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Seventh-Inning Stretch

Seventh-Inning Stretch

God

Help us

I think God will

I believe

You don’t have to

Not because I’m better

Never that

But because belief

Infects at different rates

Like a desirable disease

And some are never touched

Some are cured

Or forestalled

By degrees of nihilism

But it’s fair to understand

Faith as sick

The world doesn’t welcome it

Many take remedies, so to say

For me,

Welcome the infection

Feed the fever

Starve the cold

Once the heart is hosted

All other major organs

(yes those, too)

The wisdom of the world

Is foolish to believers

We are fools

To its wisdom

C L Couch

Mask of a fool dancer; Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl); North America department, Ethnological Museum, Berlin, Germany (Jacobsen collection, 1881)

By User:FA2010 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15334105

May 1, 2019 0

Page One

Page One

Fluff

Good for pillows

Not so good for writing

Aspiring toward substance

Sometimes it’s fluffy

The time, a portion

An interaction

Did I ever have a cat named

Fluffy? I don’t think so

Fluff is not the magic dragon

And now I think on it,

Is there any other kind?

Fly, dragon

Take me with you, please

(be courteous to dragons)

Into your magic

C L Couch

MyName (AllenS) – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4021075

Story Book Wall at Alamogordo (New Mexico) Public Library, outside the Children’s Library. Dedicated May 1963. Local schoolchildren drew illustrations for their favorite story books and these were transferred to ceramic tiles and baked on.

April 30, 2019 0

The Way

The Way

Saints and sinners

We need them both

Maybe it’s just me

I can’t be saintly as a rule

And sinning is too easy

Yet the yoke must be easy

The rule must be a way

Not only to do better but

To be reminded there are

Better ways

And sinning? I don’t know,

It could be easier, too, in

Its own way

Less costly

Maybe the Catholics are on to

Something with venial and mortal

I am mortal

So are you

Saintly and sinly are what we have

We are

Saintly too severe

Sinning too lazy, until it becomes

Too close to all there is

Asking why

Might not help so much

We have these ways

The issues, consequence, and

Choices

Though I doubt we’ll say, Today

I’ll sin this way

Then devout an hour later

I imagine this works out, anyway

And since it does

Well, maybe there’s reality

We can’t define one against the other

I doubt we can place the essences

In Erlenmeyers, drink from one flask

Or the other from time to time

We have to live now

And sometimes we’ll be good

Sometimes not so much

We have both, we are

Measures of prayer and pardon, too

The way it is

It’s Monday

Must move on with what we have

Turning the needle toward the better way

Understanding when the dial slips

And we must live in contrition

For a while

It’s what we have, it’s what we are

It’s how we live in four dimensions

Adding time and maybe soul

For fifth-dimension living

It has to be well enough

To get us into Tuesday

All of it

There is no other way

And is this way so bad?

Yes, sometimes it is

Then we are needed:

To employ discretion through

All the parts

The substances

The issues

All the matters

Our way through

The best we can,

The best we will

C L Couch

Skitterphoto / 2097 images

Pixabay

April 29, 2019 0

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

April 28, 2019 0

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

April 27, 2019 0

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

April 26, 2019 0

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.

April 25, 2019 0

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

April 24, 2019 0

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

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

April 23, 2019 3