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Process of Prayer

Process of Prayer

 

God

I love you

I don’t know if you know that

But you are perfect

So you must

And know this better than I

What is real

What is faked

What is performance

From a holy script

Or my own from the ground

The dirt, the dust of my own use

Of words

I hope that if I reach out with my mind

You are receiving

So many of my prayers are silent

They wouldn’t have to be, I guess

I count on you for reading thoughts

Is that all right?

Thought is reality

Is has to be

I hope it may also be

Salutation

Supplication

Air into which

I might air grievances

Also dreams

And gratitude

If not for dreams, then for life

Itself

I guess I trust you hear me

That silences still count

So as my words go out

They must go in as well

 

C L Couch

 

 

A nonconformist chapel in Pwllheli, Wales. Unlike historic chapels, this is not attached to a larger place of worship.

Alan Fryer, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12537842

 

3

Haze

Haze

(through the unlooking glass)

 

For now, we see through a glass darkly

So we’re told

I imagine it is made of amethyst

Like looking through dark purple

Maybe there is a shape

Maybe movement

On the other side

Nothing we can know for sure,

Which makes faith the only alternative

Not for looking but for living

In a place where definition

Has no clarity

But must be visited

(we are here)

And traversed from

A pole of birth toward the pole of

Death and what comes after,

 

Half a world at least

Though maybe at its zenith

(or the nadir)

There is a launchpoint

Upside-down—

Maybe the dark glass is an asset here

Forestalling disoriented feeling—until

Right side up again

We are in something like

The sea of stars,

 

A passageway toward

Our arrival

For having everything we needed

Without regret

And with clarity of looking, by the way

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Anh Vy on Unsplash

Chinatown through the looking glass, kidding, just a freaking hole from the iron gate.

 

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The Other Side of Prayer

The Other Side of Prayer

 

I hear you, rascal

Talking with me as if I were

A pal with loaded pockets,

Which is all right

You know I love you, anyway

I could solve and resolve

Everything for you, it’s true

And I won’t say

But then you wouldn’t learn anything

(because I did)

As for turning back and forward time

Take that up with Einstein

And with Rosen

About a bridge

But here’s what I will do

I will love you, anyway

I will always be here

Even when you don’t want me to

Because you do

When you remind yourself

 

I’ll wait

I’m not as jealous as some others say

(I don’t think that’s

understood, a problem in translation)

Not do I easily take offense

Though I am demanding

 

Maybe if you serve

I will prove a fit leader

And your troubles helped

At the same time

Maybe not

I know you love me, anyway

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash

Gothenburg, Sweden

Walked in on this great seating situation with very forgiving light. Shot on the X100F.

 

3

One-Sided Catechism

One-Sided Catechism

 

Lord,

I wonder Tevye-like,

Lord,

When will I be rich

And healthy enough

To take it and relish the

Easy pleasures of the

Earth?

 

When will I be young again

(and in so many ways

the first time)

To have a spirit free

Of mortal weights

Or maybe a few

To start

Of the more pernicious

 

To be rid of

So I might leap the

Barricades of illness

And of penury?

 

When, O Lord,

Will you love me less and

More than enough

That I might walk the world

In ignorance with

Something in my pocket

For a change

(more than change)?

 

I know you love me, Lord:

Would you make that at least

A little less challenging?

 

Well

(exasperated sighs),

I’m waiting, Lord

Please

 

C L Couch

 

 

kamshots – Fiddler in Darband, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19976441

 

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Secular Gospel

Secular Gospel

 

We cannot save ourselves

Though there is something for us

In soteriology

 

There is a cracked notion

(I tried it once in college

as an exercise)

That a ruinous approach to everything

Will hasten Armageddon

As designed by God

 

To think that we can hasten divinities

Is vanity

That aliens would not presume

In visitation,

Our unbelieving version

Passing for so much heaven

 

We must do what we can

We should

In tandem

Propelling our machines

That forward health

(that kind of prosperity)

Dismantling others

 

Swords into ploughshares, maybe

Cooling off the world

For fuel and forward-thinking

The gospel that’s enough

For now

Securing then beginning

The next chapter

 

C L Couch

 

 

Arts of Peace in Washington, D.C. Sculpted by James Earle Fraser.

Dan Vera – Photograph of public monument, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6616749

 

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Kaptah

Kaptah

 

Not the thing

That proves to bloodless machines

We are, indeed, human

But a character in

A novel so sad

With beauty,

The sting, the agony of tragedy

 

He is not the hero

Not a villain

For a foil

He exists, and his motivation

Is self-interest,

Which is to say, he’s like us

A common man

Is he common woman?

 

Early on, he is a servant,

And he steals enough to keep his job

While his hiding places are secure

The protagonist forgets

About him in the midst of terror

And sadness for the state

And for one’s own

 

A common man

Is he a common woman?

One day, when few surprises remain,

Kaptah is found, fat and wealthy

Lording it over his own

All is otherwise destruction

And reimagined chaos

For certain things go on

Only on the next generation’s form

 

He doesn’t care

He has his own

 

Glamour, glitz, tastelessness of

Rococo (not rococo itself)

He is fashionably grotesque

(relation to the living is not

coincidental)

 

There is a promise that comes across

While reading as

Demon-mischief, say,

To those who want to co-create a better world

That Kaptah will endure

Enjoy the excesses of each day

To die in bed one day

Surrounded, if not

Barricaded,

By many wealthy status-things

He might know the illusion

And the lesson

Again, he will not care

 

For he is the common man

Is he the common woman,

I don’t know

 

C L Couch

 

The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

 

 

The Common Man by R K Laxman at Symbiosis Institute, Pune.

Hari Prasad Nadig – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnadig/5537675936, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38047206

 

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Cat News in Mews

Cat News in Mews

(not meaning stables except I guess as places for cat-gossip)

 

In a recent study

It was on the news today

Arch researching

(not unlike the cats indifferent

arch that is a pose, I’m sure) Found that

Cats can hear us

They know our names

They simply choose

To ignore us

 

This is news?

We know our cats know us

We count on it

As they on us

It’s a round-robin game

(sparing the robin)

The supplicants of Bastet

Could inform you

And all the rats on ships

 

Certainly, they know their names

But what is in the mind

Are silent cues

Scripted by a

God who loves them both

The felines and their victims

 

Cycles for the ages

Worthy of praise

Like Christopher Smart’s cat Jeoffry

Who will, I’m sure, not hear daily

Anything else

 

C L Couch

 

 

 

Study of the Virgin and Christ Child with a cat.

Leonardo da Vinci – The British Museum Database, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11231152

 

“Jubilate Agno”

Christopher Smart

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno

 

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Please

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Please

 

God, what shall I say

Of you today?

You are exasperating

You are all hope

You are the center of my faith

You are the labyrinth

I mean to cross

I take my comfort from you

As I take sustenance from food

You are my food

There are no empty calories,

Which on occasion is my deal

I will die

I am afraid

I think I shall meet you there

Or someone from your office

I had an episode last night

To remind me

Though there’s fear

There will be relenting, too

A last litany with Earth

A first step toward

What you deem is next

 

C L Couch

 

 

Froaringus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7633775

 

5

A Song for Those Who Don’t Have Much of Anything

A Song for Those Who Don’t Have Much of Anything

 

I don’t know how to praise you

I am not qualified

I am a ball of sin and regret

Smooth outside, worn

By experience and cynicism

What can I do

That you would want?

What kind of words

What kind of song

What kind of dance?

How would you want me glorifying you?

I can’t see it

My senses dulled

My spirit raw

My hope has fled like the bird who

Is at least is credited with impulse

I have no church organ here

(my neighbors thank me in absentia

for what is absent)

I do not sing

I do not practice

I do not dance (don’t ask me)

Unless you want a waltz

(or, faster, a polka)

I pray in silence, wondering from time to time

How much that counts

 

I cannot fathom what would please you

I am afraid to think on glory

For my failure at it

I leave my zeal mired below

 

Maybe I could read a song of David

Or of a prophet—Deborah? Ezekiel?

Tennyson? Nikki Giovanni? Sharon Olds?

Adrienne Rich?

Reaching for these was homework

Still bearing the cachet

Of lack of will

I read them on my own and more

I think they are beyond me, too

 

I could build something

I don’t have the talent

Sometimes I make something from

What is strewn around

These are on display

And are religious

Maybe extra credit

I could read speculation

Of a world that’s better

Help others do the same

Ursula K. Le Guin (The Word for World

Is Forest), Anthony Horowitz

(Raven’s Gate), Robin McKinley (The

Blue Sword)

Tennnyson again

(In Memoriam, that’s hard)

But the spirit-work’s already done by these

I should give something of my own

For all that it’s performance,

I’m not sure church has it, either

Though I won’t blame for trying

(for being trying, that’s

another story)

 

Maybe I will in my halting way

Land on something that will last

Enough for praise

And even pleasure

From the maker

Who counts sparrows and stems of hair

And might not reckon me

And mine

So bad

Close enough for jazz

Slender spiral of

What might pass for praise

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Amy Baugess on Unsplash

 

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