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Before the Formal Feeling

Before the Formal Feeling

 

When there’s pain,

Everything enwrapped that might be good

‘Til sight is pushed down toward the ground

And placing arms around

Takes nothing but

Dust and air

 

And ashes that rise to sting the face

And render bitter tasting in the mouth

What then is left

That’s hale or promising

The hope of life for

Tomorrow or even in time that remains today

 

I think I’ll have the drink that bites

And chew on some bread that’s burnt:

Salt and ashes

Herbs that sting,

Spells of ordinary stuff

Quotidian magic

 

The miracle in the day might be a breeze;

Some of the dust of flesh

Cobwebs

Might rise off the nightmare,

Lets gazing up to see some yellow light

 

Falling on new leaves

Caught in early spring

First breaths upon the earth

 

C L Couch

 

3

Chechnya

Chechnya

 

Where, reportedly,

Our sons are murdered

They will not sin anymore

Or commit the crimes

The states say are capital

They will not bring

Us down with them in shame

And loss of standing

Though we are prostrate in

Outrage and

 

In grief

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chechen-authorities-kill-gay-sons_us_590b4038e4b0e7021e9521aa?24823947&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Morning%20Email%20050517&utm_content=The%20Morning%20Email%20050517+CID_42339fa1e0c9b39e94528d5c6c29d010&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=families%20are%20following%20through&ncid=newsltushpmgnewsThe%20Morning%20Email%20050517

 

1

Crime Scene

Crime Scene

 

She was asleep

And it fell upon her

Trapped from life

That left her never

To wake again

 

It is a still scene, now

Xes on the trees

Still riddled with disease

But will not

Fall now except to mortality

 

Her home crushed

She will not live there again

The roof is gone, and

The better home will not have her

Again

Unless haunted in memory

 

The bitterness in life

That will go on

If in arrhythmia

A halting step to pace

The life that will persist

That must

 

C L Couch

 

http://abc27.com/2017/05/01/tree-falls-kills-child-at-lancaster-county-campground/

1

Sliced

Sliced

 

I shouldn’t write when sick

I shouldn’t do much of anything

I shouldn’t commit myself to what

Might need defending

From ignorance, later on

 

But

When I write some truer part of me leaks out

Anyway

And that seems good

Maybe healthy—I don’t know

Because I am not whole

 

Because I breathe in parts

 

C L Couch

 

3

Look

Look

 

I know the children

And I know the children die

It happens every day

All the time

In real fires and in our strategies

Denying food

Denying safety

Denying home

 

Do we turn away to say

Not mine

Or do we look at it

To say

All ours

 

C L Couch

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/24/new-york-city-house-fire-kills-five-including-three-children?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=222999&subid=16706344&CMP=GT_US_collection

 

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Housesitting

Housesitting

 

I open the cupboard

It smells like meat and spice in there

Does the bread turn into meat and bone

Flesh of my God?

 

God under the sink

It is dark with known and unknown faces

On cartons and bottles

Pipes that traipse and current on

To who knows where

A filtration plant

So that water might return someday

 

Water, wine, and blood

The earth weeps I know in

Native sadness

Lands bleeds into water

Ocean’s tears and sadness of

The distance from creation

 

When molecules

Were shiny and new

And compounds yawned themselves

Into existence

 

The car is outside

Waiting to carry me temporarily

Somewhere

There is a crease in back

Over which “forgiveness” in a decal

Declares pardon for the small

Collision that nonetheless

Threw me into the intersection

With enough brake force

Applied so that

Only I, my car, was hit

 

Where is God in this?

God is in the civil conversation

That we had after

In the gears and fluids of the car

That still work and convey me

Thence and whence

In the shadows of the house

Whose objects I don’t

Know so well

 

God is in the corners

And the spotlights

Of our lives

 

C L Couch

 

7

Easter Saturday 2017

Easter Saturday 2017

 

Grey house near a sodden hilltop

Under a sky of ashes

We all live there from time to time

One by one

 

Our own Golgotha

Gehenna, Calvary

 

Our own ordinary crucifixions

Bereft of hope

And faith

Waiting for life

 

C L Couch

 

0

Choose the Day

Choose the Day

 

I write about the world I haven’t seen

What else is there to do

 

Places in photographs and other images

Bits of sound that cannot spark a memory

But will become a recollection

A safe recalling of details

 

But if I don’t take in the world this way

And stultify my senses

What good

 

Is all the patter in my head

The galloping the heart takes

The state of caring for unknown

 

Sibling places of my own

The people I am

One of

In striving above the rim

Of need

That cries and presses

Issues that are real

 

Eschewing abstract

I care as if I know

You, too

 

We are species-creatures, after all

Created with a will

To have overwhelm compunction to go through it

 

Each of us, our discrete ways

To manage each cosmos

Of consequences

 

All of which to say, it happens

Over the China Sea, I

Breathe it here

The cyclone ruinous in northern Australia

Abandons me as well

 

You see me in another room

We add dimension

We have

The future of each other

 

Hazelnut or a grain of sand—the

Molecule metaphor of

Julian or Blake

The making of a world we can contain

Not to box the heart

But render viable the sanity

Of conviction in the worldly act

Perception’s generosity

Minds alert

Ready

We act

 

C L Couch

 

1

wedreamstandup

wedreamstandup

(for Cameron on World Down Syndrome Day)

 

we dream, stand up

we sense the world around us

we love what we know

we fear when we are the unknown

 

knowingly, love us

we love you

we love the world we have

in the family of care

 

trust us, we learn

we give and take, we want to

be a part of you

we’re born for that

 

and like you

as you

we make the way

of wonder

 

grow with us

love us

teach us

let us in the world

 

we are here, we are ready to serve

in our own way, yes, our way

which we share with you, all people

you know we are

 

receive and send

it is our way, isn’t it

we here on Earth

and in the clouds of soaring

dreams and directions

 

who knows where we land

but take off with us and all set down

together

our lives, our homes, our world

our given places

all our lives

all our loves

 

we dream, stand up

 

C L Couch

 

World Down Syndrome Day

 

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