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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

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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

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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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Impositions

(x = space)

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Impositions

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The palms are burned

From last year

And ashes are prepared

To go on foreheads

All day long

As Lent begins with ashes

As reminders of mortality

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We might not

Understand mortality

Since we want to live forever

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Which might be the impulse of

Creation

To want and think the days

Will never end

As we live

Tomorrow into tomorrow

Without concern

Until concerns are imposed

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Wondering what do we know

Of immortality

Except that we think about it

A great deal

When not ignoring

Thoughtless into tomorrow

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The assurance of faith

Stories of coming back

Visitations

Apparitions

Scant stories

And the few that are detailed

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Regarding intimations

Life catches up with impulse

What happens

We’ll know

We’ll know what we know

Assurance of faith

Or amazing-grace

Surprise

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C L Couch

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Photo by William Krause on Unsplash

Burnt bushes and trees in Sardinia, Italy.

Sardinia, Italy

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Cyber Prayer

(x = space)

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Cyber Prayer

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God, help

The people of Ukraine

And the Russians who

Protest the war

And are arrested

By autocracy

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Brave days for faith

And hope

And love

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Amen

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C L Couch

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Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

Cyberpunk Tunnel

London, UK

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Two Days before Lent

(x = space)

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Two Days before Lent

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There are too many

Things to pray for:

Ukraine, COVID, the

Other violence

In the world

At home

In the heart

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As it happens,

There is a season

Starting Wednesday

A season really good

For prayer

And such

Lean living for a while,

As we can manage,

Extra services perhaps

Of kinds

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A time whose name

Means slow and full

And other things

That say

Slow down, remember me

My teaching

From the start

As if to say

I meant creation from the start

To teach

To have us read the surfaces

As teaching and as

Starting points

From which to dig, to dive

Or from which

To fly

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As if to say

We have this time now,

You and I,

In which to walk as if

There were a garden

In which to talk about

All things

Anything

You like

Or don’t like

But need to share with me

Because I’m wise

And all love

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C L Couch

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Photo by Susanne Schwarz on Unsplash

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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

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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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To Ishmael

(x = space)

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To Ishmael

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What will be left

Between

These two countries now?

What of Isaac and Ishmael

Of neighbors

And of families?

How will they get along?

Whom will they know

To trust at all?

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Will they come to a table,

Meet in a field?

Shall the words of Mizpah follow

Or better

An embrace?

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We have these words

Restoration

Reconciliation

How will we enact these

Make them manifest?

How might peace abound

While the search

For food and intact buildings

Is abundant?

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They came together

To bury their father

To bury death;

Nothing more

Broke out between

Them, then

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Might generations know

Viable forgiveness

Dead anger

Such as render borders blurred

In teary vision,

In homely

Transactions:

Dinner by

A fire that heats and cooks

With chairs left out

For friends

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C L Couch

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Photo by Gradienta on Unsplash

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Useful Prayer

(x = prayer)

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Useful Prayer

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What do we ask

For Ukraine

And for Russia?

Pious, frankly useless things

That everyone be safe

That the war stop now

That hearts and minds

Be changed

Well, that last one we can work on

We know you can work on

Done through truth,

Sometimes through righteous prophecy

Sometimes in dreams

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Change minds and hearts, then,

Lord

Help us to change ours

Help us to change theirs

‘Til ours and theirs are one

In peace

Not because sides win

But because in being made

And set to live,

All sides are one

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Yes, and to keep folk safe

To stop the war right now,

Because miracles

Are nonetheless

And notwithstanding

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C L Couch

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Photo by Sergey Vinogradov 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

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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

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Some of these

Lampooning, no doubt

Some of it relief

As if to say

The Soviets are people, too

And we are people, too

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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

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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

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There were missiles all over

Here and there

I didn’t see any,

Though there were sonic booms above

From military aircraft

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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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