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clcouch123

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clcouch123

In conversation, I prefer Christopher. My mom named me after Christopher Robin, after all. In writing, I use “C L Couch” (or, more simply, “c l couch”) because the form is genderless and also frankly easier to use. I have awful writer’s cramp. I am an educator more or less retired, more or less due to disability. At present, I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (USA). My writing here I mean to be occasional and also devotional. Either or both. The banner and profile photographs are by my friend and peer Debra Danielson. More of Debbie’s work to be enjoyed is at debradanielson.org. Thanks to each of you and both and all for coming to my blog.

On the Agenda

On the Agenda

 

When all is gray

Not boring but not

Inspiring

Where do we go

A psalmist looks to the hills

The hills are not the source of strength

Though they look strong

 

Gratitude has no tone and is

Every shade

The day could be on fire, after all

 

The psalmist knows

But relief might come

Over the horizon

Or through cables, now

And satellites bouncing rays

Invisibly

To send the word, machine commands

Binary data for agenda-forming

Open or in hiding makes the difference

 

That’s a problem with gray

It’s hard to see,

Texture’s a challenge

Direction is unclear

But it could be a vacuum

Not only vacant but absconding

With material and hope

 

Help out with everything that’s left

Someone else’s day

Might be on fire

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Greg Shield on Unsplash

 

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Riding Gimbals

Riding Gimbals

(blank page part 2, I think)

 

The blank page terrifies

No, it doesn’t terrify

It’s only a blank page

It has no weapons, no teeth

No agency to thwart us in

Our better aims

(well, maybe teeth

and when ink is added,

we say sharper than the sword

 

But) all we have to do is write

Try crayons as electric bits

There are some screens that let

Us do this

Take a paper page and apply paint

Relax or get excited

Whatever might compel, today

 

Or write then erase

(I might do that here)

Get something down, send it up

A muse might listen

Write André-Breton-like

But don’t pretend

Because if nonsense,

Say so to yourself

(me say so to me)

Yet we are meeting words again

 

Something like syntax

The grammar of creation might

Not be so far away

In the room, beyond the wall

Through the window flown like Pan

With lovely thoughts

 

Or in a recess unvisited

For a while

Pain, if we must find it there

Pleasure, if it’s due

 

But now some clay is on the wheel

We might need lessons

We might turn it into homework

Over days, who knows

 

We have what we have and want to do

To say

To be engaged

Maybe we can campaign in this

A conspiracy of art to

Break the trap

Release the net

To let us out

 

C L Couch

 

 

Jerrie Cobb, a well known female pilot in the 1950s, testing Gimbal Rig in the Altitude Wind Tunnel, AWT in April 1960.

NASA/GRC/Arden Wilfong – Great Images in NASA Description, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6448450

 

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Wrought

Wrought

 

A new way of thinking

That’s what we make

Well, we make the frame

The content of new thinking

Is up to you

Which I mean in the best way possible

Fantastic responsibility

To move yourself

And your people

Forward

 

Maybe help with the first of these

So many layers added al the time

 

There was gray light

And I turned it on, and the lamp

The bulb

Changed light to gold

Like Rumpelstiltskin’s straw

 

It might rain

It might be on the way

We’ve had some downpours recently

But the forecaster says that

Our water table’s low

 

Good time for participation

For new things to fall

To wash the world some

Offering nourishment to the ground

And those who live upon it

 

It means grayness continues

Though we can have better light against

The darkness

Through craft

And letting go the work

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Raheel Shakeel from Pixabay

 

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Between the Stitches

Between the Stitches

 

The cloth is loose and would

Unwind except for the thread that

Is on duty and will keep the

Cloth in place and connected

But in that region

There is a part in madness

Should the holding thread be

Broken in one of a number of

Ways,

Which is the risk the thread takes

 

While the cloth must sublimate its impulse

That favors chaos

Allowing order and the usefulness

Of order to let the wider purpose

Flow,

Which is what cloth does

It flows

It has movement while it covers

And contains

 

Keeps buttons, buttonholes

Zippers and loops for belts

With the pattern for a season

Close at hand

On either side and in between

 

The coat we pull around ourselves

the fabric of our lives

We’ve heard it called

While we’re at it, we could

look for the union label

Even though I didn’t learn anything of

The song

Beyond the start

 

C L Couch

 

 

Corkythehornetfan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50090683

The coat used in the movie that is displayed in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

 

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Naming Things

Naming Things

 

A first prerogative in the garden

That’s a cow and that’s a dog

That’s an Edsel, that the World Wide Web

And if we don’t like them

We can blame the editors,

Translators

There are nicknames, too

Blame-free alternative

 

Did God name day or night?

Who said that they’re good?

Whose naming,

Whose words?

 

Knowing origins

A story fills the void

Words is what we got

We set them on a stool

Play them with or without

Syncopation

The jazz of

Genesis

God’s making, our telling

Listen to the teller

Hear the names

Respect the language

Of the singer

 

No one knows the maker’s words

What we have

We perform in parts

Rehearsing for Parousia

Last words to name

New heaven and new Earth

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Rafki Altoberi on Unsplash

 

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Birth(Death)day Bard

Birth(Death)day Bard

(23 April in the UK and elsewhere)

 

If we sang his birthday, someone

Would be owed money for

Copyright

There seems to be an economy to

The celebration

Since his birth day and his death day

Go as one

Without certitude

(certified baptism- and death-date)

 

Happy birthday, Queen’s man and King’s man

Patronized by both, though she

Would have Falstaff again,

Whom she was given in The Merry Wives of Windsor

 

All the world’s not a stage, and we

Are more than seven stages (ages), though

You wrote these in jest

From a character whose

Attitude we should not replicate

Like the speaker who opined

“To thine own self be true”

How many of your jokes do we take

For relevant advice?

 

Well, four hundred fifty-five

Your candled cake—your

Company would need to help take up the

Flame

While your dark lady rises

From the smoke of mystery that follows

(end of medieval, start of

Renaissance)

 

You cannot say good or bad day

Birth or death day

Even though we wish you well (I think,

after the school-essay’s done)

 

And if my words offend

(however parenthetically)

Here’s how I mend:

 

From Robin, Good day, Will

And I am done, until

 

C L Couch

 

 

Connormah, William Shakespeare – self-made, vectorized from existing PNG/JPG files, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7324293

 

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22 April

22 April

 

A day for Earth

Earth needs more

But this day will celebrate blue and green

Land and sky

Water and oxygen

And that’s good

We need these

Good to be reminded

The villains will eschew

Hide in dark offices

Under the glare of artificiality

 

They will glare

Undoing the planet

Fracking off the layers

Mismanaged draining of oil

Allowing poorly valved

Pits of natural gas

To explode

 

Believing plastic washes away

Far from the profit margin

Until

We cannot drink the water

Cannot trust the rain

 

Forests are gone

Notre Dame cannot be rebuilt

From ancient timber

What we have has not grown tall enough

 

This is the world

It is ours

What have we done

What will we do

 

Answers to questions

They are there

Ask the scientists

Ask the faithful

Ask the Earth

It knows

It’s always known

Not to say it’s sentient

I don’t know

But it is impulsive

Knows how to react

Knows how to share the virtue

In recleansing

 

Another world won’t save us

This is what we have

 

C L Couch

 

 

“Earth seen from the Moon” by Petr Ginz.

Petr Ginz – http://personalstoriesfromtheholocaust.weebly.com/petr-ginz.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37616368

 

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The Sun Rises Easterly

The Sun Rises Easterly

 

He wakes

He gets up

Relief abounds

Outside the fleshy rabbit bounces

The egg, comedic, rolls like stone

Away from an opened tomb

That had been keeping the better things inside

 

He is awake

Marys there

Ready now to tell a doubting world

That it’s over, now

And everything’s beginning

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

 

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Penance

Penance

(Holy Saturday)

 

The emptiness of God

There can be such a thing

 

When God has left

Because we cast God out

 

What it means to have God slain

All miracles and lessons ended

 

The company

The miracle of trust

 

To have the

Lord in body

 

Hungry, thirst with us

The source of faith in the room

 

And yet we struggled with

Him in the flesh

 

Now

Now there’s less than nothing

 

Fear of arrest, forgotten words

There’s hiding, lack of life

 

No prophecy unremembered

Is worth all this

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Vincent Erhart on Unsplash

I took that image in a former Romanian salt mine. It was one of the darkest, most surrealistic and impressing place I have ever been. . . . The photo shows the 120 meter high vertical main tunnel.

 

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