Border Talk
I don’t know what to say about
A family torn apart
I never had that feeling
Once I thought I’d lost part of my family in
A famous fire
I was hundreds of miles away
I cried for a day to find
It wasn’t true
C L Couch
http://keranews.org/post/view-border-mcallen-locals-debate-child-immigration-crisis
Made Up
It’s Sunday
Maybe I should think something
Religious
I’m two days behind the Jews
Only one day after
The Adventists
And for those who never keep a sabbath
Why miss out on
The rest
It’s inside-out
Or should be
Take the time to know the heart
Four chambers to walk through
A mind that is a ride
In a synapse car
None of this is religion
But there’s something about
Wonderfully made
That comes to mind, while
I’m on the synapse-ride
In a park with a
Neuron saucer
What would I configure
If I had to make up me
It’s been done with
Someone who has more
Art and skill than
I shall ever have
In fact, the one who
Made the ride to
Set me on this course
C L Couch
The Formal Feeling
(title from Emily Dickinson)
Catharsis after tragedy
The sad rush we feel, knowing
The experience is over, that we got it
Vicariously,
That it will not happen to us
And by the way
The community depicted now is stronger
It’s after the terrible and blessed
Have both transpired
And watchers leave the scene
(we leave the theatre)
To go home, chastened and relieved
It wasn’t us
They got their due
Their nation will be better
Let’s go home
It’s not closure
(what is)
For a future ticket will bring it all to
Action, opportunity, and desire
For mortal flaws to seed
And then to flourish
And are these analogues for
Life outside
Well, for those who must
Who will not learn
By mastery of organs or
Of language
Who will not hear
And will not heed delaying paradise
So not to have it at all
C L Couch
image from a production of Hamlet, 1899
Flesh and Blood
I tried to tally death a couple
Of weeks ago
Starting with two explosions in Kabul
The second device murdering those who
Had responded, rushing, to the first
Since then, schools have been the setting of
Murders, too
Workplaces, neighborhoods
Nature has taken part in many
Though we kill well enough on our own
The count of death is maybe not so
Useful beyond actuarial
The flesh becomes abstract
The quality in tears evaporates
The blood is in another room, not
The one in which we’re arguing
Funding and our rights to shoot each other
When and where we like
Control and majesty of black metal move
Us more than someone else’s
Daughter or son
This is not about an issue
It’s about a loss that’s real
Stolen like bounty in the night
Hell’s gone a-hunting
So ephemeral a trophy,
The soul
If this is an issue for you
Then vote for something
And in the mean time wait
Until changed forever
And on occasion wonder why
Steel propulsions have to mean
So much
C L Couch
Lauda
All the things I should have said
All the times I should have said
Thank you
I love you
I’m sorry
Let me help
Yes, it’s me
Yes, it’s maudlin
Though it might be useful
I might be
Maybe I should wear motley like a fool
A reminder to step out of the folds
Of an otherwise fixed and unkind people
To say instead
I’m fragile
And I make mistakes
But I’m not done
To say instead
To act instead
Let me try
C L Couch
Wikimedia Commons
Barn-Raising
It’s a day, a process
As long as many are involved
It stands a chance
But that’s the deal: we must
Come together to make it
Happen
And afterward we have a barn
And each other
All in company
Maybe the U.N. should go into this
Raising barns in needful places
And then making delegates
Raise barns in troubled places
No doubt some of the work would be bombed
And other work burned down
We have to allow
For that without ever
Approving
C L Couch
Catskill Animal Sanctuary Needs Your Help to Complete New Barn …
The Circle Will
Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so
All of Christian theology in a
Capsule, so I’m told
And I can believe it
Little ones to him belong
Who said he will not suffer fools
It was not Jesus
He welcomed the small, the foolish,
And the outcast
I take great comfort from his
Company
And so might you
They are weak, but he is strong
Is there strength in doubt
In cynical insight—if
So, then I might qualify for
Divine companionship
To marvel in the one who
Walks beside me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
One more time, and the spell is cast
It becomes official
He has pledged some kind of
Fidelity to me
Because an invocation counts
So much so we give it once a week
That, like the bath on Saturday,
We take it, needing one or not
Yes, Jesus loves me
The Bible tells me so
Ancient lore
Interpretation of the text
Desert mothers and our fathers
Keepers of oldest insight
Dry seeds in small packages
Waiting for young water
What will be our next song, children
Maybe about fittin’ Jericho
Or whether or not we know we
Smile
Songs go back to truth,
Which is why it’s clever when
We can sing all the verses
Time for reading now
And later there’ll be play
It’s a good day in God’s land
However many rainy days
Or rungs to climb
It takes to get there
C L Couch
The original uploader was Merphant at English Wikipedia
Air and Space Museum
Light and space
It’s physics,
And it’s Arabic
It’s need
A vision helping me get by
In a crowded world
That doesn’t breathe enough
Plants to air
Us to carbon dioxide
Back to plants
It goes ‘round, and when
Done right, it’s good
I want to be at the Alhambra
Or the Alcázar
Without the Christian overparts
Not to abandon faith but
To find it in the beauty
Of healthy building
I don’t know how to reconcile
The tyranny that built it
Somehow-dimensions cast to God’s own
As if the architect had been
In Eden when
First designed
All was lush
With light and air
Imagine a veil
Blown under the arch
Of all creation, which was
The promise of
How close we might get
Toward living with life’s own
The movement
Without angels yet
To keep us out
All is green behind
After we rest, breathed upon by God
We get to go inside
C L Couch
File:Alcázar de Segovia-9.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
Universes
To understate,
The universe is huge
And there might be many of it
All around and through
Makes one wonder how matter can
Be dark as in absent
Where’s the room
But I guess dark matter is a substance
Of its own
Like tiny black holes that might be
All around as well (and through)
If so, they must be pulling matter that we know
We lose the universe we know,
And does it go to feed another
Body on another plain
And so they have such openings there
As to release their atoms
Skittering across astral dimensions
That might sometime land here
Is it all one give-and-take
And is there balance
Or is chaos confirmed
As part of the regularity, the normalcy
The paradox in making
In keeping everything together
While it all moves
It’s not covalence
It’s a dance
We all are partners
Everyone has a turn
Each one owns steps
And talent is in measure
And it’s all approved
Do you see
Whoever you are
However you’re arranged
And I can’t speak to aberrance
But someone can who calls
The dance
Does not control the steps
But gave us the hall
And bids us, as an invitation, to take part
In something wonderful
C L Couch
Honky Tonk Train Blues | recording by Lewis | Britannica.com
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