A Last Couple of Things
We went
To the church
Flea market
Taking things
And returning with more in
Number
Than we brought
We went to see Penzance
At the movies
The film
With Kevin Kline
And Linda Ronstadt
Rex Smith
And George someone
(if I say
I’m going to say it
wrong)
And the characters of cops
Who moved so fluidly
In dancing
As if the vertebrae
Could be so
Flexible
So sinuous
And that is what
I can recall
Though maybe there was more
But this is difficult
You understand
One
Two
Of the harder
Pleasant
Things
There are to recall
Then she relapsed
And finally was
Still
Fit for heaven
Finally
Though she had proved
Potential
Aptitude
And skill
Long before
Faith
Long ago
While in our mortal days
C L Couch
Photo by Ricky Turner on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Three Months
x
I miss my brother
I have no one to talk about
Old movies with
I learned from him
But mainly it was the treat
In discussing
The subject
The people mostly black and white
The fictive stories they presented
The real stories
That they were
x
Older brothers seem to come with
Mysteries
Blank spots in life that stay
That way
Stories within stories
Ways of thinking
That I’ll never know
But we had the sure thing
Of old movies
For discussion
x
And now I miss that
As part of missing him
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash
x
Western Movie Theatre in Oxford, Ohio
There was a summer when
I felt especially alone
I was at school
Everyone else was gone
So I went to the movies
Two dollars for admission
For two dollars, I saw The Last Starfighter
Then on another night, Highlander
Music by Queen
Sci-fi reigned, I guess
Taking me somewhere I wasn’t,
Which at the time was really
Needful like coal
For an empty furnace
It’s no longer there
The theatre or the summer
I got an X from the marquee
Before everything shut down
C L Couch
By Michael Gäbler, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31083077
Rodgers Theatre in Poplar Bluff in Missouri. This Art Deco-style theater opened in 1949.
Looking at You
(first films)
Have you ever seen The Big Sleep?
Like the earlier Maltese Falcon
Philip Marlowe
Sam Spade
Raymond Chandler
Dashiell Hammett
Many people say the plots are convoluted
They say that because they are
So we watch for character
The personalities
The texture
The underlying value
I like both films a lot
They are cynical stories
But there’s an underline of care
Otherwise, why watch?
I know it’s fashionable to avoid a message
Sometimes the words get through, anyway
They are in the folds of a trenchcoat
In a look from woman’s or man’s eye
In the outcome, which only
Works if
We look subcutaneously
Appreciate not the lack of technical justice
But the abundance of
Sound conclusions and livable ethics
Manifest
I’m sorry, I don’t want to give away
The endings
Have I said too much? Sorry, again
But watch the movies, anyway
They have action
They have dialogue that ricochets
Sharper than bullets on stone
They have energy
They bring the oddest hope onto the screen
Something to talk about on the way home
C L Couch
clcouch123 
Recent Comments