hate is not the absence of love

But the filling up of something else

Close to evil, too close

For righteousness is something we are

Bad at

And hating evil?

Riskiest of all

But there it is

You don’t want evil?

Resist it, mock it

(Catholic and Protestant agree)

Go another way

Ending hate is something of the same

And the fullness not of a side

But of the center of the circle, which

Goes by many names,

Though I imagine you know

The name I’m thinking of

The essence

The purpose

The last metaphor for God

 

C L Couch

 

 

sources cited (poetically, you know)

 

Philippians 2:12-13

Proverbs 9:10

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Thomas More and Martin Luther are cited.

And Oh, God 2.

 

 

Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Prague, Czechia

 

3

The Altar

The Altar

 

If there is a conflict with

A sibling, I should not

Be here

So why aren’t the churches empty?

No more blood sacrifices,

Thankfully,

Which is not a license to keep

Everything inside the skin

Such pain to allow

Nothing through the pores

A bleeding animal would make nothing

Better, only show brutality

Blanketing repression

We’re told to go away,

Make it better,

Then come back

The church will wait

The temples with flat stones

No more Sunday-best

We’ll be each other

 

As a codicil to cosmos,

Should the sibling be a neighbor

(secular authorities

consult Henry V at Agincourt

and antecedents)

We are all descendants

Then how full

How empty

How full again

Should reconciliation be

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Andreas NextVoyagePL on Unsplash

Iceland

 

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