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Not a Poem

Not a Poem

 

This is not a poem:

Poems rhyme

Like using sage in thyme

They make sense

The owl and the pussycat weren’t so tense

The poems have a meter

Ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah

Hoorah, hoorah, hoorrah!

Poems are about serious subjects

Racism bleeds the Earth of all its colors

Poems should have long lines

Well, you got me there

 

A poem takes us places

Helps fill in all the spaces

 

So if I want to poem

Just to sho-‘em

I’ll have to change my crafting

Or launch myself upon a rafting

So I might be taken seriously

By those who speak imperiously

I say this with a sigh

The worldly bar is set too high

 

I’ll turn to something else

I have my father’s wrench

Maybe I should try plumbing

(no, for me that would be numbing

maybe you

for a sou?

maybe us–that’s a plus)

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

a poem takes us places

 

1

Prismatic

Prismatic

 

How

Is it, God,

That you can love all things?

You can

Your capacity is the ocean

And the stars

With all that swims in both

Your depth is above heaven

Down to hell,

Deeper

We think ourselves so much

We move upon a planet

We are cruel

Sometimes we are kind,

Which shouldn’t have to come

Across

As a surprise

Are you sorry that you gave

The rainbow?

It’s a pledge to keep us here

There might be tests of

Floods, and

Maybe they could tempt you

 

Though I think we have your word,

If anyone

Could keep it

If anyone could stay a hand

Waiting for

What happens next

 

If there’s anything in a

Surprise

 

C L Couch

 

 

photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

created with garden hosepipe

 

3

Ending

Ending

 

Sometimes things end

They really do

My friends have lost a cat

Who died

I knew him, too

 

We say each life is precious

Maybe we meant it when

We say it, too

But we act as if

A lack of consciousness

Has taken over

And nothing counts but what

We want,

A pile of what we want

 

I’m not sure what to do

About flowers

We need them for so many things

Plants, we have to eat them

Life for life?

There is no other way

Until we find the chemicals

That feed us without

Killing the planet

Or our insides

Even then, there will be carbon

The basis for all life

We must consume that, yes?

Then it will be gone until we are gone,

Blended back into the universe

Molecularly speaking

 

There must be an exchange

Small life for bigger life

Plants, maybe fish

Some think chickens are too stupid

To be let go

Maybe we made them that way

 

But there must be endings:

In the living things we eat

In the blood we surrender when

We are wounded

In the life we surrender

Because mortality is limited,

And all things

Might be finite

 

There is sex

That’s an ending, too

Even in release

In order to have life

Other things are ending

Measures of freedom

Money

If a lack can count as something

Lack of responsibility is ending

To have something new

Maybe it’s a cycle

Though miraculous each time

Unique like (and as) a new story

 

So there’s a mystery

Ending life to have life

The seasons teach us

Lessons in the trees

Even evergreens have seasons

Plants that are perennial

Plants that need replanting

New life that is spring

And what is new each day

 

I don’t like endings

The idea,

When it happens

 

Which might be why we

Salute an ending with some alcohol

The deading of some brain cells

So we might get over

Counting out mortality

 

And here’s an ending

Because there has to be one

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Conor Firth on Unsplash

Hayden, CO, USA

 

4

The Best Is Yet to Come

The Best Is Yet to Come

 

The best is yet to come and, babe, won’t it be fine?

 

Dancing, crooning

Love songs

Ties and gowns or overalls and pinafores,

Doesn’t matter

There is glitter in the air

The lights of romance

There’s music from a combo

Ain’t it all fine?

 

There has to be more of this

Not an increase

Or exaggeration

But ongoing

The laughing, dancing, crooning combo

Always at hand

To have and have again

Not a party without end

But reasons to

Celebrate that last

 

The kind of work

(exertion of energy)

That heals

The smiles from musicians, which

Can say

We are free at last

And we love you

And an audience

In equal measure grateful

Taking part

Tomorrow there will be other things

And there will be tomorrow

For now,

There’s confidence

In this place of music

Fancy lights

(not the kind that blind)

Hands clasping on the dancing floor

 

Maybe we’ll go outside

Not because nature is tame

But because

It tames us

With its own lights of night

And gift of rock

For a dancing floor

 

This is a vision

Of necessity

Because the flesh that hears,

Touches, and responds

Should go on in some way

Call it paradise

The life renewed

That hasn’t lost a note or a step

 

C L Couch

 

 

“The Best Is Yet to Come”

written by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie performed and recorded for the album It Might as Well Be Swing (1964) and performed and recorded by many others.

 

photo by Manuel Inglez on Unsplash

Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, Sintra, Portugal

 

8

We Can Settle War This Way

We Can Settle War This Way

(if politicians aren’t allowed to play)

 

I like baseball

It should be the sport

Of queens and kings

There is some contact

Though most it’s between the ball and the glove

And with the glove, the players

On the mound, at home plate, on the bases,

In the field

 

It is a game of grace

And you need no education for it

I’m all for school

But sometimes degrees are shams

In baseball, we don’t care

We don’t care who you are

Or where you’re from

Our adversaries often make great players

 

Ballet with bats and balls and hats

And gloves and, when at bat, a helmet

Nine innings to wait through

For excitement

But there is popcorn

Yes and beer

The seventh-inning stretch

 

And then the moments

Of foreverness

In a hit, a catch, a run

Safe or out

Games that in the sun or under artificial lights

They last

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Rachel Barkdoll on Unsplash

 

3

Fixing Morning

Fixing Morning

 

Lord,

I don’t know what

To say or do

Thank goodness for the

Autonomic processes

I sit here, tempting frozenness

Fruit of depression

And anxiety, I know

Though like gout,

It could be an exigent bout

With indecision

 

But decision-making requires

Quantities,

And I have none

Feeling beaten around by

The world, because I have been

What is left?

 

Then I look outside:

It is a pale scene

Morning light-blue, yellow light

Upon some branches

Other branches in the shade

Though the leaves are waving green

As if to signal spring, perhaps

Officially some weeks away

 

While, I’m sorry for ingratitude,

I tend to savor

Seasons as they come, anymore

(dreading the extremes—

why did you make these?)

So a sign of spring is fine

Even a comfort (thank you) but

Not a pressing need

I tend to love even when they’re difficult

All times I have

 

So if this pastiche outside

That only I behold has been

(and maybe not)

Arranged at all for me,

It might be an invitation

You know (I know you know),

To sit up,

Eat the toast,

Finish the coffee,

And move on

 

It looks to be a lovely day outside

And if I leave the noise inside

I’m sure I will hear birdsong

So much better

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

 

1

Stuff of Life

Stuff of Life

 

I should say something about love

Because I know

Nothing special

You can read the book as well as I

Write in the margins

Receive advice from those

Who live it closer

It’s not a single set

There are swords as well as feathers

Lions and sheep

Living near each other off the page

In a vision manifest

Somewhere for real

 

For now, nature’s what it is

While we borrow from it flesh and blood and bone

Muscles protecting organs

That will work on and off for a while

Is there love in this?

I think so

Gifts of Earth

Set in motion long ago

With us, we with it, for a time

And we hope longer

 

An existentialist should have her way

This moment, this now

We can count on this

Live on it

Not for wages

But for the working of those organs

As the gift of now

Unbroken moment without contract

Though gratitude would be appropriate

And spices all the rest

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash

 

1

Midgard

Midgard

(a waking dream)

 

I am on the second floor

Hell is quiet beneath

My Middle-Earth

While heaven rages above

Is that the war in heaven?

Is hell quiet now because it’s empty?

If so, the story goes

A third of heaven’s host

Will fall to occupy the deeper realm

With Satan as its ruler

The revenant of those who sought,

Sought what?

To take over?

Simply to protest?

To bargain for a will

Like that awarded humans?

 

We were your agents, Lord

Certainly, we would have managed

Better with a choice

In how to serve

A better talent might have been missed

A calling other than created

Sorry, it could happen

Might we have the chance

To find out who we are?

No?

That’s bitter

 

We are better than the rest

The scion of light says so

How must we, then, be heard?

Where shall we go that you might see?

There are the plains

Splayed by your fingers

We will practice farther below

Then emerge to tussle with the best

The ones loved more

We’ll find out who wins

If your lower creatures love us

Then you should withdraw into

Two-thirds of heaven left

More than enough

Since perfection

And the servile need

Nothing but a pin

Or a nail

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Moshe Harosh from Pixabay

(detail)

 

3

The People

The People

 

Centrist and moderate

The silent majority

The melting pot

The inexorable movement of a people

Because for all attempts to stop us

At all borders and with barriers,

We move

We are the most

Inexorably living, anyway

Maybe rudely, maybe with elegance

Bearing style

Or dirt from head to toe from growing things

(or both)

We cannot be stopped

Nature is with us

 

Insanity might say,

We’ll stop you with a bullet

Though before it runs out of ammo

Another force will kill the guns

Horror, shame, or for despots

Lack of profit

 

There is a story of a mountain people

I mean people who are mountains

Who look down on the plains

To see ants fighting without earning food

Or materials for homes,

For they cannot make the trails

 

Only one set: for warfare or for building

The mountain people are bewildered

And are always powerful

And now must contemplate

Relearning the ants or, failing that,

Clearing off the plains (for people who are

mountains it would be easy)

Allowing other species with the skills and

With forbearance

To have the fertile earth

 

Someone is watching now

To measure up the borders

All of them

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Sierra Nevada, United States

One of the most beautiful destination in California are the Sierra Nevada Range both in the summer and winter.

 

4

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