Kristallnacht
(9 November ’38)
how pretty it all sounds
crystal
and night and such
yet
was a horror
too much enthusiastically destroyed
avowed violence
by fractured minds
and
government
encouraging blood-letting
and
who swept up
everything of broken
bone-
sharpened fragments
after
who tried to repair and so
live on
if under a mass of hate like iron cloud
that any moment
crash
with written on it
a night of broken glass and hearts
could
happen again
and by depravity
worse follow
c l couch
photo by Harlie Raethel on Unsplash
truth tectonics
(the plates of who we are might slide)
I want
to love
believe me
but
I’m sick
and illness doesn’t love
or
adverse conditions one must live with
so
forget love
except
to keep it on a list
in someone else’s closet
kept
until all things are better
then I might
open certain doors
to find
what had been put away for me
and
now I’m ready
reticence
with
reason
don’t you think
I must be whole before
I might share
parts
while the parts must be sound
so that
among other things
I’m
acceptable
also persuasive
solve the problems first then
share
unless
ah
there’s
some truth in the parts
some sharing beyond bleating
beyond bleeding for
my cause
that is
only proper to exclude myself from life
and also stay away
from
real worldly exchange
and
what is that
a thorn I hear about
that is never pulled
that
can’t be sliced from the otherwise
acceptable
plant
and yet one speaks
truth
to pain as well to virtue
and both might
count
in discourse
even to influence the larger
better lives
and
maybe so
I could say something
out of insufficiency
that
could be heard and might change
even hale things
lives
to find they have their splinters
too
even fractures and the broken parts
that never
seem to heal
hmm
so many
could it be all of us
who suffer
something broken
even
shameful
and still might have to live
to share
all the truth of how it is to live
fallen
and to find
like
um
everyone
c l couch
. . . but on my own behalf I will not boast, except about my weaknesses. . . . a thorn in the flesh was given to me, . . .
photo by vegonaise on Unsplash
the promises
I will not die
and in faith
not have that the ending
I guess that’s the biggest one
promise
of promises
there are others
more earthbound
the oaths
we take as families
and citizens
before the flag in school
the vows
that in infant baptism
the parents with the church say for us
and we break these
even with guns sometimes
to emphasize
the bloodiness
in going rogue
against what had been promised first
thank goodness for
that first one and
we need it
a promise of a heaven
when the world has failed us
as it is bound to
and what we resort
to but remembrance of
that first thing
that was its claim
that became its oath
it’s good
the one from the beginning
slipped inside our code to be opened
at the last
I’m not sure there’s more to say
hang on
when it’s impossible
to change
yet work at change
there’s a promise in working today
that’s not so bad
for we are
loved from here into the next
c l couch
photo by Prashant on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
Floods, Swords (two poems)
could read the second of them while waiting on the first
x
x
Consider Extra Floods
x
Jackson
And Jacksonville
Puerto Rico
Cuba
Indonesia
Pakistan
Recently, in Europe
Maybe here on Friday
x
The Earth warms
The polar shelves
Send sheets of ice
Into the ocean
Water rises
x
Storms increase
Maybe we should
Appreciate complaint
From our own
Planet
From the core to the skies
And those of us
All of us
On middle ground
Between the hell and heaven
Spirituality
Counting its own cost
In faith and lives
Of our own globe
In a waiting cosmos
x
x
Consider Broken Swords
(Lord of the Rings)
x
Sting was never fixed,
Which would have been bad
For marketing
Though reminding
If not teaching
Us quite rightly
For the story
That the sharpest swords
Don’t have to win the day
And brokenness and heroes
Go together
x
The famous sword
The one that sang for Aragorn
Is fixed by Elven smiths
And ready for the final fights
In Rohan
Osgiliath
Minas Tirith
At the Black Gate
At last
These are the heroes whom we know
The king revealed
Wanderer and healer
The sword
That has a greater name
With supernal persona
Magic
In personality,
In character
As it were
x
But Sting
Is in a box
In Rivendell
Until it’s brought out
For a hobbit’s use
An unknown being
Anonymity its armor
(which had served the king
for a time)
They would sting another spider
Fill with poison
Topping off the stinging burden
Of an eldritch thing
And promises
Nothing healing
‘Til the mountainside
And going in
To face the fire
x
Goodness, there are heroes
There are lives
That serve the world
That sacrifice all pleasures
And promises
To take on one great evil
In front of armies
On one’s own
Inside mountains
At the gate
Of hell on Earth
Of hell on Middle-Earth
For all of us, between
x
The small sword
Is character as well
Four heroes, as it were,
Famous
On the surface
Or unfamous,
Inside holes for homes
Then mines and caves
Tunnels without songs
Until at home again
To rest
When things are done
Awaiting passage to
A healing land
x
Five heroes
Add two more
Then seven
Then many more
And villainous
And in-between corrupt
Great wars to settle things
The hobbits home at last
We close the books
So are we
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Octavian Dan on Unsplash
x
Sting Broke
Does no one remember?
A stab into a spider
(giant, venomous)
And it lost the end, the point
That brought it home
Goodness, but the blade was useful, after
Sharp along the edge, shining blue
With Elven-warning about
Goblins, virtued like the partial blade that
Sting was helpful
And meant something
The aspect was a message
That the merchandising missed
(sorry, I like my t-shirts and believe
what’s on my purchased button, Frodo Lives)
The broken blade still works
When we are broken, we still work
And maybe all of us are parts
In prophecy
Narsil reforged
Something returns
Other things will be remade
But for now, even in parts, we
Can take on foes and win
We persist
C L Couch
X-ray of the reconstructed sword from the Viking boat burial at Ardnamurchan.
Pieta Greaves, AOC Archaeology – Mike Addelman, Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester. Sent by email to the uploader., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17036697
On the morning of the last day Frodo was alone with Bilbo, and the old hobbit pulled out from under his bed a wooden box. He lifted the lid and fumbled inside.
‘Here is your sword,’ he said. ‘But it was broken, you know. I took it to keep it safe but I’ve forgotten to ask if the smiths could mend it. No time now. So I thought, perhaps, you would care to have this, don’t you know?’
He took from the box a small sword in an old shabby leathern scabbard. Then he drew it, and its polished and well-tended blade glittered suddenly, cold and bright. ‘This is Sting,’ he said, and thrust it with little effort deep into a wooden beam. ‘Take it, if you like. I shan’t want it again, I expect.’
Frodo accepted it gratefully.
The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Chapter 3, “The Ring Goes South”
Contributor:
Elena Tirie
http://www.henneth-annun.net/events_view.cfm?evid=1096
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
HeartBroken – Tears are the Baptism of Soul
Tornado Forms and Passes Through
A tornado touched down here;
That doesn’t happen often
In the Midwest, I used to drive
Underneath funnel clouds forming
Within a sky of green and yellow
Sometimes the tornado formed
Sometimes it didn’t finish
Here there was the locomotive
Sound, and all things went awry
Gravestones lay flat upon the
Ground—parts of houses and
Other buildings rolled over
Discarded stone and memory
Roofs of schoolhouses pushed
Deep inside—the Amish will
Give to municipal authority
A list of broken property to
Be fixed in community, alone
The Red Cross Is here, while
We number what is lost,
Remembering simultaneously
What is to be thanked; for
This was a fatal happening
Yet stolid folk are quick to
Say it could have been much
Worse, because it has—retellings
From the cobwebbed past given
Anew to current, digital media
Meantime the sun remembers
To return to us a blessing now
Psalm 3
The world is broken, Lord of
Hosts, so much so that some
Would think you’re coming soon
With heaven’s military
To smash aggression
And grind indifference into
Dust, establishing a new, just
Place that we will call
A heaven and an earth
The brokenness of our world
Leads us, unjust, toward many
Fallen things further fallen
Those who can, too much, must utter words
Of truth through iron-manacled hands
Others commit to the selling
Of souls: I mean, taking the bodies
Of others and selling them for money
Or the relief of having adversaries gone
We crush our spirits with
What we let go by
Lord, what might lift us, free us
Make us fit for home? Please make me
Readier to act, commit the risk for good
clcouch123 
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