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Peace for All Time

Peace for All Time

(a three-part cycle)

 

1

Machine Language

 

Each moment’s a decision

To exhale,

To circulate some blood

To let the body stir for a while longer

To let the synapse burn

Brightly with mind-fire,

Transactions between what’s happening

And memory

Much of this is done for us

But there’s a partnership, I think

Between all parts

The automatic will take over for

The temporary

When immediacy of thought and movement

Are tired out

Call it sleep

Call it the second cup of tea

Taken on the porch

When for a time there’s nothing else to do

And this has been invoked

Because needed,

The ending of which we’ll debate

 

Peace an invention,

A transaction

Between all partners

Serving on the inside

 

2

Contrition

 

I won’t take it back

Not yet

I need to know the outcome,

Did I get anything I wanted

 

If penance is a prayer,

I’ll do my part

If it’s in bad feeling,

I’m already there

And counting

 

A return to normalcy

And what is that

It takes me out of this

Otherwise, I want

The special moments back

 

But it’s the future, now

Plu-imperfect

 

Please

Say them with me, maybe

All the prayers,

Then let’s move on

 

3

The Answer Is in Someone Else as Well

 

Inner peace

That’s cool

It’s not enough

If I’m in my chrysalis

And have no sight of yours

Or time

 

Where is my peace

If not in you?

This is cheating an invocation,

For it’s not a talk to God

But to you

The one nearby

And not inside

We need transaction, too

And more

 

You need to carry me

And I a part of you

A magic story in which twins

Keep a gem lit by the light force

Of the other

And there’s responsibility

 

In our story,

We will partner differently

That is, for real

Not to prevaricate conditions

But to say push on

Make peace because

We know each other now

To arbitrate

 

And there’s no other way

To build the day

That each must have

Into a present contract

As the future

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jarrod Reed on Unsplash

 

0

All We Know We Have

All We Know We Have

 

The existentialists

Have it right

The Positivists, too

The Deists

(God sets the world in motion,

leaves it go

leaves)

The one thing they know

Is that the present moment matters

As if there were nothing more

There might not be

For conscience, there isn’t

Living for tomorrow

Worse, living for heaven

Was medieval mischief

If I want my serfs to work

For me contentedly,

Then I need assure them

Of eternity

There will be no pain, no sickness

No poverty, no want for

Anything (the present moment, again)

Work now, suffer now

Under my thumb

Heaven’s coming

 

Lennon’s song has it right

Don’t dwell on heaven

Don’t fret hell

There are consequences now

Don’t put off righteousness

Live as if

There’s nothing next

What do we know,

There might not be

There isn’t

 

If we go together

That is family

If not, then I’ll have my present

Presence

You’ll have yours

And it is a gift

Too easy? Sure,

And not enough

And it doesn’t mean to re-create

The world every moment

We have standards

And philosophy

This is philosophy

But there is now to apply

There might not be another

 

Work it in

Walk through

Go on

It’s what we know we have

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash

 

4

Fire Out, Please

Fire Out, Please

 

Australia’s dying

How are the first people there?

The second people are in dire need

Those who survive the danger

Needing something of what

Was brought with them

And then called home

 

One prison colony is

Now another

No time for blame

This is a time for life

For rescue, healing, then rebuilding

New air is needed

Everywhere except the fire

That, God willing, must be bereft

Of oxygen to die

The irony of living

Losing all the green sources for

The birth of breath

For people

 

The animals who might reinhabit

Give birth again

A billion

Having been killed so far

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash

 

Australia bushfires: A billion animals will have been killed

MSN News· 23 hours ago

A billion animals will have died in Australia‘s devastating bushfires and those who make it through…

 

6

The Opposite of Magi

The Opposite of Magi

(for Epiphany, for any old epiphany)

 

The gift of the fools

The young who pay too much

For love

The old who believe there is too little

To be paying for at all

The city street is harsh for both

It’s only for transition

But because we feel the wind

Or the heat of summer,

We hope too much there’s something here

Only for us

And there is

The Earth remains a gift

And cities an invention

Not to mention farms

And small towns at crossroads

The roads themselves

The way that can only be felt

Across the desert

Through the forest

Choosing the strand to take

In a web of waterways

 

All ages have a chance

Must we always give

As in lose

Or in surrender?

Maybe so—if so, let’s make it

Worthwhile

(comes to mind is something about

aphoristic pearls and pigs,

sorry, pigs, a metaphor forwarding

the story)

Money, time, muscles, potential

Whatever it’s going to take

For betterment

One life, two lives, two and a half

A million

Can we count what matters,

Can we take it one by one?

The old response comes to mind

From the teacher trying to teach:

I don’t know if you can,

But you may

 

C L Couch

 

 

“The Gift of the Magi” is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal … en.wikipedia.org

Photo by Linh Nguyen on Unsplash

 

3

We Are X

We Are X

 

Dear God, what shall we do

With a new world?

Another planet

Or the realm of antimatter,

Once breached?

Huge or microscopic,

There is responsibility

Not to mention

An awareness come from something

Else, new denizens

To us

Of new worlds

 

We’ll make an impression

We’ll try to mask the greed

Maybe we will indeed

Send our best people

But everything we are beneath

Must surface

Might we change ourselves

(change ourselves)

In the moment of discovery?

Become better friends

Or enemies

Once someone else

Some entity of consciousness

Without doubt is known?

 

So supplication while we can

Please watch over all encounters

Keep our explorers safe

And when and how

The universe might need

To be kept safe from us

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Michael Henry on Unsplash

Seljalandsfoss, Iceland

 

3

Fall on Your Knees

Fall on Your Knees

 

A new and glorious morn

For no reason other than arriving

Nothing special

Meaning all things are

 

Look for saints outside,

Dodging puddles

Miracles in coffee cups

Epiphanies while

Sliding on coats and gloves

 

It’s the oddest day, today

For being normal

It’s stunning and spectacular

For no reason at all

Except for what it’s earned

In being here

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

West Hollywood, United States

 

0

Stopwatch for Genesis

Stopwatch for Genesis

(1 January 2020)

 

How do Arabs count the new year

How do Jews

How does China of

A billion tens of fingers?

How do those who know only seasons,

Who count days as

One traversal of the sun,

Then of the moon?

A change of feeling in the year

To favor birth or harvest?

It would be fair of all of them

To ask of us

The people of the nanosecond

Why there is counting and, once-measured,

Presumption to ownership

 

How does God who with better reason

Owns the days count them?

We guess a lot about this

A day

A day that is an age

I don’t think God can be bound

Held by our computing

Any more than the bars of an abacus

Should make a cage

Or calculators calibrated to electrocute

(maybe watch out for

servers serving)

 

There is even scandal in census-taking

For the king rather than the nation

It’s in the Chronicles and Samuels

People dying for

The autocrat’s close ticking

 

Now’s a fine and healthy time for remembering

God’s of chaos, too

And if we want, if we will

We can be held ourselves

(by God or ourselves)

To keep it either way

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

hide and seek

 

0

The Gray Gift

The Gray Gift

 

For the moment,

There is a blanket over everything

Like the one I woke up under

Anticipation of a holiday, perhaps

The blanket is light gray

It settles easily as it’s made up

Of daylight

I’m not sure what we might have done

To earn such protection and

And of

Muted beauty

 

It’s a quiet gift

And will last as long as diaphanous things

Might

Maybe longer, since nature

Knows the way around Main Street

Over it (upon it)

To serve it

And to keep it going

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by wilsan u on Unsplash

I don’t know where this is, but it’s somewhere.

 

0

Invitation’s Curling—Come in, Already

Invitation’s Curling—Come in, Already

 

If Christmas is the first day, then

This is the sixth

But then that makes the fifth

The twelfth

So maybe Christmas is its own

And then the following

Twelve days are tributes,

Are a season ‘til the sixth,

The magi

The baptism by his cousin John

The revelation by a dove

Of who he is,

Which is a lot of growing up in

Twelve or thirteen days

He was in a manger

Only six days ago

And soon, depending on the full moon

And the spring,

He will be grown and on a forty-day

Journey to Jerusalem

Such things will happen in that time

The biggest coming later

A cataclysm of the each and sky

Pierced by hammered beam

And crushing empire

The abhorrence of nature, even human

The death of everything

That had been hopeful

The death of him

The death of us

Any prospects in an honest joy of living

Then the count of days, only after

And by going back,

Really begins

 

But before so much of that

There is this

Half-season of Christmas

Sing the carols

Claim the gifts

Play and work

Burn the homely fires

Testify to this

The witness in each moment

Christmastide

The time no one will wait for,

That is wait for well

It has arrived

However romantic,

The darkness of anticipation’s passed

We are here now

This is the best where and when

We have

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Sora Sagano on Unsplash

 

0

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