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God

2 poems about parochial gods

(x = space)

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2 poems about parochial gods

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Anvil-Thinking

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Sheesh, I wake up with more

Headaches

Under the metal

Of the skin

Someone has been hitting with

A hammer while I slept

Or gave a go

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To anyone who suffers

With these things,

I’m sorry;

For those of you around them,

Take a moment to consider

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I don’t know if it’s pollution

Of some kind

Or the tyranny of thought

That keeps us from free thinking

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Well, more power

To you from the utility

Of time and grace

And maybe a surprise, that if

We try everything we know

(keep it safe, please—no

candles in the ear)

Then both of us will have

A better morning,

Thanks to

Maybe all our household gods

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Leave an offering

Of grain upon the hearth

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Photo by Bruce Kee on Unsplash

Patrica, Italy

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No Contest

(1 Kings 18:20-40)*

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Are there false gods

Or gods who are false?

Are there true gods

Who like to lie

And treat penitents with

Indiscretion?

Does Ba’al not exist

Or did it not give its profits

What they wanted?

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Maybe it cows before

The God of Israel

Who holds the truth

That displays

Are for the chumps

While true belief

Has no need

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And so Elijah won

The contest because to him

It was no deal:

Light a fire on wet wood?

Not only is it nothing

It proves nothing

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Belief is a fire

Somewhere else,

And faith lives out a lifestyle of

Easy miracles

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*verse 40 is especially brutal

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Photo by sarina gr on Unsplash

Forest

Campfire at night!

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C L Couch

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Fractured Confession

(x = space)

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Fractured Confession

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I haven’t said anything

About God today,

Which isn’t true

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I wrote above,

Commenting on

God’s judgment

And its fairness against

Earthly powers

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Sometimes, I think,

The issue is

Power versus prophecy

With God surprising us

In interpretation

When it rolls

And tolls

Like justice

Over Earth,

All planets,

Our sun,

And all stars

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C L Couch

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“Earth and All Stars,” a Christian hymn (with rather ecumenical lyrics)

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Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

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Be Serious

(x = space)

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Be Serious

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I should say something about God,

because I like God

though I wonder how God likes me.

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Love and like,

like the basis

For a friendship.

And Jesus is our friend,

a revelation given when they met

for supper one last time.

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So if Jesus likes me,

which has been the implication

then somehow, in some way

I must be likable.

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I know God is all-giving

and all patience

with everything that’s perfect,

and my regard hardly necessary.

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And I suppose

friendship must be doctrine

in this tradition, anyway,

though we switch it to indifference

when we think we might,

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when we want to forget

until outside the booth

that God was there

in everything,

made complicit by us followers.

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We are reverse claustrophobes

on Earth—we want to tunnel in

where we might take the rocks

and build small tyrannies,

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which is not friendly action,

though if God is removed

by our convenience, how easily

each other?

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Friendship with God,

a treat by Christian doctrine, I

suppose,

while others don’t forget

the awesomeness of God

and that awe means fear;

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we could stand some friendly fear,

for it is God who loves

and calls us loves even from

prophets and lawgivers.

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Jesus as our pal?

Our buddy at the bar?

It’s fun to think that way

(I think so),

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though Jesus of creation

and of Sinai,

of Golgotha and victory

in hell—how trivially

is made up by us;

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but God is always God

who cries, who creates,

who sacrifices—maybe, then,

deserving of

an attitude of more.

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C L Couch

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Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Coney Island, United States

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Tomorrow Should Be Much Like Today

(x = space)

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Tomorrow Should Be Much Like Today

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I don’t know what to say

Am I confused?

Perhaps

I mean, I try to write every day

Not because I have to

Or because of a tontine

Between poets, as the

Romantics tried

Though they wrote with form

And complex thought

And feeling

Typically, I end up with

More than one thing

And I choose

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Sometimes I surprise myself

And choose the thing

I wasn’t planning on

(as things came out)

And publish that

I’d say discovery is fun,

And it is

Though it is surprise

Becomes the main thing

When it happens

I suppose they go together

Discovery and surprise

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I write based on

What’s happening in the world

And inside me

And if I haven’t thought of

Something spiritual, then

I guide my thoughts that way,

Which sounds forced

Well, maybe a contrivance

Again, I try to keep discovery

In the mixture, as a baker

Or mixologist might see it

Prayer, Bible, interrogative—I try

To take up problems

And solutions

Or else things that matter

In a smaller, more day-to-day way

Where we live

With our souls and God

Trying to know each other,

Eke out a life together

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There is community

I’m aware of

Maybe matching something like

Thornton Wilder’s echelons

That Rebecca recounts—you know,

Citizen of Earth and such

I am Robin,

Living in a house

Along a street that’s old and busy

In the small town (borough) of

Mechanicsburg

In the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

One of the MidAtlantic states

In the U.S.A. (a country without

its own good name

because America is also

north and south

of us),

Living in the northern hemisphere

And the western as well,

Underneath the moon that

Orbits ‘round my planet

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I am a citizen of Earth,

The third planet from our sun

In a system of nine or eight planets

(we’re still arguing about the

count, though I’ve thought

since I was a child about

another planet out there

to make the system ten or nine)

But, anyway,

A member of my solar system

In a spiral galaxy

Called the Milky Way

With another galaxy called

Andromeda by us—I don’t know what

The folk out there might

Call themselves—nearby,

Galactically speaking

And there’s the mind of God

By God’s own hand

How we were made and how

We’re sustained,

Despite the agenda of human greed that

Would rather have its own way

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I believe in Jesus

Others await Messiah

Others live in Messiah

Others own Muhammad,

The prophet and the teachings–and

There are those who

Follow the Buddha

And those who want the Hindu

Godhead

And still others who follow other ways

With other entities and names

For God

And those who follow none

And I have to say

I do not mind, which makes for bad

Evangelism but also makes for

Respectful living

And I figure we need respect

More than singularity for now

Otherwise, we might not exist

To have all the arguments

About belief

Or lack thereof

That should only happen

In congenial ways,

Not with life on the line

For anyone

Believing, not believing

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And so I’m done for now,

This day

It is autumn, my favorite season

For the thrill of cold

With the presence of new colors

That, to me, make everything

More interesting

I like the other seasons, too,

Happy to have them all

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C L Couch

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Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  The dialogue referred to happens near the end of Act 1.

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By Philipp Salzgeber – http://salzgeber.at/astro/pics/9703293.html, CC BY-SA 2.0 at, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=184641

Hale–Bopp in 1997

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Seeking Sin Eaters

(x = space)

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Seeking Sin Eaters

(Genesis 3:8, Revelation 15:16)

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We say to the sun

Or moon or stars

Or hills or valleys or any part

Of Earth that might

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To cover us,

To hide us from

The wrath of God

Or of people

Or of other consequences

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To take our names,

Apply them to another

Quantity,

To stick our names to a board

Inside another

Neighborhood, a sign

That says

We are there

(don’t come looking for us

here)

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We hide

We want to hide

From judgment

Real or imagined

In this, imagined

Is real,

Is enough

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C L Couch

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(also Hosea 10:8, Luke 23:30, and Habakkuk 2:14)

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Photo by Hanna Postova on Unsplash

Odesa, Ukraine

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Demand the Gospel

(x = space)

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Demand the Gospel

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We are loved,

Which might be the hardest thing

To know at times

Because it’s so abstract

We are loved by something

In the air

Or so far inside

We have to wonder why it’s hiding

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Call it something

Spirit friend

The machine in which is God

Call us something

“Star stuff,” he used to say

Or maybe

Renegade from grace

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Fit for a book

Or a one-way conversation

Sunday morning

But really we need something

We need someone

In the flesh

Or whose magic

Makes a miracle of something

We need fixed

Or to have it

(define it)

Feel better

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No phantoms, please

There are enough in hiding

Speaking of which,

Where are you hiding and

Why do you hide?

Is there a base I should run to

As in a child’s game?

Enough, we need something real

Into which we shouldn’t

Have to plumb,

Imaginary depths

There shouldn’t be

A question

You should be here

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C L Couch

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Photo by Laith Abushaar on Unsplash

La Machine Dragon, Ottawa 2017

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Not a Game Day

(x = space)

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Not a Game Day

(maybe another day)

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We’ve had dark days

(two days’ packed clouds

and rain)

And that’s all right

We don’t soothsay

The weather, anymore

Storms are a nuisance

Comets intriguing

Too many withering days

Does not mean

God is judging us, though

God might have another

Idea, not about

Judging us through

Weather (God might be

glad we’ve outgrown that)

But keeping count

Regardless over

How we’re doing with

Created places

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There could be a book

Maybe a computer bank

Maybe angels tasked with

Keeping score

Except there are too many

Teams to count

And Earth and each day

Is not a game

(sorry)

Most of the time

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C L Couch

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Photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash

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Laid Up

(x = space)

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Laid Up

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There are stories

There are stories

I’d like to hear one story more

It need not be fantastic

Save for telling of the human will

In wisdom or in folly

In virtue or in vanity

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What I’m saying is

Make it a human story

Though we might truck with gods,

It seems most days it’s only us

Our gods so far away

Perhaps not to hear,

Maybe not to care

Certainly not

Mortal evidence discloses

To attend our

Perilous half-moments

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It isn’t this way

God doesn’t have an unmoving face

But tell it to the storm

That seems to bear God’s enmity

In visage

And the promise of

A curse upon our gentler feelings

God is there,

But in the curse of human will

Must relegate our drama

Mostly to ourselves,

According to the action and the lore

The machinery of God

Last act upon the stage

Notwithstanding

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But I’m sorry,

You weren’t asking for

A negative apology

And I was asking for a story

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C L Couch

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Photo by Olesia Misty on Unsplash

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No Indifference

No Indifference

 

If there is a God

And there is

Then why all the terrible things?

Because there are

There have to be

Otherwise, it’s all a game

And God is a demon,

Only the biggest

But there’s another question, too

For all the terrible things

That happen,

There should be no inspiration

No interest in virtue

Even to using it when lying

Why should good have an interest

At all in our deliberations?

But it does

We want it, pursue it

Even bad people

Want good things

Companionship, ambition

Self-satisfaction, pleasure

Nice things

Nice sensations

The bad has been twisting them

Hiding inside means that

Should be hidden,

A bent form of going after

What is good

Like every villain in every story

 

But there are heroes

Please understand, as women

As men

And people of all colors

And locations

And there is virtue

That usually starts with something

That is true,

Perhaps the truth

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Pavel Nekoranec on Unsplash

Am Lustgarten 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany, Berlin

[cropped]

 

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