clcouch123

All We Know We Have

All We Know We Have

The existentialists

Have it right

The Positivists, too

The Deists

(God sets the world in motion,

leaves it go

leaves)

The one thing they know

Is that the present moment matters

As if there were nothing more

There might not be

For conscience, there isn’t

Living for tomorrow

Worse, living for heaven

Was medieval mischief

If I want my serfs to work

For me contentedly,

Then I need assure them

Of eternity

There will be no pain, no sickness

No poverty, no want for

Anything (the present moment, again)

Work now, suffer now

Under my thumb

Heaven’s coming

Lennon’s song has it right

Don’t dwell on heaven

Don’t fret hell

There are consequences now

Don’t put off righteousness

Live as if

There’s nothing next

What do we know,

There might not be

There isn’t

If we go together

That is family

If not, then I’ll have my present

Presence

You’ll have yours

And it is a gift

Too easy? Sure,

And not enough

And it doesn’t mean to re-create

The world every moment

We have standards

And philosophy

This is philosophy

But there is now to apply

There might not be another

Work it in

Walk through

Go on

It’s what we know we have

C L Couch

Photo by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash

January 7, 2020 4

Fire Out, Please

Fire Out, Please

Australia’s dying

How are the first people there?

The second people are in dire need

Those who survive the danger

Needing something of what

Was brought with them

And then called home

One prison colony is

Now another

No time for blame

This is a time for life

For rescue, healing, then rebuilding

New air is needed

Everywhere except the fire

That, God willing, must be bereft

Of oxygen to die

The irony of living

Losing all the green sources for

The birth of breath

For people

The animals who might reinhabit

Give birth again

A billion

Having been killed so far

C L Couch

Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash

Australia bushfires: A billion animals will have been killed

MSN News· 23 hours ago

A billion animals will have died in Australia‘s devastating bushfires and those who make it through…

January 6, 2020 6

The Opposite of Magi

The Opposite of Magi

(for Epiphany, for any old epiphany)

The gift of the fools

The young who pay too much

For love

The old who believe there is too little

To be paying for at all

The city street is harsh for both

It’s only for transition

But because we feel the wind

Or the heat of summer,

We hope too much there’s something here

Only for us

And there is

The Earth remains a gift

And cities an invention

Not to mention farms

And small towns at crossroads

The roads themselves

The way that can only be felt

Across the desert

Through the forest

Choosing the strand to take

In a web of waterways

All ages have a chance

Must we always give

As in lose

Or in surrender?

Maybe so—if so, let’s make it

Worthwhile

(comes to mind is something about

aphoristic pearls and pigs,

sorry, pigs, a metaphor forwarding

the story)

Money, time, muscles, potential

Whatever it’s going to take

For betterment

One life, two lives, two and a half

A million

Can we count what matters,

Can we take it one by one?

The old response comes to mind

From the teacher trying to teach:

I don’t know if you can,

But you may

C L Couch

“The Gift of the Magi” is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal … en.wikipedia.org

Photo by Linh Nguyen on Unsplash

January 4, 2020 3

We Are X

We Are X

Dear God, what shall we do

With a new world?

Another planet

Or the realm of antimatter,

Once breached?

Huge or microscopic,

There is responsibility

Not to mention

An awareness come from something

Else, new denizens

To us

Of new worlds

We’ll make an impression

We’ll try to mask the greed

Maybe we will indeed

Send our best people

But everything we are beneath

Must surface

Might we change ourselves

(change ourselves)

In the moment of discovery?

Become better friends

Or enemies

Once someone else

Some entity of consciousness

Without doubt is known?

So supplication while we can

Please watch over all encounters

Keep our explorers safe

And when and how

The universe might need

To be kept safe from us

C L Couch

Photo by Michael Henry on Unsplash

Seljalandsfoss, Iceland

January 3, 2020 3

Fall on Your Knees

Fall on Your Knees

A new and glorious morn

For no reason other than arriving

Nothing special

Meaning all things are

Look for saints outside,

Dodging puddles

Miracles in coffee cups

Epiphanies while

Sliding on coats and gloves

It’s the oddest day, today

For being normal

It’s stunning and spectacular

For no reason at all

Except for what it’s earned

In being here

C L Couch

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

West Hollywood, United States

January 2, 2020 0

Stopwatch for Genesis

Stopwatch for Genesis

(1 January 2020)

How do Arabs count the new year

How do Jews

How does China of

A billion tens of fingers?

How do those who know only seasons,

Who count days as

One traversal of the sun,

Then of the moon?

A change of feeling in the year

To favor birth or harvest?

It would be fair of all of them

To ask of us

The people of the nanosecond

Why there is counting and, once-measured,

Presumption to ownership

How does God who with better reason

Owns the days count them?

We guess a lot about this

A day

A day that is an age

I don’t think God can be bound

Held by our computing

Any more than the bars of an abacus

Should make a cage

Or calculators calibrated to electrocute

(maybe watch out for

servers serving)

There is even scandal in census-taking

For the king rather than the nation

It’s in the Chronicles and Samuels

People dying for

The autocrat’s close ticking

Now’s a fine and healthy time for remembering

God’s of chaos, too

And if we want, if we will

We can be held ourselves

(by God or ourselves)

To keep it either way

C L Couch

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

hide and seek

January 1, 2020 0

The Gray Gift

The Gray Gift

For the moment,

There is a blanket over everything

Like the one I woke up under

Anticipation of a holiday, perhaps

The blanket is light gray

It settles easily as it’s made up

Of daylight

I’m not sure what we might have done

To earn such protection and

And of

Muted beauty

It’s a quiet gift

And will last as long as diaphanous things

Might

Maybe longer, since nature

Knows the way around Main Street

Over it (upon it)

To serve it

And to keep it going

C L Couch

Photo by wilsan u on Unsplash

I don’t know where this is, but it’s somewhere.

December 31, 2019 0

Invitation’s Curling—Come in, Already

Invitation’s Curling—Come in, Already

If Christmas is the first day, then

This is the sixth

But then that makes the fifth

The twelfth

So maybe Christmas is its own

And then the following

Twelve days are tributes,

Are a season ‘til the sixth,

The magi

The baptism by his cousin John

The revelation by a dove

Of who he is,

Which is a lot of growing up in

Twelve or thirteen days

He was in a manger

Only six days ago

And soon, depending on the full moon

And the spring,

He will be grown and on a forty-day

Journey to Jerusalem

Such things will happen in that time

The biggest coming later

A cataclysm of the each and sky

Pierced by hammered beam

And crushing empire

The abhorrence of nature, even human

The death of everything

That had been hopeful

The death of him

The death of us

Any prospects in an honest joy of living

Then the count of days, only after

And by going back,

Really begins

But before so much of that

There is this

Half-season of Christmas

Sing the carols

Claim the gifts

Play and work

Burn the homely fires

Testify to this

The witness in each moment

Christmastide

The time no one will wait for,

That is wait for well

It has arrived

However romantic,

The darkness of anticipation’s passed

We are here now

This is the best where and when

We have

C L Couch

Photo by Sora Sagano on Unsplash

December 30, 2019 0

Dark Heart

Dark Heart

Light, bring me light!

It must be nice to call for it

A monarch

Then expect it

If I want light, I’ll have to get it

Not to complain

I have matches that strike on anything

And it’s one payment of my bills

That’s current

And now we have the bulbs

That light and last

That are expensive

That is a promise of investment in

Illumination

As for what’s inside, I’m unsure what to say

We say or see each new idea

As a light

A symbol in a balloon

A cartoon moment without words

Light to curse the darkness

Say the Christophers

Because darkness isn’t always bad

We call them the Dark Ages

We called it the dark continent

Though that was agenda

And racism

The agenda of racism

Belief to form a profit

Over people

Maybe we do better with the heart of darkness

Maybe not

But that is the end of light at the horizon

The entrance of the Congo

And the human being

And who is the main character

If not the continent itself

That without restraint

(another sort of character)

Ruins each of us—

And whose restraint

C L Couch

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1899 serially in Blackwood’s Magazine, published (whole) with other stories in 1902

The mission of The Christophers is to encourage people of all ages, and from all walks of life, to use their God-given talents to make a positive difference in the world. The mission is best expressed in The Christophers’ motto: “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

https://www.christophers.org/

Photo by Nathan John on Unsplash

December 29, 2019 0