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The War at Home

(x = space)

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The War at Home

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I’m tired

Too much stress

Has weighed me down

Who knows

What’s heredity

What’s conditioned

By a lifetime of

Pressed down?

x

Everyone has a reason

An excuse

For being rude

And mean

In both ways,

Unkind and miserly

My money

Yes, I earned it

Is taken

And I get poor

Products in return

And services

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Does anyone else

Feel cheated

By life?

Does anyone else

Go to sleep

And wake up this way?

x

And maybe

It’s not so bad

A friend

Has called and been

Generally sympathetic

And I generally

Feel better

x

Still stressed

Still weighed down

I don’t know what

To do

But keep writing

About it all

During which

I was interrupted

By my friend

x

And worry about

The news

I’ll find today

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I’d like to find

Me and nature

For a while

The sun, the wind

Some clarity

Of sky

Blue thinking

For a while

Wispy thoughts

That don’t have to stick

Like white dandelion

Seeds

Blown onto thistles

A day of

Unpressed thinking

For a while

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3

The war at home

Funding on trial

Some money passes

Thankfully

Aid for Ukraine

Rebuilding bridges here

That have

Fallen

Down

Rebuilding, anyway

x

I guess we need

To keep moving

Throw off

That Mayberry feeling

That sitting outside

Floyd’s

On a hot day

Is a good thing

Taken down the long,

Front porch

Relegate its place

Build something

Whose plans

Whose generation lies

Around the corner

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C L Couch

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Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash

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The Boy Who Knew Something

(x = space)

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The Boy Who Knew Something

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A spark of something

Blown on through the breeze

Of time

What did he know?

Something about dreams, perhaps

That dreams try

To work out something

And something about wandering

That loneliness

Is good

That reactive loneliness is hard

But being on one’s own

As a decision for oneself

Is not so bad

Bicycle

Riding across an empty schoolyard

Creeking

Climbing rocks

Falling

There’s a bruise

One survives

x

The working out of dreams

When dreams are ridiculed

That’s when it gets hard

Harder than the stones

One fell upon

Growing up will help

x

If only there could be an arc

So many things

Could be worked out

x

Call it memory

Call it inspiration

Allowed to last

Let it last

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C L Couch

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Photo by Hugo L. Casanova on Unsplash

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Born Again in the USA

(x = space)

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Born Again in the USA

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A sabbath time

To stop

To breathe

To wait for it

To be over

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Counting the minutes

Of the homily

Or sermon

The teaching of the word

Waiting for communion

To be over

x

Now, where is the car?

How long will it take

To leave?

Thinking about

Food and rest and TV

After

The holy time

Set apart

Once a week if that

x

Bigger deal

Maybe wireless

For those who could

Be there

At Christmas and at Easter

What is wrong with

All these things

Is nothing

But set apart is set apart

x

Then the chance

To splice it

Graft it all together

Stronger, faster

Like the cyborg hybrid

Only real

Sacred and prophane

With blessings

Rain from an aspergillum

The scent of flowers

From a thurible

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Sensations

Only God

Can bestow

In the world

And the world

Can respond

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C L Couch

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Photo by Bas de Korte on Unsplash

“Storm in a few minutes.”

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Who Slew 3G?

(x = space)

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Who Slew 3G?

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Phone’s dead

As in a horror movie

When the characters

Feel progressively

Closed in

And the killer starts

To take them,

One by one

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It’s a sad day

It’s a widespread problem

For the company

And the old people’s plans

Like my plan

Time to pay one way

Or the other for

The lack of service

All the promises

Smiling gray faces

Provided

x

Bakelite phones

With wires

Newspapers

Made of paper

Talking with each other

On the street

Sending the urgent telegram

These might be making

Returns

Should we need to share

In an analog world

Again

x

A horror movie

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C L Couch

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Photo by Ilinca Roman on Unsplash

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Battle Cry

(x = space)

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Battle Cry

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The war goes on

I know war from

Reading

All Quiet on the Western Front

Johnny Got His Gun

The Red Badge of Courage

Funny war in

Catch-22

Romantic war in

Anything by Alistair MacLean

And

The Lord of the Rings

I’ve seen videos of

Hiroshima,

And I see images of Ukraine

All of which means

I don’t know anything about war

I don’t know the ripping pain

Of bullets

The sounds from

Many explosions

The sounds of people

Wounded

And the dying

All in states of dying

Mortal life leaving the body

Violent upheaval into judgment

All out of place

Before its time

An outrage of angels

Crying from all sides

The risen and the fallen

I hear stories

Read them

Hear them

Imagine them

And let them in

It’s not the real thing

But it’s something

Enough to think and feel

And cry against

And I have perspective

While those who call for war

Haven’t any

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C L Couch

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Photo by British Library on Unsplash

1914, World War 1. Highland Territorials in a trench. Photographer: H. D. Girdwood.

La Gorgue, France

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Wargodlike

(x = space)

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Wargodlike

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We’ve known God

For a long, long time

Leaders used to want

To curry favor

So built monuments, set

Time

Struck stone tombs with

Asking after asking after asking

To be let in

In a public sense,

Regardless of administration

x

It’s easy now

It’s vogue to say there is no God

So no one to attend

No one to tithe

No one to contribute anything

Except to me

And my circle

Broken, though I do not know

Cursed through an absence of words

Who hasn’t earned ruins

But the detritus in between

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C L Couch

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Photo by Matin Tavazoei on Unsplash

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Red Scare

(x = space)

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Red Scare

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I was born when

It peaked,

When McCarthy

Was deflated

But it was a cold war,

And we weren’t supposed to

Trust the Soviets

Whoever they were

I didn’t know and

Could only generally

Think about Russians

x

But there was the language room

At Pitt

And people from so many parts

Living in the city

And the region

And on TV scenes and shows

With comedy and Russians

x

Some of these

Lampooning, no doubt

Some of it relief

As if to say

The Soviets are people, too

And we are people, too

x

There were Soyuz model kits

And joined experiments in space

And there was Peter and the Wolf

At the young people’s symphony

And The Nutcracker

At Heinz Hall every winter,

And my sister liked to go

x

Communists?

Who were communists?

They wore red stars

Looked grim

Waited in long lines for everything

There was Eloise in Moscow

We looked for the funny KGB character

Appearing somewhere on each page

x

There were missiles all over

Here and there

I didn’t see any,

Though there were sonic booms above

From military aircraft

x

Blue and silver in the sky

And black and white on TV

How scared should I be?

Sometimes I was pretty scared

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C L Couch

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Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

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The Hour

(x = space)

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The Hour

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When I met with

My spiritual director,

He’d light a light

Between us

For our consideration

A flame that moved

That might have made a noise

Though we couldn’t hear it

x

It was our time to talk

But we’d be quiet

First

That was good

That was good tension

That was coaching

From the universe:

To be quiet for a time,

To give better time to listen

When it was time

To talk

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C L Couch

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Photo by Brian Gomes on Unsplash

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Justification

(x = space)

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Justification

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Just as if I had

Never sinned,

That’s how I was taught

The word

Like at-one-ment

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Hope in the small things,

Yes?

Though these are words

Behind which are big things

That sanctify

(big word)

Reconcile

(another)

x

You see, the small things count

The extra sleep

The better cup of coffee

The crispy toast

I live for these

And things like these

x

But there are the big things

Like repentance,

Reconciliation

The kind of things that bring

The prodigal home,

That cause a feast

Once sealed back into family

x

There are the things

That don’t require

Big words

Faith, hope, and love

But might need bigger understanding

Or maybe only

Pay attention

x

God is simple, too

Three letters, three parts

And one

Anything that’s three and one

Helps to explain it

The shamrock

The states of water,

As you know

x

The simple

The profound

The rest for exercise

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We sin

We can make it up

We can be snow

Or lightless night

We are returned

To the next day

To try

Better this time

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C L Couch

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Photo by Lenstravelier on Unsplash

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