We Want to Make This Classic
Two years
Plus three months
Two wars
The ones we know about
Who are the combatants
How much material
Is left
To each side
How much longer
Even supplied
By the bigger thugs outside
Who claim
Defense defending
How much robbing
Peter
To pay Paul
And then Paul
Demands more and more
Of Peter
And it’s us
Is the idea
All us
We lose
We run down
We run out
We manufacture more
To say
It’s good for the economy
While the vaults in
Hell
Or waiting by the river Styx
Are the only things
That are full
And this become our legacy
We lose
Things from the Earth
That cannot be restored
Life in which
We had only given
Love
And there is less
The surplus population
Whom did we not need
And did we push them
Toward the front
Uriah-like
Of course
We wish it over
We wish them done
So we could walk across the fields
And say
This happened here
But statues
And they are meaningful
Fly flags
The same
By force
A fallow field
Unchanneled water
And who knows what
Congeals inside
Our natural
And plastic substances
To raise
Hate
Or something else we hide
Ongoing tries
For greed
Until we say
There
Someone made money
Out of this
Someone got a bit of power
Well
The illusion of it
Anyway
But that’s the best we have
In shadowlands
Expanse
There is the sun
At last
It will rise into the clouds
Maybe into a day
That’s only gray
Until the setting hour
When all these lines of yellow
Turn toward red
Then blue
Then black of night
It happens all the time
And is not
What’s happening
There are orbits
There are rings
Of different shapes and sizes
There are fields of gravity
There is magnetism
We try
To ken it all
To suss the meaning
In the measure
Or get a damn fine story
Out of it
Feature
Human interest
Sci-fi tome
That tells us where we’ve been
And where fancifully
We might be going
Out of these rounded places
Into an
Unbounded expanse
With only our imagination
For a shield
C L Couch
Photo by Krisztian Matyas on Unsplash
Sooners
Soon
And very soon
What a wonderful way
To say that
A promise
That we won’t have long to wait
Before the bad things
End
The good things
Might be realized
Unsullied
Snow
Without mud
Or slush
Beneath
And spring beside
Well
Whatever season
We might need
A place for each one
And whatever
Passes for meals
In there
And meetings
With a purpose
The only agenda
Love
A life
And such a life
Soon
And very soon
C L Couch
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3898658
is herein the shape of heaven?
though the soons I borrowed here are more from Andraé Crouch
all saints day
saints small s
every day is their
followers
of God
who try
both to believe
and to act
patronage
of nothing in particular
no groups
claim our own
but the
relative
ease and simplicity
without notoriety
or beads
or rituals
simply leave it
to faith and action
anyone
believing
anyone who tries
a life of faith
with flaws
the Holy Spirit
will provide
kintsugi
c l couch
photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash
snow on one branch to start
snow on a branch
then move closer to the window
to see the snow
is everywhere outside
of course
and this is good
it’s winter
and it doesn’t look severe
most of this will clear away
and the temperature
supposedly
reach fifty
by
midweek
it’s the kind
to look at
and to watch it fall
as if nothing else is pressing
even though it is
calls for a drink
with rising vapor
and to sit
at something
by the window
take it in
and also think
and feel
far away
this is hardly farm show weather
it is so mild
but it’s the first snowfall
to note
in a year
and will have to do
being an untroubled visitation
on the first day
of
the January fair
c l couch
photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Epiphaneity
Epiphany
Twelfth Night
Also
Orthodox Christmas
Yet in the west
We have the
Magi
Visiting
The child
With the mother
And adoptive father
And since
Liturgy
Respects only its
Chronology
We might mainly note
Today
The baptism
By
The cousin John
Of the child now grown
Now
Authorized by the
Spirit
As a dove
Then the child
Grown
Journeys into
Wilderness
C L Couch
Le Jourdain au site du Baptême, en Jordanie.
By Jean Housen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11820699
Kneeling
I’m sorry
I’m tired
I’m sorry I’m tired
I should have given more
In better ways
To serve the Lord
The people of the Lord
The planet of
The Lord
And shall you forgive me
I think you shall
Because you’re perfect
At such things
And I am punishing myself
And you know that
And yet you love me
With a perfect love
Not to let me off the hook
Any more
Than to let me go
There’s color in repentance
Moving from
The black and white of sin
The stories in which
Color
Wondrously appears
As if we’d never known
Such a thing
Before
There’s texture
There are layers
In the Earth
They have colors
Too
Everything is better
We can hear
The colors
From within
And taste them on the surface
Through and through
We let
Everything improve
As health
After sickness
When we never thought
To feel
At all well
Again
C L Couch
Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash
I am trying the “Verse” option in WordPress, because in part I think I should; and at least I miss having to type Xes for spaces. I’m not sure how it’s going; I’m not sure what you receive, even though I proofread graphically as well. I’ll keep trying. Thanks for reading.
Tollers
Yesterday
His birthday
The day before
My brother’s
For who shall be
My brother
Well
My brother
Though I could meet
Him
In the Bird and Baby
As in a pub
He met
With Dracula
(a good story
that)
And I shall send a card
To my brother
Through electrons
And there shall be
Good wishing
In a meeting
With him
Too
That may
Or may not happen
Though we know
We can’t see
Tollers
Save on pages
And having seen
His son
Once
At a conference
At which I read
A paper
About riddles
C L Couch
notes
Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3.18 ff
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973
Steven Eric Couch, 2 January
Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash [kind of mixing up Tolkien’s use of dragons with the Year of the Dragon approaching]
photograph of one who stands different
(flash fiction challenge--the photograph reacted to is at Melissa's site, link below)
she’d like to talk
I think
she has things to say
and has invested in earth colors
and a visible presence
in a crowd
inside a city
who might keep her from talking?
well
she’s surrounded by black forms
hoods
perhaps hijabs like hers
(though hers is kindly brown)
and on the other side
black uniforms
of police
who also wear
visors hard to see through
and though we cannot see them
there must be weapons
somewhere
she has no actual platform
for her platform
there is a sign close by
she might be holding it
ironically
it says
SILENCE IS VIOLENCE
because
well
it is
silence is violence
if the silence is words
frightened
or (otherwise) brutalized
away from utterance
out of consideration
for fear of weaponry
arrest
and isolation
which would
once again
be silence
and this is a message
to the rest
that keeping silent
is through indifference
or only taciturn
approval
a kind of violence
in and of itself
we let it happen
let the wrong things happen
or keep
the right words
the protest words
the revealing words
get out
it’s like the leave to vote
and then
not bothering
infantilizing values
of democracy
her mouth is covered
I don’t know if
from cultural requirement
protection
from infection
or to illustrate her point
she is not tall
which is to say
everyone is taller
all around her
though she (or whoever)
holds the sign high
higher than everyone
to make her point
and maybe find
an invitation
to speak out
from up higher
sometime
she is not subjugated
yet
she’s there
she’s standing
and the sign is standing
not to mention
that the line
of her suit jacket
sends a message
of some fashion
something lined
through razored words
through silence
after all
the eyes are windows
clearly open
though the message
of a moment
might need more
some exchange
some blinking
we could get
from being there
but she needs to talk
everyone there
everyone here
needs to hear
and heed
what she has to say
the need is ours
outside the frame
to find her
and the source of words
and more
in principle
and action
to take away
C L Couch
(for) Melissa’s Flash Fiction Challenge #249
https://melissalemay.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/melissas-fandango-flash-fiction-challenge-249/
(tag #FFFC)
Photo by Priscilla Gyamfi on Unsplash
Chalk writing on the street near the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis. "Together we will change the world."
This Is the Song that Never Ends
Or would you like to
Swing on a star
Carry moonbeams
Home in a jar
And be better off than you are
Or would you rather be a—
(verses for blanks)
Which is a kind of song
That loops
So easily
After the movie
Then throughout the day
And we might wake with it
The next day
I just checked
Jimmy and Johnny
Made the song
(called Jimmy and Johnny
as James and Jonathan
tended to be
back then
like Johnny Williams
in the sixties
before Jaws
and Star Wars)
I think
I heard it once
On Captain Kangaroo
It really is a pleasant song
Existential animals
Notwithstanding
And I think they might excuse us
For our foibles
Symbolized
And what is a song for you
That goes ‘round
In what you wonder
Might become
An attitude
Frustrated
Though for now
As you go through it
It goes through you
(and it might be a long song)
Inciting joy
To go with something else
A chore
Or bigger thought
That occupies
Reminding
Or informing
You are better than you are
Swing on a star
C L Couch
Photo by Oleg Sergeichik on Unsplash
(out of) Gomel, Belarus
“Swinging on a Star”
Writers: Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke
Publisher: Kanjian Music, Music Sales Corporation
https://songfacts.com/lyrics/bing-crosby/swinging-on-a-star
"The Song That Doesn't End" (also referred to as "The Song That Never Ends")
written by Bernard Rothman
for Shari Lewis
(1988)
Wikipedia
clcouch123 
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