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For the People

(x = space)

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For the People

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We give billions

Might I have a smidgen

Might we all and each

Have a smidgen

Two smidgens, maybe

Our money from our coffers

Save other nations’ people,

Too

It’s mid-month and I’m feeling

Especially impoverished

It’s the thirteenth

On a Friday

And I’m tired of

Anything like

The curse of the day

Or Cain

The penury of Lazarus

Under Dives

I know, L gets to heaven

Where it’s wealthy

Without coin

And through and through

But I’m still here today

And want to be,

Not knowing the other

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I’d like to have

Some easy days

If possible

Summertime

As Gershwin says

As she sings

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C L Couch

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Photo by David Sutton on Unsplash

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Tired Love

(x = space)

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Tired Love

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Everything should stop

You’re tired

Haven’t quite hit the wall

But everything’s okay enough

And you’re tired

Time to snap

Like upper and lower crocodile teeth

But don’t

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Give everyone a break

Sorry if the world does not agree

But you have to

Have a drink

Water’s good

Be still

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From within, get to know

The bones and muscles

The rest of you

And rest

Some minutes of this will help

If you can retire for the day

Like a vacation

You can feel that good

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Maybe not less serious

All issues remaining,

After all

But better in a somber way

That matters

Then go back to it

To her and him

And them

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C L Couch

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Photo by Simon Watkinson on Unsplash

A crocodile jumping from a river in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

Darwin NT, Australia

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Idea

(x = space)

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Idea

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Here’s an idea:

Leave Ukraine live

Leave Russia live with remorse

While rebuilding

Its neighbor

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We know

There is no recourse

For life lost

Beyond revenge,

And there’s no point in that

Since taken to extremes,

Well,

Our planet burns

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But Russia can retreat

Tying up its turrets

Into shoelace- or ribbon-chapes

Send rubles back

With many, many helpers

My guess is

There would be volunteers

Among the soldiers

And the uninvolved

Back home

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Let this be a pattern, then

Let the Rohingya live

And South Sudan

And blacks and whites

In the USA

And elsewhere

And the other colors, too

Let there be colors

Let there be textures

Let there be sounds

And smells and

Things to taste

The best of these

Makes an amazing world

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Let there be self-competition

Dreaming

Without nightmares

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In the living

Let us be fed and watered,

Educated and secure

So that when heaven comes

We meet each other

Easy, unexpected kindred

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C L Couch

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Photo by Tobias Schlienger on Unsplash

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Conjuration

(x = space)

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Conjuration

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By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes

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Was it

A curse

Or a conjuring?

Did she invoke

The wicked thing

Of was she

Foretelling

Simply telling

Sisters

And us all

What would happen

Next?

Are they

Prophets,

Soothsayers

Commenters

Like the chorus?

Or worse,

Are they

Seed-planters

Giving Macbeth ideas

That were unformed,

Half-formed,

Fully-formed

Ideas as

Ambitions?

Who made the heroes

And the foils

In context

Of the story?

Who is our

Storymaker,

Storyteller?

Glamis, Cawdor

King

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We who can

Who are allowed

To rise in thought

Have plans

From our ambitions;

Pray we do not meet

The made-up

Or implanted

Witches in the mind

But choose to walk

In other parts,

Another way

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C L Couch

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Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1

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Photo by Marc Schaefer on Unsplash

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The Second Story Mountain

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The Second Story Mountain

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Merton wrote

The Seven Storey Mountain

About his journey to faith

And affiliation

David Brooks has written

The Second Mountain

About the search for a moral

Life that also

Has in it

Brooks’s journey into faith

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There are many such stories

(John Henry Newman, Anne Lamott

Karen Armstrong—I give these folk

in order of reading them),

And high places

Are often an association

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Once we climb, once we achieve

The phenomenal

The numinous,

We end up

On a mountain top

There is, in fact, the mountain-top

Experience,

A trope of faith

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On my way back recently,

I skirted a tunnel torn up for construction

And drove over two mountains

As an unmarked detour,

Taking roads who edges were too near,

Too sharp, too narrow

I was scared

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And wondered among things while driving

How folk could live on either side,

Having these as ways

To take a normal day

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I don’t like heights

I don’t like driving off the road, either

It’s all done now, and if I’m smart

I’ll never take that way again

There was a mountaintop, I guess

There were two such tops

I only noted a change in incline

Down from up

There was not a park or anything

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A pullover,

A bench with an inscription in huge letters

Come and have your mountaintop here

Rather the only words I got

Were my own

That said, don’t look down so much

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I’ll live in the valleys,

I suppose,

And have my faith life there

Or at the oceanside from time to time

It’s not stormy weather

That I mind

Though someday it should take

Me home

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I’m sorry, this is more a story

Than a poem much cleverer,

Not much more

Than talking

In the room

Over coffee or some such,

Should we be meeting

At a table

Or in comfy chairs

Or with both

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I have my life of faith, such as it

Might be

I hope, I even pray, that

You have yours

In a healthy sect or tradition

That suits you and

Creator and

Creation

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Fits you like a story to

Which you return

Time and again

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C L Couch

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The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks

Route 641

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Photo by Fabrizio Lunardi on Unsplash

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Alternatives

(x = space)

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Alternatives

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We get messages

From the front

It’s not our front

We read about Ebola outbreaks

That are not ours

Unsafe water

Not in our country

Well, there’s Flint

And all the systems that

Are going bad

But we have plastic bottles

And filters to shove under

Our faucets

Until our systems

Are repaired

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We hear of civil wars

In other countries

But they don’t happen here

Except for hate

Two parties at each other’s throats

And so much violence

On the streets

In schools

In homes

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We see, it happens everywhere

The devil’s stratagems

And our own

Inside us

Once we’ve stultified the good

And the alternatives

That the buzz inside our ears

Behind our eyes

Wherever

Telling us it’s too crazy

To imagine

To start

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C L Couch

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Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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Earthy

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Earthy

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These are the scents,

what I smelled as I was

driving back from Pittsburgh:

coal and tar and asphalt

as if mixed together, a

smell I can recall from childhood when

in the city;

manure, may times, because

it’s planting time;

plant-life already grown and

emanating from blooms in trees,

perennials along the road;

whatever smell

a clear, cold sky possesses

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C L Couch

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City of Angles and Approaches

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City of Angles and Approaches

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Steel city

Iron city

City of bridges

Renaissance city

First gateway

To the west

City of immigrants

City of technology,

Once heavy manufacturing

Collapsed

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City of

Corporate headquarters

Three wide rivers merge

The Allegheny and the Monongahela

Meet to form

The Ohio

Cargo moves from Pittsburgh

Down the Ohio

To meet the Mississippi

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City of

Great universities

And hospitals

Expensive housing

While expanding

City of neighborhoods

Old

Entrenched in the best way

And changing

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City of

Triangular streets

(those three rivers)

Midwest

Meets Appalachia

Mines and mills

Mostly closed

With careers and lives

Changing or still

Like statues without hearts

As well as movement

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Life must move

This great city moves

My childhood home

I leave and return

Come back, it says

Drive through the tunnels

And behold me

Take the funiculars

Again

Gaze at me from

Mount Washington

I am here

For so many people

I’m here for you

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C L Couch

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(on the last day while visiting with family)

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Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash

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Demons in the Corners

(x = space)

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Demons in the Corners

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Sometimes

Sometimes it seems

Too hard

There is too much that’s

Jagged like or as

Broken glass

Pieces that penetrate

That draw bright blood

Of one kind

Or another

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The world hurts

Because some people

Want it to hurt,

The cost

Of doing business

Raking prophet

Winning war

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In these strategies,

Theology is far away

There is no discussion of

Depravity,

Nearly original sin

Or otherwise

This is not a point of doctrine

We are mean in every way

Because we want to be

We want to wield something

As if it’s ours

And if it’s yours

At cost and sacrifice

So much the better:

I keep my things

And don’t care

If I lose yours

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This is mining Earth

(of any kind

of any kind)

For money

For tremendous feeling

Mortal glory

Fame or infamy

Two sides of

A silver coin

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In judgment, counted with

The other coins that paid

For Earth

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Conviction, sentence from betrayal

But that is sometime

Not today

At least is doesn’t feel that way

And we have plans

Today

We the profiteers

Are winning

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C L Couch

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Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

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