Search

clcouch123

I talk you talk we'll talk

Open Search
Tag

poem

Revenant

Revenant

(Advent or anytime)

 

This is my country now

We brutalize the families

At the border

And the young who attack them

We can remember what

This did to us in Viet Nam

If we want to

The enemy had wrecked the families

First, and then we had

To finish its work

It was strategy

What is this?

What child is this?

 

For every war we cause with someone

Small,

We make it harder for the Christ child

Or any child

Any family

To come here

 

C L Couch

 

 

Reuters

This photograph by @Reuters shows the United States of America firing tear gas at women and children.

 

0

Silent Mortal Flesh

Silent Mortal Flesh

(Advent or any beginning)

 

It’s a mystery

A season

Then eternity

Each day feels eternal, doesn’t it?

The hours move, and we are here

Sometimes there is pleasure

Sometimes there is a burden

They are a gift, though it can be hard

To feel that,

That show a part of what’s to come

But there’s so little to know

For sure

 

What can we be sure of?

That we are here and we were made

We got here somehow, even if it

Seems sensible to call it random

Random is

Part of the mystery, too

 

So many days

So many people

How can Earth bear it all?

But it does

Time, too, that seems to

Draw the seasons out

And give them passage

Through channels of sameness

And difference

 

Someday we’ll know

A mystery like dye removed

From food or fabric

But maybe in a still and quiet hour

In an empty room

 

Let this season start

It’s what we’ve had

It will be new

 

Ponder what is here

And what is descending

Not like something falling

An apple dropped from a tower

But like a bird

Fast or slow

Surely to the ground

 

Begin transacting with the Earth

Whose vibrations in return

Will resonate with who we are

And what we have.

Like mystery,

And, like

Mystery, letting the new season change us

 

C L Couch

 

 

Uploaded by: marabu

http://absfreepic.com/free-photos/download/candlestick-on-the-wood-4000x3000_40197.html

 

0

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

(in memoriam of Enkidu)

 

There is no justice

The gods cannot reveal

Who deserves to live

And who must die

They are not strong

Their fickle weakness

One way the wind blows, now the other

There is nothing to rely on

No mercy

No respect

No consideration

 

Rank and merit have no meaning

I am king

And hero

And I could not save my friend

The one I found and fought

And from whom I learned

That to be a god

One should be human, first

Then with both natures

Understand the world, at last

 

My heart is severed from the rest

My mind burns

With fire:

Regret, loss, shame

Lack of understanding

With nothing

Nothing

I may do

Though I would cleave infinity

Face the worst beast I have yet to meet

More so than the Beast of Heaven

With no sword

But with my soul, alone

For my friend’s return

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Anonymous (Mesopotamia) – Walters Art Museum: Home page  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18784557

Early Middle Assyrian cylinder seal impression dating between 1400 and 1200 BC, showing a man with bird wings and a scorpion tail firing an arrow at a griffin on a hillock. A scorpion man is among the creatures Gilgamesh encounters on his journey to the homeland of Utnapishtim.

(Wikipedia text, “Gilgamesh”)

 

1

T Time

T Time

 

Broken leaves are on the way

To atomized

The shield of fall is broken in with

Winter

It’s always a time of change

Don’t we know that?

 

I like my rituals

And of one kind or another

Know we need them

 

But retrograde is for the Earth

In winter’s northern

Declination

We can’t live angling back

We’ll only know eternity ahead

It’s our way

Don’t like it, take it up with God

If, tremulous, you can ask about the manners

In creation

 

Motion lives

Rest, that’s important

Forward, then, is not that way

But this

 

C L Couch

 

 

By 松岡明芳 – 松岡明芳, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11701874

 

1

Sky-Song

If only

If only

The stars weren’t so lonely

They wander in grace

And season of space

 

Sky-Song

(for Camden)

 

We have what’s good

Using it, should

A beach and a wave

And all of it save

 

Earth-songs we’ll sing

Seasons we’ll bring

We’ll have the nights

Gifts into rights

 

Peace ends the war

We come so far

Foes into friends

Newly-won ends

 

Aspects of grace

Seeing God’s face

Hearing the voice

From which we learn choice

 

Woman, man, child

Glory in wild

When fed the least

When we serve the feast

 

Finally, yes

Faith our best guess

All of it right

And we’ll have the night

 

C L Couch

 

 

(image)

NASA, NASA TV

 

1

Process-Serving

Process-Serving

 

The morning is enlivened

Mister Coffee’s gurgling

Hot water’s running for the dishes

I wouldn’t call this a quickening

But the day feels

More official, now

 

The typing here is quiet

No touch-typing, certainly no

Banging on a manual

Keyboards are largely quiet

Except when many clack together

The monkeys writing War and Peace

Why is it War and Peace

That’s cited in the hypothetical—

Why not Origin of Species?

 

Maybe we should write “War and Peace”

A hundred times on a blackboard

To value the former, keep the latter

And then

 

Write something new

Something with words that

Anyone might apprehend,

Which elevates the need for language

 

First steps taken by Cyril and Methodius

When evangelizing on the steppes

The factions understood

Not them, not one another

So the mission’s gift of love was

Words to hear

For those who would

 

But back behind a half a world

I have coffee

And a program loaded

Time to listen to the birds outside

And scratch black tracks of claw marks here

The solution

To an ancient riddle

Letters across the page

 

Pauses and diacriticals

Maybe to make meaning

Form a message

Then to send it

 

C L Couch

 

 

Public Domain (Pixabay)

 

1

Word Up

Word Up

 

There was no red phone

I learned that recently

Khrushchev and Kennedy used a teletype

To stand up over Cuba, negotiate

Through hardheadedness

A cold war

 

Now they might text

Or tweet if

Saints won’t abey their thumbs

 

There’s meeting face to face

And I guess the telephone might do

But we need direct communication

I learned this in school

How about you

 

Nothing like talking

Or writing with intent and art

Don’t worry

I never perfected either

And tire way too easily these days

From trying

But the message

 

The message

Still exists in words

That must be shared

From time to time

With care’s articulation

 

Call it ceremony

Call it ritual

Call it marriage day to day

Or the energy of friendship

Yes at the game, at work,

At home

 

Keep talking

Use words

In your better way

Sometimes, that’s all we got

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Vmenkov – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2910085

A pair of Laughing Doves sit on the electric (or telephone?) wires in Milyanfan village, in Kyrgyzstan’s Chuy Valley.

 

0

New Year

New Year

(first day in Advent)

 

Lord, I love you

But sometimes

You make things so hard

I’m not saying life can’t have

Its sharpness

We all get cut from time to tome

There are always to stanch the bleeding

But

It hurts each time

And some hurts, well, keep on hurting

Damaged nerves

Wounded organs

Burdens in the blood

I guess I’m complaining

What could I ask for?

Most anodynes aren’t real

And aren’t cheap

And I am not a boy in a cave

Who found a magic lamp

And you are not a genie

 

Some help, please—

Are you listening?

 

I am

You had me at I love you

 

C L Couch

 

 

note

in case you’re counting, which is a point for seasons, Advent starts Sunday 2 December; for the Christian church, Advent starts the new year

 

at A Good Morning Café, Los Altos, California (USA)

https://www.yelp.com/biz/a-good-morning-cafe-los-altos-2

http://www.agoodmorninglosaltos.com/

 

3

Hello, It’s Me

Hello, It’s Me

 

It’s Saturday

An ordinary day

Maybe it’s ordinary time

In the liturgy

Ain’t extraordinary, that’s for sure

It’s dark before dawn

Why was it said the darkest time

The fading has begun

 

Just before dawn, there’s light

It’s an announcement

I am coming

Get ready for me, day

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jenna Anderson on Unsplash

Was driving early in the morning to shoot a wedding and saw this to my right. Had to pull over to capture it.

 

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑