https://edgeofhumanity.com/2024/02/06/longing-for-the-god-who-stays/
second publication in Edge of Humanity
again,
I am published in the magazine
of text and imagery
Edge of Humanity
I am more than second bout
of gratitude
I also feel lucky
like the Irish side
might feel
from time to time
more thanks
to Jo
editor and curator
and may I say
you should read
enjoy
be changed
by the magazine
that sponsors
galleries
of words
and sculpture
also acrylics
watercolors
photographs
a panoply
and celebration
of the arts
that should
change us
Christopher
(C L Couch)
Photo by Steve Douglas on Unsplash
Out from Under
I get tunnel-visioned
Don’t we all
Or maybe not
Maybe there are those
Who are clear
Nearly all the time
Who have the sight
Beyond seeing
Hear the message
More than sound
Touch
And taste
The living water in
Life-giving air
Who get the magic
In the doctrine
Or without any word
That’s formal
Who get it
While we don’t
Who understand the Earth
With that kind of listening
That touch
Who also understand the pain
And do not give it
Or if a little
Ask for pardon
Promising
Enacting
Some
(not all)
Penance
C L Couch
Photo by rashid khreiss on Unsplash
Count and Serve the Days
(for Martin Luther King, Junior, Day)
Four score
And fifteen years ago
A person was brought forth
Into the human world
To change that world
His clothing
As he wore them
When grown-up
Are on display
At least they were
Last time I was in Atlanta
So that we could see them
See he was a person
Not a giant
Not bearing metal armor
Though he had a strength
And for a while a protection
While others felt
Stronger and protected
With him
He was a pastor
He was named for
The first Protestant reformer
And he took steps
And got many
To take steps
To change things
That too many folk
Believed
Could not be changed
And he took on
The attitude
That not changing things
Was good
For the society
(a part)
That believed
The dominance arising
From not changing
Kept things good
Even though
Things were not so good
Protests
Marches
Covering details
With rides
And meals
The words that encourage
That could not always
Be counted on
For softness
For the wrongness to change
Was hard
And difficult
And broke many lives upon it
So strength was needed
Out of prison
Out of reason
In all persuasion
For all
Of humanity
That
Yes
It was time to dream
It was also time to move
Through the world we have
The time we have
To make things
Better
Make things fair
For everyone
Uncommitted to an evil way
Because everyone
(everyone else)
Deserves a voice
And to be heard
And everyone
Should have a turn
In which there is
Justice
And through which
Should there be an opportunity
To live
To grow
To believe
To vote
To be busy in one’s work
And delight in play
He served the faith
He served the people whom he knew
As well as
So many strangers
Finally
The human world
Out of Selma
Out of Birmingham
Our of Montgomery
With his family
That goes on
And his
Many
Many
Friends
And acquaintances
I cannot help but think
About the night he spent
In jail
As have spent
So many believers
And protesters
And did he surrender
For this
And all barriers
Set up to siege his conscience
And his hope
Seems not
For out of that experience
And all such similar
Experiences
He dreamed
He wrote
He shared his thoughts
Before
During
And after
So that there was a cause
And a cause
Articulated
We have those words now
We have the pledge to change
To take it
Or leave down
But it is there
And
You know
For everyone
For the famous
And the not-so
Most of us who do
Only small things
But change the day
And altogether
Change the world
Because
You know
Change is endemic
It is human
It is spiritual
If need be
We have our aging cells
To prove it
If change
Then change
For the better
Starting
With the smaller
Hearing the larger
And supporting
As we hear
His words
As with progenitors
Successors
Happy Birthday
Martin Luther King
Junior
On fifteen January
Starting in 1929
And for the ages
And even
For
Into
Eternity
C L Couch
Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow, 15 January 2024
Photo by Frederic Bourbeau on Unsplash
General Delivery
It’s all for
General delivery
Eventually
These words
Your words
The words of anyone
To our chagrin
It all gets kept
Inside the book
Except when
The doctrine of
Justification
Is established
And then
The sins are written out
No book mark
Or any record left
When we can try again
To draft
Compose
Revise
Edit
Have someone else maybe
Take a look
Then we commit
The words are out there
Once again
Actions
Repercussions
Maybe it goes well
This time
For we are clearer
Then become reliable
For this
To some
Even constituents
Those we serve
Most closely
While in the future
Subject to interpretation
Still
Whom do we know
And how
The ethnologists
Have a way
With story
And might get us right
Eventually
We have today
For saying the right thing
And if we need
To make up for it
(not make it up)
Well
We have our doctrine
Still
To keep us
With our God
And with each other
Say this
Don’t say anything
Restraint
And modesty
Could be our values
Too
With respect to keep a world
From destruction
And bring us to
Instead
A table
Neither polished
Or shaped perfectly
But smooth enough
With people standing
(sitting)
By for splinters
But ‘round which
We have set ourselves
For conversation
The expressions
Of ourselves
The receiving of
The offered words of others
Why
There are models
Of this
Here
And every day
Thank goodness
C L Couch
Photo by Brina Blum on Unsplash
I am trying the “Verse” option in WordPress, because in part I think I should; and at least I miss having to type Xes for spaces. I’m not sure how it’s going; I’m not sure what you receive, even though I proofread graphically as well. I’ll keep trying. Thanks for reading.
Tollers
Yesterday
His birthday
The day before
My brother’s
For who shall be
My brother
Well
My brother
Though I could meet
Him
In the Bird and Baby
As in a pub
He met
With Dracula
(a good story
that)
And I shall send a card
To my brother
Through electrons
And there shall be
Good wishing
In a meeting
With him
Too
That may
Or may not happen
Though we know
We can’t see
Tollers
Save on pages
And having seen
His son
Once
At a conference
At which I read
A paper
About riddles
C L Couch
notes
Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3.18 ff
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973
Steven Eric Couch, 2 January
Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash [kind of mixing up Tolkien’s use of dragons with the Year of the Dragon approaching]
This Is the Song that Never Ends
Or would you like to
Swing on a star
Carry moonbeams
Home in a jar
And be better off than you are
Or would you rather be a—
(verses for blanks)
Which is a kind of song
That loops
So easily
After the movie
Then throughout the day
And we might wake with it
The next day
I just checked
Jimmy and Johnny
Made the song
(called Jimmy and Johnny
as James and Jonathan
tended to be
back then
like Johnny Williams
in the sixties
before Jaws
and Star Wars)
I think
I heard it once
On Captain Kangaroo
It really is a pleasant song
Existential animals
Notwithstanding
And I think they might excuse us
For our foibles
Symbolized
And what is a song for you
That goes ‘round
In what you wonder
Might become
An attitude
Frustrated
Though for now
As you go through it
It goes through you
(and it might be a long song)
Inciting joy
To go with something else
A chore
Or bigger thought
That occupies
Reminding
Or informing
You are better than you are
Swing on a star
C L Couch
Photo by Oleg Sergeichik on Unsplash
(out of) Gomel, Belarus
“Swinging on a Star”
Writers: Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke
Publisher: Kanjian Music, Music Sales Corporation
https://songfacts.com/lyrics/bing-crosby/swinging-on-a-star
"The Song That Doesn't End" (also referred to as "The Song That Never Ends")
written by Bernard Rothman
for Shari Lewis
(1988)
Wikipedia
In the Day of the Lord
Well
God
What shall you give
Today
There is the day
There will be daylight
Well-
Insinuated
In an hour or so
There will be more
Time
In hours
Time to choose
For those
Who may choose
Who aren’t
Conscripted otherwise
Drafting
Oneself
For cause
But then
The cause
Might be a wonder
How about family
About
The partner
Who works out
In
Intimacy
As well as
What is profound
When about one’s nation
Call it people
Call it country
Group
Tribe
State
Region
Everything that has a name
Maybe a living
Constitution
For a document
For walks
The simple
And sublime
Which faces our distraction
And decisions
All the time
And certainly
Today
And God
There is more than patriotism
There is the reason for it
And the rest
That is
Well
You
And what you say
You make
What you say and make
That is creation
Whose pages form
A scripture
Every day
And then the book itself
Shelved
We take down
Perhaps
We hear someone else
Reading
And from which
Some teaching
Though the hour
Is a sermon
Too
This hour
Then the next
Should we have the next
Odds say
We’ll have
Inside our complex bodies
Have a day that’s plain
Landing here or there
Pleine aire
Or chez lui
And should one
Ask oneself
About salvation
Or get the question
From another
Answer
We hope so
C L Couch
Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash
[photographer’s caption] In New York, in a little shop, those watches where there, hanging in front of me!
(x = space)
x
x
Looking Out from Earth
(considering)
x
Inside wars
We’re living inside wars
And it’s a hate-able
Life
Explosions all around
We feel the blood
And everything
Left over
That had been
Our families
Our better nation
x
And I’m not there
Most of us
Are not there
We hear the counts
We see the numbers
And they’re
Too often
In the courts of numbers
Not outside
Where we
Suburban breathe
And have our way
With local stresses
Only
x
Take thou
Our breath
Away
Let us be like those
Having only dust
Inhaling
And nothing for a meal
With no electricity
To see nothing by
x
It can be like this
On all sides
Who live in darkness
Really
Who think
Like Sneetches
Adding fangs
And cells
That they have the light
x
And after all the irony
The hatred
That is
Sibling
It’s all over
While it’s never over
Too many names shall stand
We could not stamp them
Out
Or their recollection
As Ukraine
Palestine
Russia
Or Israel
Tibet
Burma
The Rohingya there
Maybe Ceylon
Rhodesia
See
Some things should change
x
While other things
Remain the same
People as people
Breathing
Pulsing
Moving
Having life
Allowably
x
Whom to indict
Why
I don’t know
I’m sure
My country fights the war
On terror
And on drugs
How are these going
x
Bless the advances
Harbor the retreats
x
The war
Inside the war
The war
To end all wars
The war of heart to heart
Chamber to chamber
Fluid all around
When sick
Ready to squeeze
Ready to say
I’m sorry that I made you
I’m going to try another world
Now
I mean it
This time
x
War is hell
So maybe hell is war
Forever conflict
Always killing
One thing or another
Nothing qualified
To escape
That is
Live after
Lest we
Let some chiefing of our making
Some cabal
With secret knowledge
Take over
And perhaps
We never know
x
So count our organs
Count our limbs
Count every hope
Still shelved somewhere
And in daylight
Bring it out
You have to sometime
That’s the risk
In living
Anywhere
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Richard Gatley on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Partly inspired by “There Will Come Soft Rains,” a chapter in The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. This part of the story speaks to what is left of us. The chapter’s sad. Nonetheless I often think upon it.
x
x
Sci-Fied
x
Should the bombs fall
And I am atomized
And you
And the insects shall find
Nourishment
Not through flesh
(I’m atomized
so are you)
But through bits of trash
I had not the time
To take our back
x
And shall the Earth survive
To have another age
x
I remember
In the days of Strontium
We said we could
Destroy the planet’s crust
And so leave
The molten mass
The could heave
Or be
Settled down
x
Nostalgia
For a future guess
x
The Earth might have
Its own
As it once held us
There could be bees
And flowers for the bees
Or something
For pollen
So that something could
Pollenate
And there be land
With flora
Feeding
And softening
What’s left of our platforms
For another age
Of Earth
x
Arthropodic
Or could it be with feathers
Things that move
And have their being
Avoiding shadows
Form which
There used to be
Something in charge
Though now
The lesson’s different
This time
The arthropods
And feathered things
Have sentience
And speak gospel
x
While the Earth
In its own way
We never got
Though it was there
Shall smile
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
x
clcouch123 
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