practical peace
because
we won’t have peace naively
or stupidly
it must be practical
to be lasting
needs
wants
hopes
desires
visions
futures
should be secured
or all the awful
bloody
tiresome effort
will be wasted
good words
define
a map
could help
actions will prove
peace right
that we deserve it
and should have it
starting
with the victims
made before
we got to this
august place
and really mean it
by defining
by mapping
by our doing
it
the peace
we practice
everywhere
this time
C L Couch
photo in Berlin, Germany
by Norbert Braun on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Hanukkah Blue
x
Hanukkah
Blue
Blue of certain
Stars
Pretty blue
Thoughtful
Magic
Works its way inside
Protective shells
To say
This is right
This is good
Blue for the miracle
Blue for peace
That should be
No one’s miracle
For happening
For real
Everyone
Upon the Earth
In every season
Once achieved
That point
From
Now on
Blue for jazz
Blue for me
Blue for you
Blue on
Beauty
All the stars
Starting on one star
For
Seasons’
Greetings
Blue on
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Zhifei Zhou on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
two more brief poems today
x
x
Black Branches
x
The squirrel ran criss-cross
Up the branches
x
Zig-zag ladder
I certainly had not noticed
Upon
Looking out
Into the dark-grey day
x
The squirrel’s smart
Good legs
The tail helps
x
And the creature’s
Totally
Impulsively involved with nature
To be so in tune
With all vibrations
x
Must be astounding
To have so much
Ordinary
Magic
x
x
8 to try
x
Hanukkah tonight
starts
8 days for a miracle
x
what if
we try this for our
universal selves
x
8 days for peace
before they arrive
that is
something
outside ourselves
to judge
x
pretend
there is a deadline
x
find out
how far we get
then let it stay
for real
beyond 8
you know
as long as we can
or may
x
8 and more
as if the world
were at stake
which
you know
it is
x
x
Photo by Mila Tovar on Unsplash
x
x
C L Couch
x
(x = space)
x
x
Normal Prophecy
x
And shall we live today
In late fall
To the north
With spring away
Beyond the line
And before the others that
Define our place
For seasons
Though in the middle
I suppose
There must seasons
Too
x
And shall we have our fall
And then our winter
Not discontent
On sledding hills
And over frozen ponds
Our temperate zones
Replete with
Different-feeling times of year
Weather for planting
And for harvesting
As well
The mere tilting of the Earth
And shall Goldilocks
Be tilting
Too
Elsewhere
x
The seasons to survive
With food
And beauty
Too
Both for our survival
In a changing world
Until the day
We walk through the valleys
In all zones
And in all zones
We walk in peace
x
C L Couch
x
x
“We Shall Walk through the Valley” is a hymn and anthem and is referenced here.
x
Photo by Robert V. Ruggiero on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
2 poems
x
x
Fake Peace
x
We negotiate in air
While the real war goes on
The numbers we’ve collected
Make for
Phantom outrage
x
We’ve learned to gather narratives
To help
Though hardness of head and heart
Like Pharoah’s
Or the safe distance of the Czar
The junta in a bunker
Technical commanders at the switches
For computers
Will not help
x
Stop it
We want to say
Though justification
Rationale
To go on while we’re winning
Think we are
Further compels us
x
There are sides
There are protests
There are groans
From hurt
And even dying people
More explosions
Inside walls
Bursting through
That might have been
Our homes
x
And now collateral
More numbers
Say we’re winning
Why negotiate
x
Come home sometime
What will there be
Rubble in defeat
(there’s rubble on the winning
side as well)
Enough to say
For losing
(and for winning)
We are done
With so much of our spirit
Surrendered over to
Waiting
For even a surer end
Damn the legations
x
Everything
Is over
Negotiate the absence
Of our families
(both sides)
Release the pain
And fill in all the losses
Like a journey through
Bomb craters
And we have no shoes
Only garments rent
From running
And now mourning
x
And you
Winners
Want negotiation
Naming the terms
If you can
Through all this
Forget it
I need food
And walls
And separation
From everything
And all of you
Even my own
x
And this is war
Universally
With tense peace
After
And new hopelessness
To feel every day
Upon waking
Sensing
And recalling
So much blasted
So much gone
So many
Even those we argued with
Now gone
x
Gone people
Name locations
Redraw
The lines
We do not care
The dead
And now
The living victims
Anyway
In war
And after war
x
x
Truth Waits
x
And what is true
Knowing that Pilate
Doesn’t wait
For an answer
But consigns the one
He asks
To a rabid crowd
Festered
And fettered
By the empires
And wasted doctrine
Rituals
That do not work
Make nothing better
But a promise
That the next world
Will be better
x
Ready to
Tear the one apart
And is consigned to this
By the one
Who asks for truth
And doesn’t wait
For an answer
x
The rhetorical question
But for a moment
Left unsaid
By further one
And then the other
x
Truth
Suspended in the air
Wafting uselessly
Too far above the crowd
And a governor’s
Own house
And how we govern
Waiting longer
For an answer
Not from Rome
But re-released
From above
Where Pilate’s truth
Was captured
And let go
Refined
And can be received
By him
Had waited
And the crowd
Had it been stilled
Like the truth
Over the storm
In Galilee
x
x
John 18:38
John 4:24
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash
(THIS IS WHO I AM)
x
(x = space)
x
x
nether campaigning
x
the demon
knows a gun
or a Bible
and what shape
a trench might take
and the cosmic trouble
when a soul is gone
then how to argue
for salvation
of the other
the wide pathway
into hell
x
demon thwarted
demon satisfied
a report for
adversaries
smallest of decrees
ringing through
one judgment
or the other
x
two kinds of howls
for outcomes
two kinds of retributions
for the work
in afterlife
after a soul is counted
one way
or the other
x
they lose
you know
the demons
finally
they have contracted
signing by descent
to grasp for
less and less
until after last battles
when the aftermath
is simply
nothing
x
c l couch
x
x
one might read The Great Divorce or Revelation 22 of the Christian testament
x
photo by Jani Kaasinen on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
The USA President in Israel
x
The President speaks in Israel,
There’s something popping with
Small flames
Outside the embassy;
He speaks mostly in support of Israel
Though he speaks to
Civil and civilian losses
On both sides,
All sides
x
Because there are sides
Having removed from each other
Because
There is a war
x
Hamas should not have done what it did
To start;
That was sinful
And stupid:
It was followed by
The deaths of many citizens
Around Hamas
(I mean geographically
and also
dis-strategically),
The destruction of homes
In Gaza,
Hospitals
And so many lives together
And the lives alone
x
The Israelis
Suffered
First,
Others underneath
Or beside
The missiles
And the bombs,
All the bullets fired;
And Israel responds with wrath
x
Hamas keeps fighting,
There is a war
x
Are there promised weapons
For Hamas?
Promised philosophy?
The codes–
The Jewish, Muslim–
Say
To love the neighbor,
Welcome the stranger,
Understand that creation
Is an act of love
x
The greatest power
Behind success of nations
As it is behind
The cosmos
And the reason
For the cosmos
x
On the devil’s table,
Looking one way or the other,
Is now a bullet-point,
A mark
For thoughts and plans
Of genocide
Believing that
We get rid
Of a people
Then all shall be well
x
And so the fighting
In this hellish hope
And demons’ cause;
They cheer infernally
x
It’s people
Not agendas
Killed:
The abstract, ersatz
Notions remain
Weaving a web
And also caught up in it,
An ouroboros
That consumes itself
To add a symbol
To the metaphor
x
We have nowhere else to go
Said Golda Meir to
Senator Biden
Some years ago,
And it is true
And also true
In fact and spirit
For many Palestinians
x
Both of us are there,
Both are home
x
How could diasporas
Be on the table, too?
x
What Hamas did
Was stupid
And sinful
Warfare on a quietish,
Tense day
Like any other there
And now there are fronts
Fighting also on mixed lines
With and beside the plans
x
People
Ununiformed
And uniformed
Suffering the most
On all sides
Of the weapons
x
There shall be an end,
Cessations maybe
Then the end
And what then shall happen?
Who shall win?
We think there shall be a winner
And with reason
But crazy to believe
Anything shall be resolved
For good
(for good)
In victory
x
The losers shall be punished
And might be promised
Through back doors
Into dark rooms
That nothing is over
When there shall be new campaigns
From promises
x
Cessation might
Overlay a mask of peace
That for relief
Might be suitable
For a while
x
I’m sorry,
I’m afraid,
We are afraid
Victimized by terror and by war
Who pray
Who petition for
Practical peace
x
Out of love that is not sweetness,
Well,
Is sweetness
But wears a skin of wounds
With scars
Still persists
Far more real than
We tend to think
Instead
Of worldly power
x
Please come to the right
Even righteous table
x
End the war
With tense
Satisfaction
Then go for peace for real
On this side of everyone’s
Parousial paradise
Ungained
Maybe blasted,
Might be apocalypsed
But not yet lost
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by ritesh singh on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Dona Nobis Please
x
God
I wish I knew a round
And had a choir
Volunteered
x
A canon in the better sense
For meaning without questioning
The bias
x
I guess
What I really mean
Is to write the round
For exigence
A canon for the evening
Fluidly
To welcome stars
And thoughts of rest
And afterward
Retire
With notes to welcome dreams
x
Amen
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Adam Ulrich on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
New Shapes
x
In the new century
When everything’s
An artifact
We’ll skew some things
Add our biases
That might be better
Might be inclined toward
An actual
Prosperity
x
In peace
We have declared some things
No more
Metal and blood war
Outside
We have enough
With
Environmental warfare
Chemical destruction
The legacies of hate
On all fronts
Which we’re trying to
Reform
And then re-form
Like plastics
Into spaceships
x
Welcome the new era
Should you
Time-travel
You might
Not recognize it
A universal language
Appreciation of unique
And favorable
A celebration of progress
In unity
While
Yes
We’re working on the hatred
And the other sins
We keep inside
x
It’s frightening
It’s new
We can’t be humanists
Not thoroughly
But must try
In alliance with God-parts
With the liminal
The numinous
We are spiritual in part
After all
x
Sigh
We have far to go and
We know that
Both open and oblique
Our novelists
Will tell us so
Our poets
Keep us honest
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
x
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