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Speaking Simply

(x = space)

x

x

Speaking Simply

x

Who holds the tap

On grace

Like backyard water

Miserly barmaster

Rain

For life

On hanging gardens

x

Why

No one

Keeps grace tight

Or somehow

Unavailable

Do not let anyone

Inform you

x

Grace is free

We need to say this

While the only one who holds it

Lets it go

To pour upon the Earth

xxxxxLike rain or dew

xxxxxOr faithful tears

With salvation

Near

And all we have to do is to touch

To hear

To take it in

x

Let no one bill you

Teach you anything extreme

For expectation

God might like to use you

But will not

Should you ask for distance

Space

And time

x

The vulnerable should come to God

The children

God appeals

It’s open

No money or affiliation

Must change hands

x

The strong

Or strong supposed

May come to God as well

Those who like to lift things

Move things around

Or have them moved

Or who wish

In frustration

They

You

Were movers

x

God will take

The complexity of plans

xxxxxGod can handle

And would handle for you

While you learn

The simple

And profound

And the merely simple

Like the love of God

Be love

For every person

x

Love without measure

Meaning

Complete

For nothing

Everything

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

x

3

Left Over

(x = space)

x

x

Left Behind Over

x

I used to wonder

How I got it

Wrong

How I was tricked

By devilish

Personae

And didn’t get to go

Above

Beyond

Wherever all the heavenly

Got to go

x

I am on Earth

When it’s called tribulation

To be here

And to be here

I have to have my forehead

Marked

Be ready to pay

Bars of gold

For bread

And who knows

If any water

Anything is safe

While nothing is

x

I wish it hadn’t come to this

x

A savior

Styled by self

And people

Rises

A liar

Who looks

Oh

So

Well

In public

Yet drains us for itself

Ready to execute

The life from those

Returning

To the faith

x

And me

Should I feel the blade

Of death on Earth

For heaven

x

A heavenly force

Arrives

And all again is overthrown

This time for victory

Of belief

And real power

Manifest like matter

From creation

x

It has hurt

It has been trying

Life

And death for faith was awful

Now it’s done

x

And is it a dream

For sirens of

Earthly missiles

And a moment

To decide

x

So

Decide

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Cosmin Gurau on Unsplash

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0

Dona Nobis Please

(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

0

The Eighth Day

(x = space)

x

x

The Eighth Day

x

O God

I exhale your name

That has no name

Nothing catchy

For a slogan

Or a following

x

Plain

Supreme

(like pizza)

Simple without cunning

The closest thing to name

Because we need a name

Otherwise

There is no signifier

So that creation

Stands alone

As its own testimony

To our senses

Of the creator

Back of it

Before

Underneath

To carry through

The secrets of the universe

Navigating rings

Of everything that orbits

Or otherwise transports

x

God without a name

Who’d rather not have one

Though Moses

Insisted

For his

Sibling people

x

God without a name

Vacuum for power

The designer has designed

To share

First with the host

And then for

Nature

Than for the rest of us

Who also need a name

For show

Of praise

Rather than manifest

Through only

Breathing out and breathing in

A life

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by La Pájara Azul on Unsplash

x

1

osiris rex tremendae

(x = space)

x

x

osiris rex tremendae

x

we brought back part of an asteroid

today

while I was in church

what do you know

it happened anyway

I caught the replay

people near the capsule

sample in a box?

blackened spacecraft back on Earth

now left alone

(and I gloss

these are preliminaries

then

a bag

not a box)

and now someone should consider

quarantine

I’m sure someone has already thought of this

uh

we wish those closest

well

x

c l couch

x

x

photo by 2H Media on Unsplash

x

0

Gray-Day Invitationing

(x = space)

x

x

Invitationing

x

It is a gray day

Perfect for

The Spirit to come in

x

A visit by a fire

With the Fire

An easy day

Made glorious

Through interaction

With the presence

Of the Lord

x

Hosted by

The human heart

Watched over

By the human mind

x

The visit lasts forever

Or it may

It depends upon the labor

Of the Spirit

And our own

To relent

To the exchange

Timeless

Over time

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash

x

0

The Lord Hears

(x = space)

x

x

The Lord Hears

x

The Lord hears

Our prayers

We don’t how they’re

Tallied or remembered

If there’s a meeting

On each day in heaven

When and where

Angels receive assignments

Even discuss

The timing

x

Each word is heard

There is no requirement

We may ask in faith

Or doubt

We might be easy in our words

Or difficult

Say something

It is heard

x

It might be yes or no

Though the Lord is more than

Binary

There must be many ways

To answer prayer

Materially

Abstractly

With small mechanical change

Or simply in an attitude

Encouraged to endure

x

Good is still pretty good

Without the bad

There is a learning value

We suppose

But ask for what is needed

And think about

Confession

And thanksgiving

x

Dear and

Amen

Is not

Are not

Required

Say either or both

For a beginning and an ending

Or you know

Don’t

Leave the prayer suspended

In the air

For someone else to catch

To carry with endearment

For another’s hearing

And response

x

There’s always something next

Pray badly

Stutter in your heart

Speak

Or simply think your prayer with God

Pray what Jesus taught

As a responsibility

An affirmation

x

But however

The words go

And whichever

We will be heard by truth

And responded to

With love’s

Practicality

And maybe by our reckoning

A miracle

x

Listened

And responded to

The transactional nature of the world

Confirms

It points the way

Creation’s creator

Reckoning perfectly

Providing something always

In return

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by whoislimos on Unsplash

x

0

Gospel According to the Birds

(x = space)

x

x

Gospel According to the Birds

x

Books are wonderful

Black tracks across the page

Birds to say

There’s something here

Someone inked our talons

And we have walked on lines

Somehow

And there’s a message

Someone overheard a gospel

Before we were

Put back on our branches

Ancient pens

And when we’re gone

Our larger feathers go to humans

Who are

Surprised by grace

To leave a message

Whispers of angels

Like the ones who took their wings

To guide us

In our flights across the page

x

They take the credit

Though we guess it is their story

More than ours

We need to messages

No gospels

We emerge into life

Knowing how to fly

How to listen to impulses

The small glories

We would never hide

Or cease in all our starts and stops

From praising the creator

You can hear us

Humans

Our song is perfect

Without lessons

Or egos

Or prevarications

x

We could say praise us

In our stories

We know better

Without knowing

We fly

We sing

We know

God loves us

x

x

What is made by birds walking across skin that has a third opportunity?

The answer is a page whose words resemble tracks upon vellum made by animals once alive, whose skin is stretched for a second chance at life, so to say, bearing a story now to offer life for a third time, especially if the story be a gospel.

This is the kind of riddle that literate medieval people enjoyed together, literate meaning mostly monks, the kind who kept texts that had not been destroyed in the fall, thus saving what was left and what could feed into new nourishing, again to say, mostly in Europe a new civilization

The birds talking is not typical back then but my idea now.  And Aesop.  And Aristophanes.

Sorry, teacher can’t stop chirping.

Old English riddles are found in The Exeter Book, a volume discovered that had served as a coaster and something for impatience to glide a knife into (or why anyone would drive a knife into, along a book).  A not-hiding glory to be plainly found, opened, and discovered.

x

Photo by Mehdi Sepehri on Unsplash

x

1

Rhapsody in Bible

(x = space)

x

x

Rhapsody in Bible

x

God

You are good

You love us

Always

And anyway

x

I’m sure it’s in there

Though I can make

Only pages with

Neat typing

Of blurred letters

As I try

x

And then the stream

The invitation

And a wall of rooms

That somehow

Turn into mansions

Promise of two verses

About paradise

About

You know

Dwelling in the house

Of the Lord

x

There are numbers on the pages

Small headlines

Aids from time

Which were not in

The original

Black pages

Into mod

(it was the sixties

into seventies

for us)

And now the church

All wood

And mullions

With a clock that I could see

When in the choir

Set in the center

So the pastor be reminded

(by the clock

committee)

Of the time

For preaching

And when

To wrap it up

x

I received my Bible there

I think

Or in the rooms

For Sunday School

Which had checked floors

Of tile

Room dividers

In the wing

That had been built

Before I got there

And a breezeway

Over the drive

x

But this is building stuff

And the pages

Pages stuff

What of the truth that’s in there

And it’s in there

I can recall without the images

Though they come

Anyway

The verses and the truth inside

x

Create in me

A clean heart

O God

And renew a right spirit

Within me

x

And that’s only to begin

The faith

And transformation

Needed

That we learn about

In there

x

C L Couch

x

x

from Psalm 51

(followed by

Cast me not away

from thy presence

and take not thy holy spirit

from me

x

which happened to Saul

by the way

at the nadir

of his life

as king

appointed by the prophet

who got directions

from the Lord

to look for someone tall

and

well

kingly

for a tragic irony

as things turned out)

x

sorry, I got into a kind of coda

(that a kind of song, could be a psalm, might have)

x

x

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

x

0

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