Francis and Me
(not unlike/not really like Ben and Me, book by Robert Lawson, film by Disney)
I’m too tired
Got up because
I was up
Got coffee for the ritual
And pleasure
From
The ritual
I’m writing
Though it’s gunk-like
Like old oil
That hasn’t yet been cleaned away
Nearly
Enough
From the machine
Replace the batteries
As well
Or something like
For charge
Get into it
But it’s a push
Against the hours I have lost
Again
Against pre-morning
Early-light
Fractal illumination
I ask
Of myself
As audience
While illumination
Of all kinds
Tries
To creep in
Over the factual sill
And the one
To
The mind
Over the parts
That sense
And I happen
Out of nerd-like interest (maybe)
Or a patriot’s dream
To think
About
Pre-dawn
Near a fort
On a ship
Neither so far away
(to ask)
How soon did he
How soon
Did Francis spy
The flag
Then write while on the ship
After uncertainty except
The fact of
(not a doorframe but)
A battle
Overnight
C L Couch
(starting at 4:30)
“The Fact of a Doorframe” is a poem by Adrienne Rich (title of book, too, “Selected Poems”)
Photo by Jamie Morrison on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Nowhere People
x
I rock sometimes,
Seated cross-legged here
Between bouts of writing;
x
It works out my lower back
And keeps me in motion,
Which seems important
In the smaller ways
To do so;
x
I might like the rocking chair,
I don’t know;
There is an association
That could be revised:
x
Saving the rocking chair for age,
For those still in motion
Not going anywhere
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Morgan Vander Hart on Unsplash
x
two poems about associating
(drafted today)
Loony Like a Tune
I don’t know much
But I know this
Carson City is the capital of Nevada
Bugs Bunny told me so
I think he was being pressed
By Yosemite Sam
I don’t mean to push a copyright
This was the stuff of childhood
I remember things
Associations
My older brother and I once
Ran around the basement,
Making woop-woop sounds because the
Three Stooges were on TV
And because I read about the Hardy boys
I found something good in reading
Read other things
And became the English teacher
Who owns these associations?
I have to wonder
We own our minds
In spite of agendas toward dystopia
And sometimes cultic ravings
I think I still need my
Cartoons and my easygoing stories
Found in books with little weight
We never know when a bad,
Mechanistic idea might
Come along
One response
To act like a fourth
Stooge rather than a minion
That last stanza looks like Minnesota
I wonder what cartoons
They need up there
(drafted yesterday, I realize)
Allusion
(an argument I’m never going to have)
You think I do this because
I don’t know enough words
Please
It has meaning
You know this when you use it
Home of the brave
The seventh-inning stretch
Lady Macbeth
She doth protest too much
(who is not that lady)
The referencing ties us all
In ties that bind
Silken cords, I imagine
(and I borrow)
And we refer to Genesis or anything
To say like Whos to Horton,
We are here
C L Couch
Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash
Mother Loon Shakes Off
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