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two poems, again I’m not sure why

(x = space)

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Sci-Fi Goats

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Goats eat anything

I am reminded

As do pigs

I don’t think goats eat tin cans

As cartoons and other stories

Tell

But maybe

Maybe in the multiverse

Anything is possible

A metal-eating goat

On a world of lead

Might be

Just the thing

While justice of materials

Is worked out on other worlds

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Not that we’re excused here

We have what we have

To use

To keep

Or we lose ourselves

Without a possibility

Of portals—

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Maybe goats

They might be traversing

And we never know

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Poeming

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It’s not hard

But it should be honest

In challenging to write

About anything

(say, sci-fi goats, above)

What is the real story?

In not in fact,

Than in judicious metaphor

And maybe both—yes,

Both would be better

So choose the topic

Or let the topic choose

Get to work with

Heart and head,

All the muscles,

All the organs,

All the aspects

(I mean senses),

All the parts

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Breathe through it all

Let the apparatus work

Once something is set down,

Go over it

And over it again

(not too many times)

Then release it like

Letting go of healed birds

Into the wild sky

Then let the work

Make sense of the world

For a while

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C L Couch

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Hello, Friends

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel at Unsplash

https://unsplash.com/@rgaleria

Glattalpsee, Muotathal, Suiza

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two poems, I don’t know why

(x = space)

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Lost World

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Dumb means mute

Kids are small goats

Am I becoming

That old person?

A semicolon’s

Better than a comma splice

President of the United States

Is always capitalized

Unlike another mention

Of a president

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Defensive driving

Is a good thing

People should know

The lyrics of the first verse

Of the national anthem

And the lyrics to

One Christmas carol

(take your pick)

All is not lost in lost traditions,

I suppose;

I made that last one up

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No re-creating the world

In my image,

Thank the Lord

(thank you)

It took me a while

To learn “whom” from “who”

So I’m going to use it

But I don’t mind

If you don’t,

Which is mostly true

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The Lost World is a story first by Arthur Conan Doyle, then by Michael Crichton who used the title as a tribute and allusion, as I am using the title here.

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Supplicant

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Well, it’s early and I’m up

What shall you have for me,

Dear Lord?

What might I do for you?

Nothing, I think, that’s

Worthwhile

All right, that’s worthy

What do I have to contribute to a

God?

No gold, no blood-letting

(sorry)

Nothing awful

That might have been awesome

Only me and the wretched qualities

I have—

That grace has saved

For a wretch like me—

Can offer

Most of the time, I don’t know

What these are

Help me, Lord,

To understand

What I have that could ever

Please, if not

Satisfy

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“Amazing Grace,” a song by John Newton

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Photo by AJITH S on Unsplash

Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, India

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C L Couch

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Civil Conspiracy

(x = space)

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Civil Conspiracy

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If everyone had what they want

Aberrance aside

I mean a place to live

That is secure and likable

Food

For need and a little more celebration

The chance to learn

Some might say we have those things now

We don’t

Water that’s safe and without fear

A measure of peace

In our days and nights

Would this be a better world?

Of course, it would be

How otherwise?

A job

That’s not a dream deferred

So that we rise

Oh, yes, we rise

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Join me a campaign, will you?

An open conspiracy

To find the smaller and the larger

Ways,

Practice them

To meet the needs of others

And ourselves

That’s it: no more profound than that

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C L Couch

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Extinction Rebellion September 2020 Protests for the Launch of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (CEE Bill) across the City of London

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

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Erev Yom Kippur

(x = space)

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Erev Yom Kippur

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Grant us mercy

When we cannot find it in ourselves

To give one another;

Show us kindness

When we’ve forgotten how to show it;

Forgive us

When we forget the value in forgiving

With the newness of life, after

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CLC

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for Christians, there is the sibling and the altar (Matthew 5:24)

and reconciliation in most other traditions, hopefully

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F/GURA PROJECT #1

Photo by Norbert Kowalczyk on Unsplash

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Gaze

(x = space)

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Gaze

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Give me a

Small piece of Earth

For a while

With dust swept in the corner

Without perfection

A hard floor

Some stones for walls

A ledge from which to look

While I can look

Out upon, well,

Everything you’ve made

And the uneasy alliance

You have with

Your creatures

Maybe all of them

Certainly the ones who

Made it out of Eden

Not unscathed

And how much we took with us

No one knows for now

And it’s been a while

And in this place

I’ll ponder you

And us

And our place with each other

In the grander scheme

Of things,

Which for now is

Still a guess

Though sometimes

We think we’re getting closer

But I won’t care about conclusions

Rather the sacraments

In each moment

Normal, mortal

Materials

Turned

Taken inside

To serve a spiritual purpose

However far

A thought of you

And us

Might take us

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C L Couch

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The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre de Caussade

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Photo by Brigi Uhrin on Unsplash

Budapest, Budapest, Magyarország

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Second Book of Genesis

(x = space)

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Second Book of Genesis

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God kept saying

That it’s good

Creation’s good

Each day of it

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To be there

Hear the names

Have God speak into our minds

In pre-fall grace

With understanding

There is delight

And faith

In all this

Without they’re being named

Only the day and night

All the animals

Us

And then a time of rest

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If we had been there

If we could have touched their hands

And drawn them back

From the tree

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C L Couch

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Thirty Means End of Story

(x = space)

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Thirty Means End of Story

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How will it end

We do not know

What happens next

We have great lore

And supposition

We have stories

Of returns

We should believe them

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C L Couch

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(not years—thirty is or used to be a sign in journalism)

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Photo by Rishabh Sharma on Unsplash

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holy and holy

(x = space)

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holy and holy

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one priest one day a year

I wonder if it were cleaned

maybe by the priest

how dusty would it get

without a cleaning

over time

would the priest walk through dust

to find the glorious container

in which was God

maybe a walk through dust

reminded the priest

of mortality

on the way to what is glory

and shall never change

such a day it might be

when splendid robes

are marred

walking through the dust

accumulated

by passing time

by mortality

by forbidding rules

with eternity beyond

how tempting it might be

to stay

not have to walk back

through the particles

of death

reminding everything unclean

but the assignment ends

other rules pull

back through earth

back to earth

changed

moving faith

for another year

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c l couch

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Photo by Andy Køgl on Unsplash

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spooky times

(x = space)

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spooky times

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have a good hallowe’en

be safe

no razor blades

did that ever happen

not to invoke a retry

of insanity

nothing to do

with trick-or-treat magic

costumes for the veil

that entertain

the fun kind of fear

civil ghosts

good witches who

spell out

in autumn

south in spring

in chocolate letters

marshmallow punctuation

masks

ephemeral disguise

‘til it’s time to treat

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c l couch

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Four pumpkins, individually carved for Halloween 2020. One with a COVID mask.

(detail)

photo by the blowup on Unsplash

London, UK

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