(x = space)
x
x
At Last the Rain
x
The rain falls
It is behind me
I should turn
Push things aside
Look out
Listen
Think on justice
As the thunder rolls
The water rolls
The watershed
Has more
x
Drought
Negotiated
Amos
(not)
Notwithstands
x
C L Couch
x
x
Amos 5:24
x
Photo by Evelina Friman on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
How Are You
x
We have shot four youth
This week
In the USA
One young person’s dead
All were hit
Wounded first
One died
Three are treated
One hopefully recovers if, oh,
So slowly
x
None can be the same
In Earth
Or heaven
(our daily petitions
for)
x
Now we pray
We shouldn’t have to
We should be
Praying for
Their joy
In youthful living
Not in
Struggling
To live
At all
x
Cheerleaders,
For goodness sake
Honor students
Good people, all
The kind you’d like
To get
To know
x
And if not our cup of tea,
We don’t shoot
At them
For that(,
crazy people)
x
And now
Their lives are changed
For the worse
Forever
x
We shoot our children
We can say
We are afraid
We are threatened by
The unfamiliar,
Anymore
x
But really, now,
We shoot children
Because
We can
The shooters being with us,
After all,
These locked in due process
And shall be heard
x
The victims cannot speak
Nearly so well
At all
And had no plans
Before
Except to live
You know, to adolesce
To grow
To live
And be alive
x
That’s over now
If they live,
They’re grown up now
We grew them
When we shot them
This week
In the USA
Our nation of
Domestic
Intimate
Gunplay
x
n. b.
x
Yes, without guns
We’d say
We’d use knives and sticks—well,
Okay
x
C L Couch
x
x
In Six Days, Four Young Americans Have Been Shot after …
1 day ago · KANSAS CITY, Missouri. In the span of six days, four young people across the U.S. have been shot — one fatally — for making one of the most ordinary and …
Nobody Is Talking about the Four Black Students Shot in …
February 17, 2023 · It’s hard to believe, for instance, that had four teenagers been shot leaving school in one of Pittsburgh’s wealthier, whiter suburbs — say Mount Lebanon, a borough …
x
Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash
x
(well, there’s Pogo who observed that we have met the enemy and it is us)
x
(x = prayer)
x
x
Prayer inside the Wire
x
Oh
God
We need you
As the song says
(sings)
Every day we need
You
Your presence matters
In the morning
All the hours
We are fortified
Knowing there’s something
More
Than us
And the world
And the hope we want
To have
In the universe
x
Grant us
An audience through prayer
Much better communicating in
Heaven
We suppose
x
But we reach out
As best we can
Here and now
And again there’s something
That responds
More words than our own
Sometimes the timing
Miraculocity
In change
The water parting
Unseasonably
Exactly when we need
Land to cross over
x
Toward a promise
Provision
On the other side
x
And then we’re there
On the other side of prayer
Build an altar
For remembrance
Pocket and snap the urgency
Of interest
Free now
For beholding
Many possibilities
x
And rest
For being heard
Before we rise
And go
x
We thank you
You are God
Not to make things splendid for us
All the time
But to give us
Moments
For our hopes
And fears
(all the years)
And for our chances
Before and after
Stretched out through the day
And in the night
(barring night shift
who will have the day)
Still
And still
For thoughts
Praying down
The day
The day to come
And now
The now in which we pray
And as it happens
Or is given
To the hearers
Whichever
Apparatus
Opened
And the rest
x
God and the angels
Listening
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash
x
“I Need Thee Every Hour”
x
“O Little Town of Bethlehem”
x
(x = space)
x
x
3 Links in a Chain
x
1
x
I slept half a night
That was half a morning
My eyes are strained
(they hurt)
I have a heart test later on
And another to have
On my own
By the next visit
x
I feel like Peter Pan
In that
I won’t grow up
Neverland must be nice
All that woodwork
A heaven for Bob Vila
(remember him?)
It might be
On a co-ed trend by now
And so
A better microcosm
I suppose the wireless
Is terrible
x
2
x
Funny how
Wireless is back
When it was so antique
As a term
For a long while
x
A hundred years ago
Or so
It was what the radio
Was called;
I suppose we have both usages
In large part
To Tesla
Thank you, Nikola,
And also for your notion
Of offering the capacity
Free for everyone,
Which would be
Quite
The advancement
Over air
And underfoot
x
3
x
Maybe that’s my
Secret hobbit name
Mister Underfoot for when
I’m on clandestine
Business
Eschewing riders
Not from Rohan
But from Mordor
Or
The busybodies
By daylight
x
C L Couch
x
x
x
(x = space)
x
x
Prayer Practicing
x
The best place to pray
Is at church
Or at home
Or in the car
Or on the sidewalk
(watch your
step)
Or beneath a tree
Or inside a tree,
Having climbed
Up
x
With others
Or all alone
Or with numbers
In between
One and many
x
On a farm
Or in a skyscraper
On the water
On a hillside
Atop a mountain
In the valley
At the entrance to a desert
Far within
x
While walking
While
Sitting still
x
So anywhere
And when you’re feeling
Where is
Nowhere
x
Amen
x
C L Couch
x
x
View of Mount Cook, circa 1930, New Zealand, by Margaret Stoddart.
Photo by Museum of New Zealand – Te Papa Tongarewa on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
While Rhapsodizing Feeling Sick Today
x
I woke up sick
The kind of sick
That barely functions
For the rest
I got up
Moved around
Which made me feel
How sick I am
Sinuses rebelling
They really want to be
Somewhere else
Elysia
Or another
Warmer, health-filled
Paradise
Knots at the base of my neck
I can feel them
Protesting
On both sides
x
I was feeling better
Going in
All right, it was too late
But thanks to stress and pain
I do not sleep well
Until I do
Hours into night
x
Poor me
It is not war
There are no explosions
Nearby
Well, except the cosmic kind
Neighborly
Like protesting planets
Yearning to be heard
Across space
And time
x
So visual
Aural
Also abstract
Where is the peace
The pastor observed
There is no peace on Earth
But then were heard
The bells
Calling, winter bells
Across amazing stillness
Unanticipating
x
Surprising health
Surprising
On the Earth
Healing
Miracle
And grace
x
It’s doesn’t matter
Call it magic
Call it autonomic
Say that tokens
And mixtures
Brought it on
x
What’s in a name
Or sometimes an object
x
then
x
Mass shooting at a birthday party
Who needs to feel sick
Who needs a war across the world
This is the news
After the commercial
They’ll say something
While I’m drafting
When I’m feeling miserable already
Though this really
Is misery
And is there so much cheating
So much money
To say these losses
By unploughshared arms
Are worth it
Is one worth it
x
They smile because
It’s the bottom of the hour
And ratings needs
Need
To drag us along
Here is the weather
x
But what about the war
The war there
The war at home
More than drives for
Domestic supplies
x
Back to the hunt
It’s in our networks
Sweet sixteen
Down South
It could happen anywhere
It’s happening anywhere
Shall we outlaw crowds
All assemblies
x
Welcome the dead home
Heal the living
Maybe I’ve had enough
For a while
We’ve had enough
x
Beck and call
Wanting to run away
Forgetting to think about
Where we’d go
Look at the maps
They should down here
Up there
Like those who school
For home
And back because
They can’t stand one place
Or the other
(ask the poets)
x
There is no final
Summation
No lesson from
A kind man in a chair
We can look instead
At the booked as in books
Set
To leave it empty
The upholstered chairs
While we’re open
To ideas
x
Let’s be open
Maybe it’s time
For something old
Like virtue
Or something new
Like voyages
To Mars
x
I’m done now
Suffering succotash
For sinuses
Your turn
x
C L Couch
x
x
x
(x = space)
x
x
two brief poems, unrelated (well)
x
x
Spirited
x
What shall God
Have for us today?
x
A new assignment?
x
A day to read up
Instead?
x
A list of prayer so long
Indeed
x
Indeed
We’ll need the day,
Its focused energy for
Intercessions?
x
A day to encounter
Creation
Specially,
To consider all the wonder
And to play?
x
Or this day
Might be a day
Like all days
To love God and each other,
Not a suggestion
Or an option
But direction
Limited by human will
Alone
x
Though
Admittedly
As people in the world
With
Myriad possibilities
There are days
When it’s hard
Or when it’s easier
To love
x
Which might be why
There’s both
Expression
And redemption
Available
At will
All the time
x
x
At the Bottom of the Hour
x
Could we do the news
In halves
So that
There’s bad followed by
As much good?
x
The readers
And
The ratings
Would be fine
x
We sponsor and produce as if
We believe
Good is automatic
While bad
Is creative
And so (bad) more attention-worthy
x
Though
The presumption is
Ironically
Disingenuous;
We know
By now
That bad is not
Exceptional
And good could stand more press
x
So by halves
Coverage of good and bad
(for some reason
in
the discourse
bad then good),
Well,
It would not be
(hah)
So bad
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
2 disclosing pieces
x
x
In the Mood
x
I am not sure what
To say
I never am
There is an empty page
(there you are)
I look away sometimes
Then start to write
I say
What there is to say
My mind is on God
And hoping
Frankly
For a good day
In all persons
I and you and we
And shall God give us (all)
A good day
Or something like
Often the wish is
To have the means
To get through
The bad
The means material
And abstract
Miracles
Would be gladly received
Material and abstract
Material would mean
What
Money
Treasure in the cave
Or sometimes simply
(miraculously)
A way out
While abstract is a good thought
A steady faith the medium
For good thoughts
Hope
How about
Dealing here not there
Founding philosophies
Of virtue
Values
(life has value)
Everything based on a directive
To
Love and be loved
Meaning
And gratitude
And when everything is wrecked
What seems what must be
The chance for living well
Living at all
Around us
Or inside us
Due to wrecks
Outside inside
Inside outside
War and the fear of war
Fire
Ruined ground
Where there was verdure
Even where we used to live
Our habitats
Are gone
With how we thought
To be social
To be at all well-knit inside
There are wounds
With the pain and stress
In healing, too
The burdens and ennui
Of getting by
At best
When we need something better
In both places
External
And internal
Grant us peace
Grant us hope
Grant us enough satiation
We could day
This day was gratefully asked for
And received
Thank you
Divinity
Each other
And ourselves
x
x
x
A String of Pearls
x
For me when I was young
A horn was
Chosen
For me by someone
Who
Merely looked
At my lips
x
Whose sound
(the horn)
I liked
But did not to play
Success was only in first chair (first)
Driven to drive
And park there,
Which I did
I could have been
First second
Or given up
Not bothered in the first place
Maybe piano
Sung instead
Once I discovered these
And then for me
The joy in conducting
x
I could have compromised
With the world
Stayed quiet
When
Go noisy
When not
Stopped being told to settle down
As if Greeley were talking to
A young man in the east
Contemplating west
x
I could have had
A few things that I liked
Not so many things
That broke too easily
Things
Of all kinds
Or I could have learned more
Experimented
With taking parts of things I had
To meld
Them into the new and odd
Setting an eccentric path
On which I find
Or receive
Pieces on the way
Look, feel
For beauty in what’s there
What might be the possibilities
In new combinations
New whole things
x
Had I adolesced this way
I’d be on a weird way,
I suppose
Accepted enough by the world
With all my second places
On a creative way
Releasing rock
You know
From the unformed statue
Or other work
For senses
And appreciation
x
Thanks
How about
Safe drinks all around
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash
x
titles of Big Band songs made popular by Glenn Miller (Glenn Miller and His Orchestra)
x
(x = space)
x
x
The Mix of Faith for Heaven
x
It is a mystery
And paradox
Thoughts
And feelings
Words for the hearts
Of millions
By each heart
Pierced
As a rule
x
Gospel for everyone
For one
For no one
‘Til engaging
We read
We hear
Interpret
(we’re allowed)
Good news about God
Having been
Set down
By people
In relationship
With God’s spirit
Making a kind
Of ersatz scribe
According to
The world’s
Expectations
x
Die to live
Love and take the hit
Joy in
Hard labor
Even for one’s enemies
The world wins
But does not really
Heaven after the end
And peace
Now
And forever
x
Though
In this life
Our flaws remain
And trip us up
And bring us down
And we
Are blamed
We blame ourselves
Though
Grace and mercy
Should attend,
Which is the holy law
But
Civilities
Must have their way
They often damn us
Excoriate
Our chances for changes
From
The first
After transgressions
x
Sigh,
Too many contradictions
Living near each other
In fact
Embracing
Over, under
Anywhere the breastplate says
For reassurance
x
A life of faith
Is hard
Easy
Soft
Rigid
Impossible
Demanded
Eternal
Fleshly
In each moment
Cells sloughed off
Like sin
Perhaps revealing
Virtue
In redemption
Should anyone on Earth
Have care
To notice
This
And those
While on Earth
Then disappear
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
x
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