(x = space)
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Shopping
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I’m getting food,
And I am thankful
Being useless on the farm
Or in the forest
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I’d poison myself
Over mushrooms,
Love the animals too much
To kill;
I do murder houseplants
And so doubt I could
Raise a crop of anything
But turned earth
And weeds
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C L Couch
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Photo by Dorothea OLDANI on Unsplash
Mushrooms in the Forest
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(x = space)
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from yesterday’s journal
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(later)
I’ve just finished watching and listening to the third episode of a three-episode film by Ken Burns about the life of Ernest Hemingway. I watched all three episodes though maybe could have done without the final episode. My father looked like Hemingway, especially late in life. Besides looks, something they shared was paranoia. Or is it schizophrenia? Both men were sure they were dogged by agents of the federal government. Hemingway talked about the FBI. My father about the CIA.
My dad died, and what killed him? Organ dysfunction due to poisoning from alcohol? Pneumonia? I think pneumonia might have been the official cause. He’d had melanoma and evidently beat it. He had diabetes and beat that, too. How an alcoholic can win out over diabetes is unclear to me. He didn’t need to take the diabetes medication after a while. There was a cancer on or in the brain that was being treated, evidently with success.
Hemingway we know, we believe we know—I mean no one else was there in the room—died by suicide. By pressing the gun against his forehead and pushing the trigger.
I got the diabetes diagnosis recently. I’m not sure what I should be doing about it, though I’m trying, well, to take in less sugar, not so much, that is, at least. I’m not sure what else I should do. Taking walks would be good, I’m sure.
I could end up diabetic, fat, grizzled, paranoic with delusions—and too weak to want to live. I could die as these men died, one man all at once and the other by some arrangement of stages. Both men declined physically, inwardly. I’m struggling physically but trying to create. To send something out. I don’t know if I’m trying to stave off death by legacy. To have and have not. I started writing every day—and it wasn’t every day at first—simply to have something to do while recovering from surgery. How the blog came to mind I do not know. But it did, and I am thankful.
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C L Couch
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Hemingway, a film by Ken Burns
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By unattributed – Photograph by Mary Hemingway, in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11539931
Ernest Hemingway at “La Consula”, Bill Davis’ estate in Spain, 1959.
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(x = space)
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The Devil in the Middle
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What is in
The center of it all?
A devil laughing?
Why should a devil
Laugh? Why should
A devil care?
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Devil-may-care,
What does that mean?
It means cavalier
In this instance;
Cavalier meaning gallant,
Gallant meaning piquant
Small matters
To the devil
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Some imply a drama:
The devil made an angel,
Risen through the rank
To be chief angel
Even over arches
The prince of light
In the maker’s eye
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Then came ambition
There must be more
(there isn’t
there is),
A form of pride
Borrowed from the will
The maker gave
The last things made,
Before resting
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Pride made or given,
The angel rises
Now to have something
Of its own,
The will to chase the universe
To know
And thus have
Everything that moves—
Better yet, motion itself
And heat
And all reactions,
The moving in everything
That moves
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The universe is not
Statuary;
I will own dynamos
All that makes possible
All else—this
Is ambition
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And the maker,
The maker said no
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Other than the tree,
The first time
That was said
More so imposed,
And the devil knew
The maker meant it
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And there was howling,
The first kind
Ever heard in heaven
And rebellion
And rejection
As decreed
In the moment before
And in between
Anything beyond the host
Was made
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The devil thought
Nothing like this could apply
To an angel
Better than archangels—
But this was meant,
It knew and so
It and its own followers
Must leave,
The devil
And the devil’s own
Sliding onto Earth
In a compromise, it hoped,
Of creation’s creating,
Maker’s binding law
Not to destroy in victory
Anything that was made,
Even with
Accounting the defeated
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Earth the great place
In between,
Where battles might be fought
Until the last engagement;
The devil knew it all
And didn’t care—there
Were its own skirmishes to win,
A campaign of turning
And, turned enough,
To ruin Eden’s darlings
Even turn the animals
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Twisting the good
In molecules
And lightning
And all forces remade
Into viscous virtue,
Easy to remake
And redirect,
Blurring the vision of the end
Even in its sight—
Maybe the devil and an army
Of the Earth
Will split the maker’s love
And all will overthrown,
New laws
With everything its own
With what might be taken
From each other
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All anarchies,
All chaos
Water will not fill the shape
Of its container
For physics overthrown
With anything agreed-upon
Undone
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Undo it all,
The devil owning energy
Would win
And have its own,
More than any other
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Enough of a plan
To ruin Eden’s promises
Then go from there
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C L Couch
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there is more
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Photo by Jonathan Bean on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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No Woman Is an Island
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I exhale a puff of air
Carbon dioxide
And yet that’s all right for kissing
And for lifting the lungs
Of someone who’s in trouble
And not breathing
The kiss of life, we call it
And it is
Both sides of air being good
The oxygen, the CO-2
Both give life all around
Our daily allies on the planet
Are the plants in our
Inhale-exhale
Symbiosis
All is relationship
No one goes alone
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C L Couch
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No Man Is an Island, a poem, a contemplation, a movie, a song
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Photo by Kyle Wagner on Unsplash
Allan Gardens Children’s Conservatory, Toronto, Canada
the greenhouse
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(x = space)
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Tontines
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Good morning, Monday
And to all of you
I hope the weekend brought some pleasure
Some enjoyment
That lives inside
Your living, now
I hope that Tuesday’s grand as well
But today is today
I’d like the present moment
The next present moment
To be good for you
As if there were a promise kept
By forces unseen
Or heard
But sometimes felt like
Two-way touches in the wind,
Smelled and tasted, too
Like Sabbath-keeping
Or peace in
An hour of prayer
A walk inside a forest
Or the palace of the mind
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C L Couch
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Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
While visiting the Gaitor site in India’s pink city (known for its pink mud walls), we came to a temple with beautiful, carved figures. Noticing the birds, I took my camera and all of sudden a whole group of them leapt into the sky.
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(x = space)
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You before Me
(for everyone)
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You’re in line
In front of me for friendship
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We’ve been here
For an age
And hear the hits,
One hit at a time,
Behind us
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To feel the hit
Anonymous
Then know by instinct
Now
(it’s how the world works)
To strike the person
Back of the head in front
Anonymous (we’ll
get away with it)
And then receive
The things,
What people say
We’re due
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In a line of greed
Even for an age,
Someone must turn first
To receive the slap
Looking into the face
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Then the forward movement
Stops and painless
Possibilities considered
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It’s risky
Being hit so hard
(regulations say each
must hit hard),
But all good things are chances;
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Life might end for me
Or in part,
Begin for you
And everyone
Ahead of you
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C L Couch
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Photo by Srivatsa Sreenivasarao on Unsplash
Four Birds and Reflections
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(x = space)
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Me before You
(for youth)
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Peace in our time,
Which implied more strongly
Than the message
That there would be no peace
In their time,
The coming generation’s
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We bargain with our children’s
Lives and should
Know better,
Abrogating wisdom
And the sacrifice of us
So that they have a world
Better than we found it
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There used to be a message,
Parents investing
So that children should have
Better lives than theirs,
A message that had stopped
Variably in the seventies
And eighties,
Not to mention attitudes
Toward annihilation
From the war that was so cold
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Sorry about all that,
All this
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C L Couch
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Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash
Freedom
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(x = space)
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During Great Pain
(preempting Ms. Dickinson)
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In the ‘midst of pain
There is no formal feeling
It hurts is not a great pronouncement
One could, when it’s bad,
Wish to call up the carriage
That Death provides,
Though that arrival should be way,
Way off
And when it’s time
Will call up itself
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No, this is pain
That ends with mortal life ahead
But now the middle time’s invested
Having begun some time ago
Has an ending to which to look forward
And now
Is now
The beginning and the ending
That don’t matter
As this moment
When we wish it had
Never happened
If there’s awareness
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Or we simply want it
To go away
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C L Couch
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Remaining.
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(x = space)
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Catechesis, Part 1
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questions
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I got up in time,
Sort of
How did you do?
Is it a good day?
Are things going well?
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I missed my turn at prayer
The group went on
And I hope the quiet praying
Counted
I don’t know the protocols
On Earth, in heaven
So well
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I fact,
When I feel my tether pulled,
So to speak,
On Earth or heaven,
I ask, existentially
What do you want of me?
And Who are you?
Asking anything of me
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Not that I take it amiss
I have time
Enough lack of direction
That I may respond happily,
Given
Something good to do
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Catechesis, Part 2
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answers
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You are God,
I think,
Maker of all things
That must mean good and bad
Downright evil
Or so frustrating that
Some of us
Might want
To scream and do
So you are the God
Of good things and bad things
And evil things
Supposing the delightful things as well
Spring and picnics in good weather,
Cool water, wine,
And sex
Beside still waters
(metaphorically at least)
You are with us
In all things,
Somehow excused of voyeurism,
Which might be why
The seraphim have so many eyes apiece
So that one eye or another
Might be closed
With no loss to function, overall
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Anyway,
You want of us to love
To love you
To accept love from you,
Which isn’t a done deal
You know, during
Those awful times
When so much has been lost
To the dark
Forever night
Without night’s comforts
‘Til a white sun rises over day,
All our empty landscapes
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You are there
Maybe we’ll excuse this
One way or the other
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C L Couch
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Photo by Avery D’Alessandro on Unsplash
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