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Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra

(Homer, Aeschylus)

 

Agamemnon

Leader of the Greek forces

That went to war against Troy

He won a victory

He sacrificed his daughter for safe passage

From a god

And brought a prophet back to Greece

As a trophy and a mistress

The antique word and calling, concubine

 

His wife would dominate the next act

In a drama of her own

In which he would finally become the victim

The real accomplishment he’d earned

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Travelling Runes – https://www.flickr.com/photos/travellingrunes/2949254926/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10603596

The Mykonos vase (750 to 650 BC), with one of the earliest known renditions of the Trojan Horse. (Note the depiction of the faces of hidden warriors shown on the horse’s side.)

 

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Pastiche

Pastiche

 

A mélange of media

Rococo

Painting leaps out of sculpture

Plaster writhes from metal into stone,

Lurks in upper corners

I don’t know how much we make of this

(the making and interpreting)

These days,

Though steampunk runs some tries at this,

I think

(and really well)

 

I remember pictures from a textbook

I doubt I’ll get to Spain to see

Just past the golden age

But I appreciate the media

Mixing up to make a life

Yours, mine, and ours

McLuhan notwithstanding,

We are the message

We go through the doors

Then rise

And all the art we’ve made

 

C L Couch

 

 

Prettysleepy2

https://pixabay.com/en/steampunk-gears-pipes-brass-door-3222894/

 

 

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Parabling

Parabling

(Chapter 10, Actions of the Apostles)

 

The sheet unfolded

Peter saw so many things

And was told they are all

Good

Enjoy it, Peter

This is the bounty of the Earth

Fertile plains surrounded by

Its hills and all its oceans

 

Kosher is important

It’s devout and, frankly, safer

But how could there be

A kosher forest?  Or a kosher

Ocean or a sky?

 

All that is created and blessed

Is in the litany of Genesis

And that is good

Darkness and light

Water and land

Animals and our charge

To care for it all

 

Everything that bore the movement

Of God’s spirit and carries

The imprint, still

Having been made

Against the loneliness

Of God

 

Peter’s solitude is challenged

The exclusion of society

The orthodoxy of an elite

Must open the door

Rend the curtain

Opens its doorway

Baring the inside

Of robes and crowns

 

Relent, ye wealthy of the Earth

You are not Solomon

Who knows whose obedience

He owes

And a better nature

Demanded in a daily life

Turning over all the neighbor’s need

Like finding small, hard, and fibrous plants

To harvest from dark soil

 

Peter is enlightened;

Through the story,

Now are we

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://rosycroix.blogspot.com/2010/04/clothes-line.html

 

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Ghost Walk

Ghost Walk

 

The past haunts it,

Doesn’t it

It walks with us at night

Well past the witching hour

Sometimes I am awake

On my side

Fearing that my heart might sometime explode

Figuratively but

A crisis with literally arrhythmic parts

It can be a problem

How do I stay awake

(too easily)

And how might I fall asleep again

(that’s hard)

 

There is an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show

When, for fear of something, Laura doesn’t want to

Sleep, and so she flips up

All the switches in her house

Plays music and the television

And gets the neighbor to stay up

With her

And there are other alterations

 

And, you know, I’m sure

There is some resolution

(it’s a half-hour show),

Though I have no idea what that was

 

But the black-and-white imaging is invoked

When I can’t sleep or think about

The lack of sleep

In the middle of a night and wish for rest

 

C L Couch

 

 

CC0 Public Domain

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/697047

 

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Slipstream

Slipstream

 

Too many thoughts to keep

I must let them go

Around the corner, just before

The turn, a thought moving

Too fast toward the new street

 

And I can’t catch up

To tap it on the shoulder

To say, Slow down!  The neurons

Flash, and I miss everything

 

I want to get to know them

Look, here’s a café just along the way

We might stop, have some coffee

A nosh

While I may get to know you, maybe,

If you will,

Slip you in my pocket to go over with

Clarity, later on

 

No?  The synaptic pace is set?

I’ll simply lose you, then

Have what marks I made

(little more than bird tracks)

Fold them in a file

Read over the pages from

Time to time

Hoping for salience with

A slowed-down sense

Of light speed

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Joachim Lutz, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20052646

 

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Creaking

Creaking

 

I’m sitting, learning forward

On a Sunday afternoon

As if I were counting vertebrae

I can’t hear them, not yet

Maybe someday

Ageing with an e or without

Isn’t so bad

Especially when most of what’s wrong

Has been extant for years

I wonder if someone else could relate

With ailments long-standing

Conditions that haven’t healed right

Events from long ago

That still have their way

For good or ill

Ill when it’s nightmarish

In the waking now

 

Creaking like an old door

That still moves

Thank goodness

But like a challenge that

Deserves a well-oiled response

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://pxhere.com/id/photo/1201631

 

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Home Keys

Home Keys

 

I know who I am

Do you?

It’s not a challenge

Maybe

 

Maybe it’s a way to say

That if we talk

And as we listen,

It will go better if

If you have some understanding

Who you are

Me, too

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/627056

 

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A Dose of Paradox

A Dose of Paradox

 

They sit next to each other on the shelf

Salt and pepper

In the fridge, mustard and ketchup

Beer and wine

The opposites that don’t attract

But must live near each other

And often used together

 

Complementary colors on the wheel

Yellow and purple

Orange and blue

The colors of Christmas

And the Italian flag (add white)

 

Paradox is ecumenical

I guess I should say yin and yang

But it’s not a coin, you know

Two coins thrown into an ocean, more like

Love and death

Sex and abstinence

Not opposites, not really

Not two sides

Not life and death

But death and resurrection

They must be by each other

On the shelf

They must be used

Both and unevenly

There isn’t a good pattern that we see

Through our dark glasses

 

It’s ecumenical

It’s church

Folk who get together for no other reason

And often reason breaks it down

The Muslim and the Jew

The Christian and the Hindu

The Buddhist and the Taoist

Confucian and Shinto

All those who have a way

And have it rather exclusively

 

Thankfully, the broad shelf is there

The place for all things to dwell

In readiness

No one wins unless

All win

Respect is the spice

That will keep us at the table

Using everything we know

And not so much

 

Mister Marlow said restraint

And he was right

The horror was in letting go

Not knowing there are many directions in

Which to fall

 

Well, there it is

It’s Friday

For those who have one, the end of

The work week

It is finished

Let’s hope for restoration now

Before the work begins again

And those who work on weekends will

Have another day

See, the cycles do not hold

For all

And without doubt

Not in the same way

 

C L Couch

 

 

MiraCosic

https://pixabay.com/en/salt-pepper-shaker-seasoning-food-993111/

 

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At 5 a.m., How and Why

At 5 a.m., How and Why

 

God

You are there

And I am here

The distance between us need

Be no more than a filament

The breadth of a capillary

A pulse between two nuclei

Or the space can be

The width of a world

 

That has more to do with me

Since no qualifying of divine will stands

Beyond the condition you placed upon yourself

For a savior

 

One who redeems as God and a person

Flesh molded with spirit

Majesty in ordinary undertaking

To teach, to heal, to live, to die in innocence

And then all will returns

In death defeated

 

It is a Christian way to know things

It might not be yours

 

But to God

I wonder how you stayed the angel

Who took the knife from Abram’s hand

But would keep it in the Roman plan

To hack a cross together

Display one who dies because

A decision was made

In Sanhedrin and handwashing

Not for justice but for status quo become murderous

 

Abraham was flawed, so was Noah

So was Sarah, so was Isaac, so was Miriam

Yet you made them whole

As all were knit together

Except your child

Who was you and yet was not excused from execution

Out of innocence

 

How do you mitigate your will

And maybe you never do

You allow yourself to bleed

Blood and water, liquids running life

 

You could have changed it all, and you didn’t

Change a thing

I am amazed and horrified

And would never lift my eyes again

Except

You promise joy and peace

And whoever have I been to argue with you

I must be content

 

Allow for Easter

For greater pain unknown anywhere on Earth,

Which splits the universe

And renders understanding into splinters

Of crystalline grace

‘Til grace is all that’s left

With which you save

 

With which you drag us into heaven

From drowning in deep waters

Filled with tendrils from wary sources

Always ready, in fact plotting

To bring us down

Away from light

From one day into eternity

 

I don’t get it

I don’t have to

I am here

You are there

And here

Closer in than I shall ever be

My God

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

 

 

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