(x = space)
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I’m Taking My Break
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The haunting rises from
The coffee cup
When the liquid’s hot
Enough,
Aided by the air
That might be just-right cool
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A spell upon the world
Not cast by anyone
Not by un-sentient machines
Or by any eldritch
Part
Of us
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Like morning fog
There’s beauty in the vagueness
Indefinition
Wonder, too, as we look
Through
To the same as ever
And it’s not the same
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C L Couch
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Photo by Ayaneshu Bhardwaj on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Wicked, You Know
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Hello, Friday
Just after Thursday
Beyond the witching hour
By only a few
I drove back seeing lights
In front of houses
And beside
Orange and purple have been added
Fine by me
The colors of fall
Are enough
But the lights at night
Add romance with chill air
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Reminders of ghost stories
The best kind of fear
New Englanders
(old Englanders, too)
Call wicked
Meaning good
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C L Couch
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Photo by Will Swann on Unsplash
Blue Ridge Parkway, Canton, United States
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(x = space)
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Cell Block
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I don’t know that I’ve written
Anything
I like
Not that I have to like it
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You have to like it,
That is, with textual
Appreciation
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Or at least give me a break
To read
And then to have
Whatever frank reaction
If good to tell me,
If bad to keep it to yourself
Kidding!
(mostly)
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I’ve been sitting by myself
Too long
Writing whatever
Looking up pretty pictures, too
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I need to nap
Or go out to buy more coffee filters
One task then the other,
Recommending order
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Later
Rested, filtered
Enjoy a tea time
(coffee time)
Then write some more
Or not
It’s not as if
There’s a contract
Yet
Except with myself, my own
Eccentric terms
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I’m sure you understand
Defining, realizing
Your own discipline
As well
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C L Couch
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Photo by loli Clement on Unsplash
my sister’s coffee
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(x = space)
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La Paz
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I don’t mean peace
As ideal
We can’t have ideals now
Not on this side of things
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But we can have a working peace
Something for day to day
For ordinary
Do I mean compromise?
Don’t know—I mean
Talking about it,
Which I imagine will mean
Negotiation form time to time
My nation grows food
Mine has technology
Mine is famous for a labor force
Come on,
Let’s have peace
x
More than a show,
Of course,
And something that admits our flaws
Because we are flawed
And for all we know the world’s flawed
And the cosmos, overall;
And who knows?
We might have had a hand in all that
x
But we’re talking real peace
It must admit virtues and vice
Good days and bad
Rampant egos that on the good days
Know restraint,
While restraint is now the law
There are also mistakes
And errors
These are not sins
Though there are also sins
Deserving of confession
To confessors
And then the fixing-up
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We can do this:
We can have a real peace
Then everything we grow
Will grow
And each one will have one’s own
(don’t worry about a term for that)
And we can legitimately
Aim for the stars
Worthy of the company
Of all the objects
All the beings
We encounter
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There is more to say about this
More to figure
Maybe I’ll have time
You’ll have time
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C L Couch
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Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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What Sigmund Freud, Erma Bombeck, and Jean Shepherd Knew
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Some memories
Are childish
Because they come
From children
We might cringe
From the foolishness
More so from
Childish behavior
From adults
From the adult
Inside
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Well, I’m not sure
If memory can cleanse
Embarrassment
Though it could teach
Humility
Or another understanding
So that’s why
I said or did
The thing
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Otherwise, we cringe
Again
When something no one else
Can see
Because it’s in
The mind,
A symbol of regret
Passing by
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C L Couch
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Photo by Jisun Han on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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The Game of Life
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I’m not ready
I wasn’t ready for my
Comprehensives
I did fine
I wasn’t ready
For my mother to be sick
I did what I could
I contributed
She rallied
I won’t be ready
For the next big thing,
I think in children’s media called
The NBT
I doubt we’re ready
For most things,
You know?
They happen anyway
And we respond
We do well
We don’t
We try
We retreat
We come out again
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We are changed
For the next time
Though it might not be
In kind
But we pick up things
They get tucked away
Consequently,
And whether consciously or not,
We can reach into the drawer
Of the file cabinet
Pull open the door
Of the mind palace
At a little more
Since in the keep
As in the world
There are treasures
Set from the beginning
And we’re always
On the hunt
Solving the riddle
Finding other puzzles
Finding keys
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Life, folks
That’s what we got
In all this
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C L Couch
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A Game of Concordia
Photo by Karthik Balakrishnan on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Old
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We get old
Forgetting we were young
No one would believe us
White hair
No hair
Everything takes longer
We wonder what to do with our day
An irony
On irony
We know more
Unless we gave that up
Stopping in our heads
Sometime ago
We could grow
We have things to say
Who wants to listen?
The gray become unseen
Unheard
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C L Couch
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(x = space)
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Let Angel Minds Inquire More
(two poems)
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And Can It Be
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The stakes are doomsday,
The life of the world
There are sides
There is disbelief
There is, as people have,
Denial
x
What comes next
Is mystery
The greedy hope to outlive everyone
At the cost of everyone (else)
There is delusion
All around
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Maybe we’ve given up
On bomb shelters
Except the big ones no one knows
The war is still blue
With cold
There are madmen all around
Maybe madwomen
Maybe not
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That They Should Gain
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There are those who gain from this
While the bombs are kept at bay
(in bays)
Accruing
At the cost of someone else
Reducing supply,
Raising prices
Getting us used to
Three dollars a gallon
Against the early day
When it was thirty-five cents
Or the day
A while before
To fill the tank on two dollars
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Should we lose it all
Maybe not in war
Maybe in destroying Earth
In other ways
(we know these, too)
We won’t believe
It is that bad
Or we shall gain it all
Back again
And more
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In less
We think there’s more
A trickster’s game
The raven sometimes has a plan
To teach us
Something
There is hope
In its cry
It cannot be
Too late
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C L Couch
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with thanks to Charles Wesley, brother of John
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By © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48615973
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(x = space)
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Kieran Levi
(petition)
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He has been wonderfully named
Kieran for his Irish father
Levi for his Jewish mother
But he has gotten sick
With a respiratory disease we are told
Is severe and contagious
Over the weekend, his temperature dropped
From 102 to 99,
Which is something
My brother, his grandfather
Sent us a message with a photograph of
An infant surrounded by machines
If you have a moment and don’t mind,
Please pray for Kieran Levi
Birth might be traumatic
And three months is just a start
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C L Couch
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Photo by Yoksel 🌿 Zok on Unsplash
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