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Story Time, Please

(x = space)

x

x

Story Time, Please

x

Oof, I’m tired

Aren’t you tired?

If you’re energized, please

Let me know

Maybe chocolate

Inspiration from a movie

Or a book

An entertaining story

From someone who

Tells stories well

x

I like storytelling

I like listening

I like to think of people

Gathered ‘round tended fires

From ancient times

To hear from a bard

(roving poet)

Some other teller

Adding historically to lore

More urgently, to move us

With the tried

Or taking chances

Now

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Obed Hernández on Unsplash

x

2

Discover the Abandoned Sites of Brooklyn

(x = space)

x

x

Discover the Abandoned Sites of Brooklyn 

x

Where you lived

Is an abandoned site in Brooklyn

I visited you once

Never knew your agenda

I think it changed

Between the invitation and arrival

The visit wasn’t fun

You didn’t talk

I didn’t listen

Then it was over

You wrote to ease your mind

I wrote back truth, as it turns out,

Never heard from you again

You moved on

With your plans

And, you know,

That was that

x

C L Couch

x

x

Untapped New York

info@untappedcities.com

x

Photo by Mitchell Trotter on Unsplash

Amidst the usual family arguments when attempting to travel via subway, our trip to NYC would not be complete without them. Tuning it out, I managed to capture a neat view of the variety of moods in the city. The subway is an efficient and well-used mode of transport in the city, you’re never short of people to fill your frame.

New York, United States

x

0

The Salton Sea

(x = space)

x

x

The Salton Sea

x

I’d like to go into

The desert

Because I don’t know what

I’m saying,

Which isn’t true:

I lived in California

For a time

Went to the desert there

Saw the stars

At night

One day went to Palomar

Never got to

The Salton Sea,

Not knowing what I would

Have found then—

A miasma of

Mismanagement shown

In rusty signs and

Rotted beams

Or tries at reclamation:

Burying

Dead animals

Nailing together boathouses,

Pubs,

And homes

Maybe re-servicing

The Navy base

Maybe putting back in

All the water

That used to be there,

That kept

The crafted ocean

And habitation

Viable

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Salton Sea, California, USA

x

1

Their Eyes

Their Eyes

 

 

There is a drugstore

What we’d call it

Wait, a soda fountain

No, an ice cream parlor

Of the old kind

In my town,

I mean the old kind

Made of wood inside

The kind that is

Thick paneling

Holding up the walls

And whatever a

Soda fountain really

Inside, what controls

Behind the counter,

Is there

And all the wired,

Cushioned chairs

That keep us in our place

Just long enough

It even has the gilded

Name of Eckels,

Which for some reason

Makes me think

Of spectacles

Not on a sign such as

The billboard in Gatsby

That also makes me think

Of the work by

Zora Neale Hurston

 

Old-fashioned eyeglasses

Metal, round

The kind that perch

Upon the nose

Through which we

See a shaded world

No longer extant

Save in restorations

Such as Eckel’s

 

A walk into time

(with fresh ingredients)

Such as in the story

When the man

(it was a man)

Walks down the stairs

Inside a city station,

Finds another

Set of tracks that takes

Him back in time through

Less than

A hundred years or so

To live in quiet time

Stretching easily for

Needs something like an

Old-coin collection

 

In the past,

We read that story, too

 

 

nota bene

There is a mystery

I hadn’t read the novel in some years

Though as an English teacher

I should know it

Eckel can be found in Eckleburg,

Somehow

Though I wasn’t thinking that

On passing by

The store in town

Or until I looked it up, just now

Mystery of memory

I don’t know how to read it with

So many blank pages

In between

 

 

C L Couch

 

 

 

(“The Third Level” by Jack Finney, 1950)

 

Photo by victor vote on Unsplash

 

1

Solace

Solace

 

It’s a kindness, really

To have a little something of my own

A pen, a pair of glasses

A pipe stand that belonged to my father

A photo of my mother, when she was a girl

Holding a little cat

 

It’s not remembrance

Or nostalgia

Mostly, it’s regret

For what they didn’t have

But should have had

 

A comfort only

That so much pain is gone

Absent from the Earth

Kept in the tears of God

And every now and then

When I press out my own

 

As if to keep them in a scrapbook

A book of scraps

The little bits that are my own

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Anne-marie Ridderhof from Pixabay

 

0

Machine Learning

Machine Learning

 

I should be ashamed to say

I looked them up

Not for contact

No

Simply to know a little

I didn’t learn much

Evidence of lives lived

For which I’m thankful

Penury is not a thing to know

I keep you from mine

 

C L Couch

 

 

Control panel for UNIVAC 1232

Steven Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46966916

 

0

Men into Space

Men into Space

(someone else’s nostalgia)

 

William Lundigan beat them all

Because he got to space in the fifties

I didn’t see this show while

Growing up

Or Johnny Sokko with his giant robot in the

Half hour before

Other shows I missed as well

Supercar, for instance

I guess this was the fifties-sixties way

To get us there

Enjoy the ride

And encounter who knows what

Only the television writers knew

 

Thankful for retrograde, I guess

Retroactive, retrospective

The tier of channels that carry

Our imagination

From the past

Into the present

Maybe to conferences

And comic books

And all sorts of new brains

 

New days

That started here

In my older siblilngs’ days

Brought forward

Into better resolution

 

Now let’s have, please

Women into Space

 

C L Couch

 

 

image, NASA

STS Discovery Mission 131, International Space Station

Astronauts (clockwise from top right) Naoko Yamazaki, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, and Tracy Caldwell

 

0

Gunita

Gunita

 

Remembrance

Until it might

Slip away,

 

Tripped not on

Forgetfulness

But rather

On the path to

Now

 

Then matters

Again,

 

A crystal

Record;

 

But while you

And I are here

 

Memory is

Present for the

Present

 

Even if we

Stumble over

Nostalgia

In our steps to

The sweetness of

This time

 

C L Couch

 

Word-High July: Welcome!

 

Maria of Doodles and Scribbles and I [that’s Rosema at rosemawrites] are more than excited to read your takes on the 30 Beautiful Filipino Words.

  1. Write or create a post inspired or about the Filipino word prompts.
  2. A post can be anything. A poem, a fiction, a six-word tale, or even a photo. It’s all up to you.
  3. Linkback/create a pingback to this post: Word-High July 30 Beautiful Filipino Words. Here is a quick tutorial on how to do a pingback.
  4. Tag your post with WordHighJuly, so your co-bloggers will be able to read/see your take on the prompt. Here’s how you create tags.
  5. Most important of all, read and comment to your blogger friends (old and new found, we’ll never know).

HOP ON and let’s all GET WORD-HIGH this JULY!

10

Psalm 28, a song when I feel haunted

Psalm 28
a song when I feel haunted

I need, Lord, your love

Who doesn’t need the love of
God?

And yet I fear

I fear the ghosts that haunt me
From the past into the present

How do you proceed in this

How do you love?

How might I know peace this
Day from all the days wrought
In iron pain, now fully steel-
Dimensional?

You are here, I know

You can bear sinuous demon’s
Presence away, even into
Annihilation

Yet I feel possessed, perhaps in
Lack of faith:

Past wrongs, mine and theirs, that
Aberrate the life that you first
Shaped

Maybe this is why, in life, the (first)
Psalmists say, Make straight your
Way

For the line of majesty arriving as
The lord of care

Travels truly—with economy and
All divine electricity—on the line

Made edged and replete when we
Ally in your design

6

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