On Stairs
I’m lost
Today
Pent up
Stressed
In pain
Depressed
The mental pain
That has expressions
Elsewhere
From neurons
To cells
And how about
Emotions
Where was I
I was sure I was around
Somewhere
Before
Am I meeting the man
Who wasn’t there
An old
And existential rhyme
In time
With time
Maybe I’ll find myself again
Even to know
A thing to you that
I could
Rhymed
Unrhyming share with you
Only my best upon
Request
C L Couch
(something like)
When
I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there
I didn’t see him on the stair
Today
I wish
I wish he’d go away
(man or woman may apply)
Photo by Atanas Teodosiev on Unsplash
(maybe I should call an existential Tuesday)
poppies for soldiers
fields of poppies
fields of gravestones
all traditions
and maybe
nonbelief
should leave a blank stone
with name and
service
on an even shape
I wish that poppies were
non-soporific
although
I guess the sleep effect
is good
in what the poppies mean
for
those who sleep beneath
the flowers
and the stones
and those who sleep elsewhere
for the same reason
after service
after sacrifice
should sleep
each
should sleep
until the final call
that would be
a gentle and firm word to say
wake now
you’re well
and all
now
shall be well
c l couch
photo by Laura M Goodsell on Unsplash
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
(from) “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae
Binary Opposition
‘Levendy-‘leven
A children’s number
Yet
Everything too grown-up
Was waiting
For the papers on the tables
To be signed to
End
The awful
Too grown-up
Thing
Eleven eleven
Eleven eleven
And then
The terrible ritual
Was done and we could say
The war
Is over
Over there
Over here
The horror
Of a heart of darkness
Goes back under for
A season
Inside the shell of all the mortals
And the devils
Who let the horror out for
Four years
And now
To reckon all such times
And all such people
Knowing also
Innocent
To serve
Knowing by country
And by honor
And that was nearly all
Except
The names that each one
Might have known
To bear inside the pockets
And the packs
Before
Each battle
And on the field
After
Until games
As in the most harrowing
Of contests
Call
In-free
Come to base
The dark is on
Go home
C L Couch
Photo by Georgi Kalaydzhiev on Unsplash
At the Crossing
(you know stop, look, and listen)
I still don’t think I have
Said anything for you
In any form
More so
With any good intent
Though I mean well
I care for you
And want you to live well
Helped in some small way
By a word
Somehow from
Me
To you
And so
What shall I say to you
But that I care
And from far away
Which might be safer for you
I can tell you
That you matter
Which
God will tell you better
If you listen
And
Behold
Something useful
Practical
Spiritual
I can say to you
Have said
In that
You matter
And God says so
So please
Listen
C L Couch
if you don’t want to hear from God, then find (a/another) trustworthy source—and I mean trustworthy
(gosh, today I’m feeling, well, moralizing)
Photo by Tony Pham on Unsplash
Road of hope..... [from photographer]
Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam
Love Is Come Again
Four Thanksgivings
Four
Christmases
Four New Year’s
Four
Valentine’s
All
These days
Sixteen
Seasons
Every decent lesson
Learning
This is awfulness in charge
Plus the thing
About
We get what we deserve
Rise of the selfishness
The dark side
With
Apologies to dark
That should be
Romantic
And impressive
An evil empire
For those who think
This is
An empire
Not
Better understood
A borrowed colony at best
Over which
Dimensionally
A judge maintains
And will
One day
Make plain
The judgment
Of all things flesh
And spirit
Of the material
And abstract
All names
Obliterated
Unremembered
Like sin
In a repentant land
Rather we shall own what is
Eternity’s
To own
Then
Names and things re-remembered
As it were
One by one
In openness
Of love
So that we shall have
The good
And not so much
Wanting
Any other
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain
And then
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green
Certain songs knowing
By the souls
That move the songs for us
From
Sleeping ground
Onto the wakful earth
Over teaching water
Into faithful sky
C L Couch
“Love Is Come Again” (“Now the Green Blade Riseth”) is a hymn
Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash
Each fat round acorn
Under my feet in white sand
An intimate gift
[photographer’s text]
2 poems about thoughts and feelings post-election
About Electing Lies
Well
I am disappointed
So I guess
If I’m convicted of
Many crimes
And I’ve committed fraud
And broken promises
In marriage
And other relationships
So that
In fact
I break faith with everyone
And if I do not pay my bills
And if I want
To accuse people I’m afraid of
Of everything that isn’t
True
If I make a style
In fact
Of lying
And don’t pay my bills
And
By the way
I take everything that’s wrong with me
And say it is another’s
And not me
Though
It is
All I have to do
To get away with
All of it
Is to run for President
And get billionaires
To buy my way
For
Their own
Agendas
The same folk who
By the way
Won’t welcome
Me at
Table
Otherwise
It’s 17 June 1972
Another
Day the music died
And what we learned but that
We cannot
Trust the government
And should stay away from
All such things
And have
So much easier living
Through
Indifference
The Topsy-Turvy that Has No Playfulness in Topsy-Turvy
There are those
Who learn about the Holocaust
And take notes from
The evil side
So that the lie might be acknowledged
That some good things
Happened
Then
In Germany
Not
To say we can’t be academic
Though the filter must be moral
Or we are pursuing nothing
Human
Or has a place
On righteous Earth
We should be
Rhetorical
Understanding something of
Our honest discourse
With each other
And
We should study flaws in that
Tradition
You know
Straw people
Post hoc propter hoc
Gilding the lily
Though
Again
The point is not
To strategize to use the flaws
To dupe each other
Though
Some will
It’s
Sad to know
And one more thing
That should be
And that isn’t
Is that
Politics
Means good government
You know
The pursuit of by the people
And yet
Like taking notes
From the wrong side
And
Going for the
Discourse flaws
Not
To mention
Spewing accusations
In
A puerile attempt
To escape one’s
Own
The codes we could live by
Like good governance
And topsy-
Turvy
Fun on Ferris wheels
But good and evil upside-
Down to try
For ways to live
Simply act against
The deeper
And the shallower things we
Really know
Those presuming leadership who
Act against all virtue
And all wisdom
Though
Might
Try hollowly
Merely to use the worlds
Invite the citizenries
And
Congregations
To subscribe to indifference
To endure
C L Couch
(sorry should there be any ranting parts but not sorry for any easier-living-wisdom parts)
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
courses
my abdomen
hurts
maybe from pressing on it
to be seated
maybe from gas
maybe
due to medication
maybe from stress of
maybe
something
existential
how is the day
and how’s the world
and how
much
should I care
and how shall my problems
go away
while this
side of
eternal matters
shall justice roll
my tiny stream
down to
a universal
sea
and shall that sea
move
indifference
to my causes
and
of course
it shall
it has its own concerns
with mortal storms
and all
and yet
the molecules of God
are with me
in mine
maybe a neutrino
or a quark
while the greater hand
might move with waves
to stir
or calm
that sea I think
cannot consider me
and the whole body
moved from forming Earth
into managing
the stars
as we say
in their courses
enforcing orbits
exacting
something like
cosmic obedience
though allowing for
the unpredictable
the errant comet
rascal
asteroid
as part of
divine predictability
contraries
embraced by
opposites uplifted
so that a little chaos
be allowable in
order
than back to you
and back to me
and how do we count
by God
and yet
we do
our bodies
on our bits of land
which is to say we
occupy
not own
and by the water
moving our concerns
toward that ocean
of collectiveness in which
it seems
impossibly
our matter
matters
too
everything we are
our cells
our abstract notions
with the uncounting qualities
of thinking
all emotions
of our loves
we may realize at any time
how remarkable
the small
however might be small
while larger things go
obviously from
that start of
things
day and night
Earth and all
and all in all
with each bit owned
if
maybe tallied
by beneficence
which is to say
God knows
and judges
and whose greater bias
as God
is to note all things
and love
all things
a refrain
the sea is so large
while
my boat so small
the merest of God’s breathing
for my sails
and shall I cross
and shall I transact
and then
shall I return
by the light that someone made for
home
(it would be proper if you thought of the Breton prayer upon reading what I'm calling "a refrain”)
C L Couch
Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash
Long Exhale Now and Then
Exhale
And then a little more
Get it out
Whatever it
Might
Be
More than
A pulmonary test
Or getting the bad air out
As
In a cartoon
Getting into meditation
Only if
There is
The time
Otherwise
Breathe out
As
You would have to do
Anyway
You know to
Keep on living
But let it out
A little more
Not as an exercise
As much
As to
Let a little more
Of the bad air
Out
The promise also
Taking of
A little more
Of the good air
In
By God
In a kind of sponsorship
And also of companionship
Two promises
Not if
But as
They happen
Irascible
Indelible
Perfection in divine reality
As well as perfection
In the offing for the rest of us
Maybe
Beneath the angels
(the war in heaven notwithstanding)
For the mortal
Rest of us
C L Couch
Photo by Laura Ohlman on Unsplash
What Do We Say and then What Shall We Do
I crashed my airplane
Through your roof
Near
But not on
But near enough
To the place where you reclined
Holding a sketch pad
And I could even see the thing
With which
You drew
I apologized
For crashing through your roof
And through the ceiling
In the room
You demurred
Citing lack of inspiration to draw
Anything
That moment
In fact
For the hour
Or that day
So far
At least
And I said
Strange
I had my notebook and my
Pencil with me
Though sometimes it is a pen
And I
Was stuck
Coming up with something
Of substance
You know
To set down
How strange
She replied
That we should both be at a point
So to say
Where nothing was forthcoming
You for words
And me for an illustration
Still
I’m supposing that is not
Why you crashed
Into my house
Indeed
No
I responded
I crashed because
I’m simply
Not really good
At flying
Ah
She said
And I got out
And we had tea
With all the authorities
Whom
Arrived
And so we had our stories
Words
And pictures
Even
A collaboration of long-standing
Over years
In fact
After I paid for
The construction of her house
That is
It’s easy
Isn’t it
To crash into something
Do some damage
After which
We should apologize
Then fix
What we have fallen into
One person
State
Or nation
C L Couch
Inspired by What Do You Say, Dear? by Joslin Sesyle, Maurice Sendak
Photo by Martin Robles on Unsplash
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