the question posed for funding
1
can
poetry matter
to
which
someone important wrote an essay
posing
responding to the question
and
because it does
verse writing
with the verse-thinking come before
and
in the process
is important
otherwise
we’re left with quadrupeds for horses and
also
without
the Pegasus in modern times
and
yet
there are prosaic aspects as well
the straightforward issues
dealt with
directly
‘cause
verse helps with that
even
a genre to it
and though
we’re not the monarchs of the metaphor
we are the stewards
in
the realm of work
with something of our syntax going
overall with grammar in the poem
to offer clarity
agreed
upon
if by a formlessness in art as well
2
maybe imagine wordless
songs
or nothing to impact a speech
with
such as
the surly bonds of Earth
and
so
poetry
serves
with power like jet planes’ announcements
by Mach bursts
that heard
pressing the sky as music invocations
in
the service as
they sounded with Cold War beats
back then
3
to say things without saying
and
to say again
even so a nation might be following
also changing
like seas
rhyme
meter
provide accompaniment
to all that’s
said
addressing the five senses
in
their import
plus all the added senses at which
poems might be
guessing
4
for all impulses
instincts
and
directions over and inside
our Earth
c l couch
“Can Poetry Matter?” is an essay later developed into a book by Dana Gioia
the quadruped for horse is argued in Hard Times by Charles Dickens
the parts "have slipped the surly bonds of Earth . . . to touch the face of God" are from “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Junior--recited by the President during the Challenger memorial
photo is by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
We Say, We Believe
(maybe it’s Revelation 23)
x
God is love
The metaphor
Reality
So much better than
God is gold
Even
God is power
Though God is both
The metaphor
Reality
x
God made the gold, at least
And also power
Power lent
To us
And in the Earth
Inherent
x
Borrowing
And legacy
That’s not our own
No matter how many times
We name another name
x
We do not last
Not on our own
And everything on Earth
That was our own
Is naught
So that when everything’s renewed
There will no monuments
Except the living
In a city
Where the temple
Is a person
And water is provided
That’s life-giving
x
C L Couch
x
x
By Voky89 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72763611
This is a photo of a monument in Ukraine, number: 53-101-0501
x
(x = space)
x
x
Metaphors for Divinity
x
God is love
God is a spirit
God is a lion
God is a rock
The rock of our salvation
And the Bible tells us so
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Metaphorism
x
Are there candles
That burn
At both ends?
Is the illumination
Doubly helpful?
And what happens when
The ends meet
In between?
x
It’s an untried
Metaphor,
I guess
Like the silk purse
From the sow’s ear
Or trying to catch
The crocodile tears
x
Their value is
Instructive—still,
I’d like to see the candle,
Hear its twice-done
Hiss inside
The darkness
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Ronnie Overgoor on Unsplash
Everglades Alligator Farm, Homestead, USA
x
(x = space)
x
x
Hard-Going
x
The metaphors
Should be everywhere
x
The land should be
Replete with them,
North and south
x
Here is the quiet earth,
There the earth is passionate
With green,
The seasons are alive
Either with slumber or with
Breaking through
x
Both are organic states,
Necessary,
And beautiful
x
In the human world,
There should be holidays
And there are:
Hanukkah enjoys a full menorah,
Christmas is but days away
So all is anticipation,
And the colors of
Kwanzaa adorn
x
Not to mention, anciently,
The solstice is tilting toward us
More and more;
There will be festivals
Set on stone
Or rather around them
x
The planet
With or without our help
In counting
Shall split into seasons
x
What is compelling?
I don’t know
x
The virus,
The ugliness of politics
In the USA,
Danger in so many other
Places
x
There’s room for verse,
The call is clarion
But heavy goes the craft:
Can you feel it?
x
Questions deserve answers,
Most of them;
Brittle is the monolith
The keeps on moving
To allow a phallic message
To be realized
x
Brittle yet taking
Many hits until it has a
Home or many homes,
Leaving scooped-out earth
So that the
Female has a say
x
Though one has to ask
Why the say is always second,
And there are more options
In the day
x
It is difficult;
Next time might be typical,
Greeting cards make
Silly sense again;
And the metaphors that
Make the text
And move the world be
Open from the cupboard
Of the Lord
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
x
Sometimes Older Metaphors
(not always)
Silent and dry
Like the oasis near the desert
Nature can make the noise
To overwhelm cacophony
Of metal articulation
Plastic reasoning
I know that there’s romance
And romance becomes cliché
Oases, Baghdads, minarets,
Viziers, and genies you
Could call djinn
How novel (and in novels
and our poems)
Centuries ago
To what we think is
Trite imagination
Yet viziers become wizards
New packages and popularities
So I’ll take my oasis, thank you
In all it means
Or used to mean
A place to re-source life
Discover air and water
Make into verses
Eden in small patches
All that’s left
Upon our minds
Of paradise on outcast Earth
C L Couch
Photo by Philipp Lublasser on Unsplash
Coffee Break in Namibia
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
After a Kind of Rain
There is hope
While there is good
We don’t even have to know
It’s more than half
We only need to catch a gleam
In the morass of kidnapped night
That better roles have
Abrogated
That was, I think, the war
In heaven
And if the hopeful glint
Is not in evidence
On the field or in a corner
In case our spirits are abducted, too
In the metaphor, we can close
Our eyes and in a better
Darkness recall
The light,
Which lifts the cause for metaphor
And story
More poetry, more narrative
We need more, we must have more
In case so much depends upon
By all means, this is not a call
For this
There is so much around
Barely a kick will stir it up from
Dulling dust
Or here’s a thought:
Create
Co-create
Strike an agreement with a muse
A long-term contract
Don’t worry
She awaits
With clarity even within
The rolls of night
Even before the end of
Stormy weather
Over one plain or another
C L Couch
Fahad Hashmi – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40357621
Lahore
Again with the Sunday-Thinking
It’s Sunday, and
I should say something spiritual
But there’s Hamlet’s rub
(not a small town’s)
About mortality or, I should
Say, the end of it,
Which is what the Dane’s discussing
One side of the coin, as
It were, the other side
Well, spirituality
Who’d have thought?
So here we are
The coin I have,
The choice I have
Heads or tails
Or stand it on the edge,
Which I can do
Do you?
This is where we are
Where angels could dance
As slender as the pin
Though it goes around
Another way
Both things, the circle and the sphere,
Are endless
One comes back
And if a mark isn’t made
We’ll fool ourselves
In the illusion
A belief that we are always going
Somewhere
Somewhere else
So we need another metaphor
Metaphors as analogies
Always fail somewhere
Along the way
But we have the vine
The true vine and the faulty
And would that we graft ourselves
To the stronger,
Greener branch
And so grow
Like a magic beanstalk
Toward heaven
Though here’s where plants no longer
Serve analogy
For heaven’s not up
Where Claudius would send his prayers
Not forward, backward
Interior, exterior
Exit, arriving
I think you know
Where heaven is
Open the window of the soul
The air is good, at last
No teaching no longer necessary
Breathe the good and lasting
Air of heaven in
I wonder if in heaven
All we do is inhale
Better than direction
Better than metaphors
Better than Christmas morning
Or a birthday
(not analogies but real
remembrances I trust, I hope)
Heaven is an invitation
Please respond
r.s.v.p.
a.s.a.p.
I want to meet there
And maybe you
Will help me
Though there’s one who
Will bring us, both
C L Couch
Image by Thanks. All my pics are free! from Pixabay
church war syria civil war devastation devastated
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