2 patriot verses
Patriot Dreams
I love my country
Though sometimes
It’s hard
To recognize
For violence
Yes
Also disorder
In the halls of politics
And justice
It seems that we all
Lean
Maybe time
To say so
And admit we can do better
Be larger
Than one interest
So to legislate
Even to judge
I am this
And I am that
My group is this
But I can care
Bigger than
That
And must
To make intact
And keep intact
The nation
From the privilege of chaos
And the run of evil
Ripping through
Any sense
Of unity
Faltered
Flawed
We can do better
Larger
Though the irony must be
That patriot feeling
And intent
Be shown in smaller
Ways
The things of families
And of neighborhoods
Leave me alone
Should not be our working words
Not since
We thought
To work out something
‘Gainst an empire
Knowing that
Solitary items matter
As matter
Individuals
Remember
Though
That birthing seems
Separate
But by necessities
Is actually conjoined
That dying
For some choices might be
Shared as well
That we are in our skins
And inside
Our interests
But we do better
Not for
Groupthink
But when we work it
Healthily
Together
By “patriot dream”
(ethereally good)
We may try
(waking
hale)
Vision
Turned like
Named and unnamed blocks
Into
Democratic strategy
And our
Republic’s practice
God save America
All Americas
And both hemispheres
A planet
Nation
For with reason
Any people
In
The world
May
Build this
Choices in smaller things
The easy things
Be easy
While we also have the larger
And complex
Thus
Vote for
Service
For security
Love of nation
Love of home
Families reconstructed
In any number
Blood
And also water
Both safely
Required
We share
The nation’s business
While invested
In
Our own
The larger one
Be ours
Indifferently approached
Perhaps
(check voting
statistics
far as well as near)
But we live on the promise that
We make this
(large
and small)
Our own
Sustaining it in
Quotidian
As well as come-November ways
C L Couch
Photo by Sardar Faizan on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Plain
x
Sigh
It’s Friday morning
We’re told
The heat is crested
So low 90s today
Which still is hard
For those of us
From here
Above equators
(there are two
you know
tell Ecuador)
And the tropic lines
x
We’ll breathe into Saturday
Be grateful
When it rains
Maybe too much
But they will break
The drought
As well
x
And these are
My
And our
Issues
Over here
How is it where you are
How is your health
And your family
How is your neighborhood
And any community wider
You are
Or must be part of
x
I am perforce
American
Though America is huge
And we tend to take the name
And then apply it
To one part
x
You are French
Or Nigerian
Or Indian
Chinese
From idealized Tibet
From Ukraine
From Russia
x
You might be from the South
Or the Northwest
Or the Northeast
Maybe all the way up
(we say)
To Maine
Maybe you know
Or encounter at the supermarket
Stephen King
x
These are places
In the USA
In France
You have
The Côte d’Azur
In Greece
Santorini for an island
(that might have been the home
of Atlantis)
In Egypt
The upper Nile
Into Ethiopia
That was Nubia
In China
There’s the Gobi
The severest place on Earth
x
And there are the people
We are people
There
x
Inhabitants of the world
The team of Earth
One people
Now we’re leaving it
And shall need identity
x
Should we live in peace
Appreciating our diversity
All
The shapes and sizes
In our making
And our choosing
The lives we have
That is
The lives we make
x
And we should make them well
And have the freedom
To do so
Too direct
Too easy
Maybe
x
But too bad to be good
Sometimes it’s easy
Put it down
The weapons
And the prejudice
Evil conditioning
Perhaps
Somewhere inside
Take up something better
Food to share
Safe water
The love of life
You know
That someone else
A group perhaps
Might need
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Yuriy Bogdanov on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Birth of a Nation
x
It’s the Fourth of July
In the USA
It’s hard to miss
What with all the sales
In the computer
x
And all the local booms
That will happen
Between buildings
In the neighborhood
This evening
Upsetting dogs
x
The bell did not crack then
And the document
For the assembly
And the criers
Wasn’t ready then
More like the sixth
And no one need worry
x
A day was selected
For the start of freedom
And a nation
Approving thirteen groups
That did not want to fight
But would fight
A famous army
With a storied king
From faraway
Now home
x
Home needing freedom
From political
And corporate interests
That took more and more away
Until at home we said,
Enough
x
And war is war
It would not be kind
Or clean
Though ranks set on the field
Were tried
And when to start the battle
x
Really
How farmers
Children died
Holding guns
Or something enough like
To draw fire from the foe
x
There were strategies
And spies
And those with local knowledge
Of terrain
And somehow
Against the European mind
For monarchs
The war was won
By merchants and farmers
Fugitives and foreigners
Identified
Foregoing slaves
To free
Only to count
x
With vision to admire
Yet with fractures
Like the bell that was fractured at
Other times
Now we had to form a nation
With all the blunders
And the cheating
All the buildings
And the farmland
All the expanding
All the settling to come
With treaties
Skirmishes
And battles
We borrowed names
America
The United States of America
x
We asked for God
Too often after everything arranged
Maybe we could do better at that
Now
x
God is known in many ways
Inside this land
The values of the heart
And mind
And neighborhood
Remain the same
x
Reasons abound
For trying God first
Each day
In every time
x
In a nation born
x
C L Couch
x
x
United States flag painted on the side of a Saturn V rocket.
Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash
Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, United States
x
(x = space)
x
x
Columbus Day Observed
x
I guess that would be today
Funny, I haven’t heard
About the sales
Maybe we’ve realized that
Good money after bad
Means something
That by five hundred years ago
Something scandalous had happened
Land was discovered
By the Europeans
Though it wasn’t empty
So guns and armor
Their diseases
(don’t worry—they took some back)
Conquered and destroyed
Enslaved the native life
In greed for land and gold
And anything discovered
Were they ever fooled,
The people they encountered?
Person to person
I have to wonder about that
Less discriminate weapons
Skin tone that made it easy
To tell friend from foe
Tall ships
Laden with rapacious agenda
Before and after
x
My people to the north
Didn’t do much better
On touching land
That wasn’t theirs
Until they said so
x
Should we give it back?
Should we go back to Europe?
For justice sake, we should
The irony that bites
Is that we came
For freedom
As well as opportunity
And for many as a prison sentence
We should have known
We used God as our excuse
To take what we wanted
Then take part
In perpetrating crimes in Africa
North and south we did this
So that prosperity
And new-empire thinking
Might belong inside the few
Who understood
New to them
The land and its resources
Should belong
Should be banked
Should be used up
Keeping pushing west
x
Some renegotiating is in order
Honestly, this time
Call it reparation, call it giving back
Call it what should not have happened
In the first place
And could stop any day now
My people came from England
And from Ireland
And other British parts
They were not kings,
Though their ancestors might have been
As with us all, I imagine
They wanted service
Frankly, they wanted food
They were told the land was good
And they could have some
They soldiered
They farmed
Many are soldiering and farming, still
I don’t think
There is a going back for them
For us
x
We call it now
An American story
Occasionally remembering
There is America to the north
And south
And farther south
We had it
Setting and ordering the wilderness
The denizens
Breaking treaties for cities
For estates
For colonies
Until colonies became the nations
Over here,
Another irony of freedom
But hard-fought
Adding to
The blood already planted
In the land
x
And here we are:
Sliding our land into the sea
(don’t worry—it’s happening all over)
Setting fires
Ruining the air
Counting on small trees
To replace the giants
Looking far off
With universal agenda
Toward NEOs, the moon,
And even other worlds
To save us
And who will save us
From ourselves?
x
But it’s all right
Everyone is wrong by now
Everyone deserves some fixing up
How about we meet
Without the windows
While the world is melting
At our hands
Around us?
How about inviting
Everyone who wants to come
To camp around this place,
Sending representatives?
How about we start the work
Around the talk
To seal in word and
In action as a fact
And a tontine
With the world?
x
Give Earth a chance
Stone soup
And the favorite part of everybody’s
Codex
Come to the table, too
We leave with new orders
We give ourselves
And in the first step
And each step after
x
Too good to happen?
Let’s find out
Every race, every arrival
Has a part in this
x
C L Couch
x
x
Don’t Lose Hope
[“Don’t Lose Hope. When the sun goes down, the stars come out. Pastor B. Crouch”]
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Community Presbyterian Church Pismo Beach
x
Aleppo, Pennsylvania
Neighborhood is
Near three rivers
Reminding us that
Syria, native or
Immigrant (like the
Rest of ours), has
Been America for
A long, long time
clcouch123 
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