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two poems for young people

(x = space)

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two poems for young people

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Youth

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They (you) look so young

Not like those near altars

Of antiquity

Who are forever beautiful

But cannot move

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These might be cared for carefully

That youth might be preserved

Youth cannot be preserved

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Youth might invest their own

(your own)

So that the coming days

Are rich

With age and wisdom,

Maybe things put by

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But (you) run without avarice

Or even long ambition

Become parts of a transitory mural

That is bright

All colors

Shapes

At least three dimensions,

Which will have no museum

Save in memory

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Locksmithing

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Who holds the keys?

Why are there keys?

Why are their locks?

What is kept?

What must be freed

Up with which

From being locked?

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Behind the door

Once opened

Nothing might be withheld

But secrets of the arrogance

The avarice in

Withholding

Private parties

Boring,

Frightening without joy

From the absconded powerful

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There might be secrets

For the young to own

(they, you

should have mentors)

If taught or teach themselves

(yourselves)

How to

Break out

x

This is the story

Of the end of age’s

Generation

The beginning of another

An ownership

That could calcify

So-called in privilege

Or turn around

Turn everything around

Toward all the growth

In revelation

And unwithheld resources

For life

With invention

Food, that is, and challenge

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Keeping democracy

(boo say some, but)

We need it

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C L Couch

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Burned Out at the Salton Sea

Photo by Tina Rataj-Berard on Unsplash

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La Paz

(x = space)

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La Paz

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I don’t mean peace

As ideal

We can’t have ideals now

Not on this side of things

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But we can have a working peace

Something for day to day

For ordinary

Do I mean compromise?

Don’t know—I mean

Talking about it,

Which I imagine will mean

Negotiation form time to time

My nation grows food

Mine has technology

Mine is famous for a labor force

Come on,

Let’s have peace

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More than a show,

Of course,

And something that admits our flaws

Because we are flawed

And for all we know the world’s flawed

And the cosmos, overall;

And who knows?

We might have had a hand in all that

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But we’re talking real peace

It must admit virtues and vice

Good days and bad

Rampant egos that on the good days

Know restraint,

While restraint is now the law

There are also mistakes

And errors

These are not sins

Though there are also sins

Deserving of confession

To confessors

And then the fixing-up

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We can do this:

We can have a real peace

Then everything we grow

Will grow

And each one will have one’s own

(don’t worry about a term for that)

And we can legitimately

Aim for the stars

Worthy of the company

Of all the objects

All the beings

We encounter

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There is more to say about this

More to figure

Maybe I’ll have time

You’ll have time

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C L Couch

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Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

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An Angel Visits Francis

(x = space)

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An Angel Visits Francis

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I speak to God today

God is quiet

Not uninvolved

With nothing noisy

To contribute

Beyond the rain outside

The singing tires

The occasional movement

Inside

From a neighbor

Or from me

x

I wonder when an angel

Visits Francis

How it goes

No, don’t get up

Relax the hand with the ring

No doubt you lift the office

With an instinct

Anymore

I’m here to rest with you

For a moment

To be still

You know the issues

And the crises in the world

One of us will tell you

When there are

Awful surprises

You are doing well

We are

I am

Sorry when you’re sick

The age and job

Do take it out of you

You could retire

Like your peer

Sometimes I think

He has the better part

But I don’t think you’ll give up

‘Til you have the sense

You’re done

Remember I am here

We are here

We fly around you

Dance with happiness

Or grief

You know we are not

The round things of the Renaissance

But are might beings

Wide in span

And awful

As in full of awe

To know us

And carry power

You know whose

And are ready

Should you wish us to defend

Evil forefend

Should you wish to rest with us around

And when you’re ready

To be escorted

Even carried

Home

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We are will

And we love you

x

Back to me

And God is ready for your voice

When you wish to speak

Or keep it in your mind

The better things

Are in your heart

We’re told,

Which means your spirit

The spirit of the Lord

Is with you, too,

Waking or sleeping

Like the song

Agents of God

Angels and nature

Sing around you

Sometimes difficult

Impossible, it seems,

To hear

But singing nonetheless

The music of the spheres

The song that’s in your sphere

Of hope

And love

To resonate with good things

To navigate the bad

There is help

In that

In both

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C L Couch

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Photo by gil on Unsplash

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Dear Earth

(x = space)

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Dear Earth

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I don’t know what to say

One person can’t apologize

We destroy you

And we need you

We like you for you move

Unlike the decorations

On the ancient vase

You move

With beauty

And with truth

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You have renewing skills

We won’t take them on

Or indeed respect them

We need pollution

Acid rain

Discarded plastic

Unsafe water

Trash as mountains

Outside cities,

All to justify

Our way of life

Our shiny, blindered way of life

That is so good

To look the other way

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Toward the moon?

Toward Mars?

Is there a hope

A plan

We can leave you

When our destructive preferences

Have finished you?

I think we see the Earth as vast

And it is

You are

So we have time

To reach the corners,

So to say

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Eventually,

Horizons shall meet

The burning and the melting

From each side

The drowning

The dissolving of safe ground

Between

And overwhelming water

Taking us away,

Which we can’t drink

Or with which to build

To clean

To take our oxygen

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How shall we change?

How can we say we’re sorry?

We try to change

But we’ve set up our war in this

Anti-polluters fight polluters

With the great indifference

In between

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Compartmentalized,

There are few agreements

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Like broken bulkheads,

There is no more breathing

To share

Each box of us collapses

Into an airless deep

The ship of Earth

Of you

Founders and

Shall sink

into gravity, under magnetic waves

Of other worlds

Whose LaGrange we used to share

In orbital mediation

With satellites

Asteroids and meteoroids

Not always in place, admittedly

And comets

Farther off yet neighborly

The suns that also spun out worlds

Other life forms

After here

To try at wholeness

Integration

While there had been us

Who had a turn

And turned

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Whose only hope

Might be in turning more

Turn again,

Which is repentance

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C L Couch

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A calving glacier. Witness to global warming.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

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Floods, Swords (two poems)

(x = space)

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Floods, Swords (two poems)

could read the second of them while waiting on the first

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Consider Extra Floods

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Jackson

And Jacksonville

Puerto Rico

Cuba

Indonesia

Pakistan

Recently, in Europe

Maybe here on Friday

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The Earth warms

The polar shelves

Send sheets of ice

Into the ocean

Water rises

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Storms increase

Maybe we should

Appreciate complaint

From our own

Planet

From the core to the skies

And those of us

All of us

On middle ground

Between the hell and heaven

Spirituality

Counting its own cost

In faith and lives

Of our own globe

In a waiting cosmos

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Consider Broken Swords

(Lord of the Rings)

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Sting was never fixed,

Which would have been bad

For marketing

Though reminding

If not teaching

Us quite rightly

For the story

That the sharpest swords

Don’t have to win the day

And brokenness and heroes

Go together

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The famous sword

The one that sang for Aragorn

Is fixed by Elven smiths

And ready for the final fights

In Rohan

Osgiliath

Minas Tirith

At the Black Gate

At last

These are the heroes whom we know

The king revealed

Wanderer and healer

The sword

That has a greater name

With supernal persona

Magic

In personality,

In character

As it were

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But Sting

Is in a box

In Rivendell

Until it’s brought out

For a hobbit’s use

An unknown being

Anonymity its armor

(which had served the king

for a time)

They would sting another spider

Fill with poison

Topping off the stinging burden

Of an eldritch thing

And promises

Nothing healing

‘Til the mountainside

And going in

To face the fire

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Goodness, there are heroes

There are lives

That serve the world

That sacrifice all pleasures

And promises

To take on one great evil

In front of armies

On one’s own

Inside mountains

At the gate

Of hell on Earth

Of hell on Middle-Earth

For all of us, between

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The small sword

Is character as well

Four heroes, as it were,

Famous

On the surface

Or unfamous,

Inside holes for homes

Then mines and caves

Tunnels without songs

Until at home again

To rest

When things are done

Awaiting passage to

A healing land

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Five heroes

Add two more

Then seven

Then many more

And villainous

And in-between corrupt

Great wars to settle things

The hobbits home at last

We close the books

So are we

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C L Couch

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Photo by Octavian Dan on Unsplash

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Remember the Sabbath

(x = space)

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Remember the Sabbath

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To keep it holy,

That is,

Set aside

For a spiritual purpose

Take ordinary things

Like the materials

For temple and for church

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Like rest and relaxation

Contemplation

Talking about easy things

As well

Easy play

The pleasure of your company

Ordinary things

Set aside in honor of creation

And creator

That’s all we need to do

One commandment kept

x

We may interpret;

We’ve denied it

And the consequences

Having been directed

Over ages

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Ordinary set aside

It should be a good day

On another day, when scheduling

Demands

I’ve said before, but I didn’t

Make these things

That go on being made:

A new set of six days follows

Then a seventh

A new chance

Almost absurdity

Of reason

ETs will ask,

And you didn’t take the free

Day that your God directed you

To take?

We’ll be leaving now

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Have the sabbath day

It’s good, clean fun

Let’s hope we could manage that

Against ongoing, human depravity

The other days

It is the easiest of hopes

And means

A sabbath

For salvation

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C L Couch

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Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

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We Deceive Ourselves

(x = space)

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We Deceive Ourselves

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And the truth is not in us

Self-deception

In the liturgy, because of

Self-righteousness

A belief that we are right and

Good in all things

And that sins committed

Must have been done

By someone else

Or misunderstood

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But there’s another voice

A voice of conscience

The angel on the left shoulder

Pitted against the devil

On the right

(so go the cartoons)

Not subtle or complex

A voice that says

You’re wrong

Not like the critic’s voice

But prodding

In a way that

Doesn’t hurt so much

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Comes in waves

Not the correcting

But the minding

Like the waves we hear

When holding the shell

Next to our ears

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The truth is not in us

We deceive ourselves

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Can we fix this?

Not forever ‘til forever

Though there are mortal measures

If you ever went to Sabbath school

Or heard about goodness

Have read something

Watched something on TV

Or on-line

Without sending anything

(without expectation)

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Then you can write the next part

You may

(me, too)

Without deception

Or deception at a minimum

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C L Couch

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The cited part is from Christian Scripture (1 John 1:8) and the (Catholic, Protestant) service liturgy.

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Photo by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash

Louvre – Tuileries, Paris, Frankreich

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When Worlds No Longer Can Collide

(x = space)

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When Worlds No Longer Can Collide

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This is not

What I want

I want the innocence

Without the naivete

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I want

To like the colors

All of them

The rainbow

And the color wheel

x

I want

To enjoy

The softness of felt

From the playful

Learning boards

Of childhood

x

I want

To be both

Simple and profound

To have some shapes

Some textures

That have meaning

Day to day

x

That all of this

Is my philosophy

And if I wear a tie

Or shiny shoes,

No one should care

x

But me

And you

With whom I share

The pleasure in the day

In the life

And we have met

Should we meet

Choosing to sip coffee

At a café by the lake

In Switzerland

I have made up

x

(made up the café

and your company

not Switzerland that

has been around

for a while

and I’ve never been there)

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I’d like anyone

To get this

For pursuits,

Philosophy

Share in it

In these

Make your own

To have

To offer

Where you imagine

We might meet next

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C L Couch

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When Worlds Collide is a novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie.  There is a sequel titled After Worlds Collide.  They are science fiction, and I recommend them.

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Photo by Danny Lines on Unsplash

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What Sigmund Freud, Erma Bombeck, and Jean Shepherd Knew

(x = space)

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What Sigmund Freud, Erma Bombeck, and Jean Shepherd Knew

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Some memories

Are childish

Because they come

From children

We might cringe

From the foolishness

More so from

Childish behavior

From adults

From the adult

Inside

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Well, I’m not sure

If memory can cleanse

Embarrassment

Though it could teach

Humility

Or another understanding

So that’s why

I said or did

The thing

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Otherwise, we cringe

Again

When something no one else

Can see

Because it’s in

The mind,

A symbol of regret

Passing by

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C L Couch

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Photo by Jisun Han on Unsplash

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