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Firenze

Firenze

 

My sister and her family evacuated Wilmington

Before the hurricane

We’re “bugging out,” she said, no doubt

A reference to all the M*A*S*H episodes we used to watch

 

Now they’re home, she says

No electricity but plenty of red wine

And all the cleaning-up to do

They’re both alive

Their little dog, too

Old Poodle

While the storming moves up here, I guess

Maybe it will be less

I don’t really know

Who does?

The forecast is given in percentages

 

And we’ll joke about

The job one gets to have

For being paid to get something wrong

 

C L Couch

 

 

“Ever stared down the gaping eye of a category 4 hurricane? It’s chilling, even from space,” says European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex), who is currently living and working aboard the International Space Station as a member of the Expedition 56 crew.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/staring-down-hurricane-florence

 

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Pluto Attacks

Pluto Attacks

 

The problems of impatience

The perils

I hang up on sellers, anymore

They’re doing a job, I know

But I can’t handle little parts of

Conversation prior to a pitch

I feel the pressure

Lean into my wall

Pressing on the shield

Of disclosure

 

A stranger wants me to buy

I have nothing and want nothing

In that way

Maybe you relate

I do not curse

I do not wish ill upon the current

Generation of marketers

Or the next

I simply want the phone to answer with

The known

The friendly, the familiar

Some comfort in connection

 

So I can’t listen, anymore

Can you?

Does your day have either holes

Or heroic capacities

To have the agenda pushed

With additives or promises, once

Paid for?

 

You are better than I

And I imagine you are, anyway

You have peace

Where I sense only perturbation

You can give

When I must withhold

Energy, even motes of time

 

Well, this is me

This is me now

Don’t try to sell me anything

It burns the hole burned through long ago

I don’t want to have what’s left

Set up on the block

In a marketplace of phantoms

 

C L Couch

 

 

Grzegorz Rejniak

https://www.freeimages.com/photo/old-phone-1313726

 

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Hot Spots

Hot Spots

 

It’s close enough to be war

Venezuela, Colombia

The Philippines, Myanmar

Eastern Ukraine

Syria, Yemen, the Sudans,

And Nigeria (thanks to Boko Haram)

These are near enough to war

And there are other places

Do we name Chicago?

 

Are wildfires war? Then we must

Add California

And the violence of our spirits?

Where does that extend the boundary?

 

Is it a cosmos that wars as well?

In terms of matter, we might claim entropy

Or the mustard gas of stars’ annihilation

But where is will?

I think we need to know

 

This becomes our place in the universe as well

Does matter tilt toward intention

Or simple cessation?

Whose woods these are I think I know.

Does it participate,

The maker and the builder—

Does it build?

 

Do we matter,

Does matter matter?

Does a notion of a providence bamboozle?

Okay, I don’t think so, the Calvinist

In me will out

 

We need to talk about this

Let’s think first,

Maybe set something down

Like homework

Then come together, class,

To learn

 

We learn from each other

Dialogic, the style of Socrates

Synthesis, Hegelian

 

On the other side, what then?

We live more fully,

Fed on coffee, pastries, wine, and cheese

Civil plates’ discussion

Offering cups of cold water

Never forget that

A metaphor made real every time

Even a commandment

 

We live better together

Each one has one’s own

It is a choice

It is a pleasure

A present

And a future

 

C L Couch

 

 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

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Emergency Calls

Emergency Calls

(remembering 9/11 in the USA)

 

Today in my part

We are remembering

A horrific attack on innocents

By crazy people

This kind of murder happens

Elsewhere

My country is not the battleground

So often

Syria, Yemen, Colombia, Myanmar

The Philippines, Somalia

Sudan

We’ve sometimes had a hand in these

That might have made the crazy

People crazier

Enacting their cause here

 

On this day, we remember here

Where death came to passengers,

Firefighters, office people, and

The rest

Companies of normal people

Noncombatants, we would say

If this were anything like war

Between fair nations

 

I suppose on planet Earth

Wars and war-like actions must

Happen in someone’s yard

The playing fields, business places

Farm, and town

We have few dedicated battle zones

The DMZ, maybe ocean surfaces

And depths

Air and now we think to weaponize

Space, above and beyond

 

So war must happen close to home

Inside

And things warlike, if not war

Which then we call killing

We call it murder

And I suppose on someone’s ugly surface

There is a plan to do it again

Pray that we stop it

And praise those who do

 

But as we honor peace

So may we honor them:

The victims, those who ran toward

The concussions of air and sound

And matter

Turned into explosion and horror

Metal, blood, and bone

All those who died first

First helpers

And the many who were saved

Who are with us, still

 

We are here

Remember

Celebrate

Pray for cessation

Pray for profusion

The horror gone

And peace prevail

 

C L Couch

 

 

By United States v. Zacarias MoussaouiCriminal No. 01-455-AProsecution Trial ExhibitsExhibit Number P200066Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Russavia using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15252009

 

 

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The Sacrifice of Isaac

The Sacrifice of Isaac

 

What is remarkable is the presence of the angel

Who stayed the hand of Abraham, bearing

The knife or whatever would be taking away

 

Isaac from his life

And is it remarkable

The surrender of the spirit of the son

To be carried away from the promise not of prophecy

But of parenthood

 

It happened

It would never be forgotten

My father took me to a place and set me down

To steal my life

Rams could not do this time

I must be the sacrifice

 

He is the offering to God

For what

Sorrow of the people

Plea for repentance

Future abundance in the land

 

Is it enough

To give up himself,

The words promised his father and his mother,

The dealing out of Ishmael,

His mother

 

Once sacrificed, always gone

Even spared, what should be left

Of hopes and dreams

And a father’s guard

If not affection

 

What is left for Isaac:

Was he blinded by the presence of the angel

Suffuse with the strength and majesty

Of God’s own following,

Will he live in love and faith and

Aspiration for a lifetime?

 

So much later, David weeps for Absalom

We might also wonder about the tears

Of Abraham

Relief, sorrow, the temerity of

Surrendering all sides to

Barter with the future

Of a parent

Of a people

Of a child

 

C L Couch

 

 

(caption) The sixth-century C.E. floor mosaic from the Beth Alpha synagogue, in Israel’s Jezreel Valley. The mosaic lay near the door, so that anyone who entered was confronted by the scene. Walking from here to the apse, visitors crossed a large mosaic zodiac and then a panel depicting a lulav (palm branch) and etrog (citron), menorahs, and the Ark of the Law—the same objects that accompanied the Akedah image at Dura-Europos 300 years earlier.

(from) https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/binding-sacrifice-isaac/?mqsc=E3987540&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDDaily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=ZE8A9JZ80

 

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And Does It Take a Sabbath Day

And Does It Take a Sabbath Day

 

And does it take a sabbath day

To have a larger thought

To encounter feeling that goes

‘Round the world

 

Maybe it does

Though the Lord knows

I can make my own

And, like entitlement, could call it

Anything I want

Though usually it’s Friday

Maybe Thursday

 

I used to retreat and rearranged the week

I’d go out on Thursday afternoon

Stay through the night

Often not sleeping, maybe by intent

My own dark night of the soul

Then I’d have Friday to go downstairs

To meet with the director

We’d talk of Francis and Gerald May

And would I train as he did

So far, I haven’t done so

 

All that has ended, as I guess it had to

Not because of miffed occasions

I’m not sure we ever had a one of those

But because mortality calls unevenly

And those of us are left

To fill in steps like pulling in

Loose lines on board we weren’t expecting

Never are

 

I must do now for me

Chaos, order

Void, abundance

I don’t arrange these very well

But they are big

Like large thoughts on a sabbath day

Friday or whenever

 

I must find my own way home

Find more company than this

Than these

Sensations, wishes, little more

Not to fill in emptiness

But something hale to

Place over the pain

Like a well-timed blanket

On a cold, cold winter day

 

When I couldn’t go out, anyway

To find the house above the creek

On made-up sabbath days

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://12footcwc.org/

 

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Clergy Sex Abuse

Clergy Sex Abuse

 

I don’t know how to sound

Holier than thou

When thou art rancid hate

And destruction of a soul

 

It happened to me

It happened to you

I know some of the names

Maybe you do, too

 

They truck with intimacy

Allowing it to slip from God

Into human spirits

Trusting

Even to think the pastor boring

Well, there is another kind

 

Earth weeps enough

And why would God need more tears

From God’s own

Relegated

Abrogated

To the underside of things

Unto the part of us that’s shocked

Broken

Alone

 

C L Couch

 

 

Anil Kumar

HeartBroken – Tears are the Baptism of Soul

 

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An Eighth Day

An Eighth Day

 

If we were given

an extra day,

would we play?

 

It if were announced,

a day that wouldn’t count

for acquisition,

a gift of food and air

and water,

a day when no one could

wage war

or victimize another,

would we play?

 

Would some say

not me,

I’m too urgent,

I have to impress,

nature to command,

so many things to hoard

and wielding bellicose conversation,

I will not play.

 

Well, go home, then.  You may

have a room in which to

exist; nothing

will work, and there will be

no toys.

 

Angels will referee, if need be,

though mainly they’ll be waiting

by the fields, near the water,

at the table in the

houses that have

family rooms

 

to help, to pass out balls and

gloves and discs that fly,

to spread out the board, play-cash,

and tokens

while everyone gets the piece

they want to play.

 

Everyone gets chosen

everyone feels first

everyone gets a turn;

agendas are released

and for a change, all genders

and colors are assets like

winning extra turns.

 

The cosmos will keep quiet,

slide over to tomorrow.

When it’s time, we’ll catch up fine.

After our eighth day

for play.

 

C L Couch

 

 

Nyla Moss, an eighth grader at Polaris Charter Academy, plays at Kells Park in Chicago’s West Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Andrew Gill/WBEZ

For West Side Students, Playing Outside Is Protesting Against Gun Violence

Linda Lutton

May 26, 2017

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/for-west-side-students-playing-outside-is-protesting-against-gun-violence/3f7a4cb7-ec1c-4cc4-817e-3ee5e5ca865a

 

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Pilings

Pilings

 

I live by piling things

Maybe you do, too

If not, you’ve saved yourself

From a lot of dust

It’s the books

 

I’m gleaning, though the

Stacks remaining still look

Awfully tall

And the size of some

What made me think I should

Have texts as sizable as

Tables?

 

And here’s the thing:

I need shelves

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsp

 

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