Search

clcouch123

I talk you talk we'll talk

Open Search
Tag

poems

2 poems—pray for me, pray for you

(x = space)

x

x

2 poems—pray for me, pray for you

x

Life in 3/4 Time

x

I’m sorry, Lord

I spent half my life repressed

The other half aggressive

Now is a time of

Negotiated peace

I’ve tried to give up everything

From each time

Even time

So that now there’s little left

With which to make a new life

Made of acceptable things

For an acceptable time

x

x

Pray for Friends

x

Lord,

Watch over all my friends

Send your angels to protect

Them from all kinds

Of things

x

There is sickness

There are sick pets

There are jobs

And then no jobs

And sometimes jobs

Not worth the having

x

And sometimes things get

Broken, and there is pain

Of all kinds

Sometimes relationships

Are broken and I cannot

Speak with expertise

But eschew all the bitterness

As well

x

They are people, mostly

Some are animals

And I pray that where something

Has been split,

You will fill in with healing

And a promise

x

Though tomorrow only waits

While today is what

We have

So I must pray for now

For them

For you

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Tejash Verma on Unsplash

Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

x

0

2 songs

(x = space)

x

x

2 songs

x

x

Song of Innocence

x

If innocence

Means free from guilt

Well, that’s really

Not enough

Innocence must be

Something on its own,

Not the absence

Of anything

Something desirable

A sense of peace

Of grace that we can

Walk with through

The day

x

Substance

Not a reflection or

Wishful thinking

Something that knows

The world, the score

And chooses innocence

Knowing,

Even skeptical or cynical

Strong innocence

Elastic

Durable

That knows the score

Not absence of guilt

The born-with quality

Is fine

But the knowing quality

Is better

x

x

Song of Experience

x

There’s so little

That I’ve done

Enough to hurt some people

To have been used

By people, too

x

Here I am

So tired,

Breathing through

A microphone

A torch song

Emanating

Is that all there is?

x

But it isn’t

I think there’s more

More sufficiency

More grace

More life

x

And if it seems I’m whining

Or whistling through

My teeth

The saddest tune

Well, I’ve been

Around

Some

With so much more

I’ve never known

x

And yet I think

In splinters,

Having this and wanting that

Wishing I’d done that

Wishing I hadn’t

It’s a maddening calculation

At the board

On this side of the gate

x

I hope

The tally’s adequate

Or maybe we could

Toss the numbers

Into the moving water

Dividing worlds

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

Hope Valley, Peak District, UK

Photo by Magda V on Unsplash

x

1

3 poems about room

(x = space)

x

x

3 poems about room

x

x

Waiting Room

x

Lately, I’ve been angry in my dreams

I’m not sure what that means

I’ve argued with my mother

I’ve argued with former coworkers

Then I’ve left each encounter

To find a peaceful place, all my own

x

x

Wanting Room

x

I’ve not argued with God

In my dreams

I’ve not argued with God

When awake

I don’t argue with God

x

Though I imagine

There was a time

When I must have argued,

When

Hurts were all

Too awful in the bearing

Of them,

And I didn’t want

To bear them

x

Wanting relief, instead

Or at least a reason—

No, a reason

Wouldn’t be enough

x

I wanted relief

From God

x

x

Room

x

I want room from the landlord*

Who makes me live

With paper-peeling walls

And ceiling and says he can do

Nothing

x

I want room from doctors who

Don’t respond

To their own tests,

To tell me how to deal with

Possibly a broken bone

And certainly with broken flesh

x

I want room

From people who don’t recognize

Me anyway

Because they don’t recognize

Anyone, anyway

x

Each is in a world of one

While the rest of us are landscape

Statues in performance,

Performing when invoked

With snapping fingers or something

x

I’ll take room

From that

From those,

Thank you

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Holy Maria Lala on Unsplash

Palmerston North, New Zealand

x

*(room, landlord = pun, sorry)

x

1

Greenwood

(x = space)

x

x

Greenwood

x

Pleasant name, pleasant place,

I’m sure

But a hundred years ago

The neighborhood was burning,

Smoldering, ruining

Owners gone or rounded up, arrested,

And confined

And it would take a hundred years

To talk about at all,

At all well

x

A campaign of hours,

One side had more guns

And a pretense of law enforcement

That on other days

Might have worked fine

x

But now

So many deputized

Self-deputized

More simply self-righteous

Took aim, fired

Then burned buildings,

One of the first of them a church

x

Were they prideful,

The Greenwood people?

Did they enjoy their luxury?

A colony of prosperity

In what turned out to be

Enemy-occupied land,

Though they had helped

To fight the war

Against the worst

x

Say what you will,

There is relief in owning something

And despair when it is taken—maybe

You know the feeling

x

So many who lost more

And life as more

x

And had evidence

Of their lives

Buried without markings,

Without marking the

Rage and guilt

That killed them

x

But it’s in such a pleasant

Place

And the neighborhood so

Pleasantly named,

Imbued with rest

That someday will return

To those who know it best for

Want,

For dreaming

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Hayden Scott on Unsplash

Tulsa, OK

x

City Of Tulsa To Resume Search For Possible Mass Graves At Oaklawn Cemetery (news9.com)

x

0

Victory at Sea

(x = space)

x

x

Victory at Sea

x

The sadness

That so much is done,

So much never started

But then I’d want

Eternity here and now

Everything

All possibilities

From which to choose

And choose again

To get it right

x

Would that Earth

Could turn peacefully

So that choices might

Be made from

Wisdom and from joy

x

But too many

Steal podiums to say

Beat the other side,

Don’t hesitate

To shoot

x

The second problem is

That hate will shoot back,

And when our

Magazines are empty

There is only peace

In death, that is,

Lives taken

x

Sibling murder

We pretend the other

Is not human

But a target for our rage,

For demon-stoked

Disapproval

x

This is so the world is mine,

Rendered in my own image

With death the medium

x

Would that

Famous people

Would shut up

And listen to the Earth

For a while

Then listen to us,

Which is nearly all of us

x

Pain, thirst

All kinds of ideas

And agendas

Find them

Find the stories

Hear them

x

Let change happen

Speak to it

Let peace prevail

And every other goodness

x

Favorite recipes

Homemade holidays

Comfortable shoes

Barefoot where the Earth

Is welcoming

x

We welcome each other

Sparing the lives that only

Insanity demands

And criminality

x

There is little more to say

Stop destroying

Leave self-righteousness to God

From whom we can learn about

Justice

And safe water

And living as if everything

Is home

For everyone

x

C L Couch

x

The title is taken from a TV series about bravery in war.  Music by Richard Rodgers.

To be at sea also means to be adrift.  Wanting to head for home.

(Not that the ship in the image is adrift, as in having no control. I don’t know.  The ship looks lonely, though.)

x

Photo by Javier Balseiro on Unsplash

x

2

Catechesis, Parts 1 and 2

(x = space)

x

x

Catechesis, Part 1

x

questions

x

I got up in time,

Sort of

How did you do?

Is it a good day?

Are things going well?

x

I missed my turn at prayer

The group went on

And I hope the quiet praying

Counted

I don’t know the protocols

On Earth, in heaven

So well

x

I fact,

When I feel my tether pulled,

So to speak,

On Earth or heaven,

I ask, existentially

What do you want of me?

And Who are you?

Asking anything of me

x

Not that I take it amiss

I have time

Enough lack of direction

That I may respond happily,

Given

Something good to do

x

x

Catechesis, Part 2

x

answers

x

You are God,

I think,

Maker of all things

That must mean good and bad

Downright evil

Or so frustrating that

Some of us

Might want

To scream and do

So you are the God

Of good things and bad things

And evil things

Supposing the delightful things as well

Spring and picnics in good weather,

Cool water, wine,

And sex

Beside still waters

(metaphorically at least)

You are with us

In all things,

Somehow excused of voyeurism,

Which might be why

The seraphim have so many eyes apiece

So that one eye or another

Might be closed

With no loss to function, overall

x

Anyway,

You want of us to love

To love you

To accept love from you,

Which isn’t a done deal

You know, during

Those awful times

When so much has been lost

To the dark

Forever night

Without night’s comforts

‘Til a white sun rises over day,

All our empty landscapes

x

You are there

Maybe we’ll excuse this

One way or the other

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

x

Photo by Avery D’Alessandro on Unsplash

Brugge, Belgium

x

0

3 brief poems for the new year

3 brief poems for the new year

(x = space)

x

x

May I Sell You a Machine?

(end of December)

x

According to commercials

At this time of year,

We should be losing weight

x

Grinding on exercise machines,

Finding our food in a box,

Engaging meditation maybe

Thirty seconds, maybe

Less

x

I suppose the box companies

Are doing well

And companies that make

Machines—I wonder

That machines are always doing well

x

We lose weight,

They weigh us down

x

x

Contemporarities

(2021)

x

God, help us in new years

Whenever they begin

In calendars,

In life

x

When someone dies,

When someone comes to life

x

Because she or he is born,

Because there is a return

To life

After pain, as she says

x

When the formal feeling comes

And something after

x

x

Our Sci-Fi Lives

x

Now is the science-fiction time,

Far enough into

The twenty-first century

That we may have some expectations

For reverse magnetism

And anti-gravity

x

For cities in the air and mining solely

By machines, enough that humans

Have jobs again

In new alliances

x

But we know how to fix it, at least

I hope we do,

The Earth that we have harmed;

And when we go, the missions we take

With us will not harm

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

I was a suburban kid but grew up in or near mining and steel-making country.  And our city fell apart when the industries fell apart.  If they could come back in local and safe ways, I should be relieved and very glad.

x

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

. . .

Emily Dickinson

x

Photo by Fabrício Severo on Unsplash

Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Bishop Street, The Lough, Cork, Irlanda

x

0

2 poems about the snow

2 poems about the snow that’s on its way

(and now is falling)

x

x

Happy Weather People

x

The sky is full

Nothing surprising there

It should be snowing soon

x

I don’t like where

The car is parked,

Though I suppose anywhere

Along the street

It’s going to be plowed against

When the trucks with the

Big blades go by

x

Records will be broken,

So they say;

The forecasters actually are

Excited on the TV screen

With big maps projected behind

Them—well, sure things

Probably don’t

Come their way so often,

Lucky them

For now

x

x

New Testament

(December, MidAtlantic USA)

x

Yes, it’s cold

For now, I’m not worried

Should I lose the electricity,

I might die

But I’m inside

Not everyone gets to be

And some are inside hospitals

Too many, in fact

Because the disease

Is moving toward a spike, again

x

There is a better message

Still to be sworn in

And better methods in the offing

We’ll all get our shots,

Eventually

And deal with side effects

The chart will have point

And then slide down

The other side

x

At least, that’s the plan

Many people

Even when silenced

Or at least shouted down

Have worked on this

And we need

To trust their skill,

Attested by the numbers

Going down

x

And we can say

This was

Our generation’s 1918 influenza

To count

To bury

And to weep

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash

Cairngorms National Park, Ballater, United Kingdom

National Park, Ballater, United Kingdom

Pile of Leaves

x

2

2 poems about parochial gods

(x = space)

x

x

2 poems about parochial gods

x

x

Anvil-Thinking

x

Sheesh, I wake up with more

Headaches

Under the metal

Of the skin

Someone has been hitting with

A hammer while I slept

Or gave a go

x

To anyone who suffers

With these things,

I’m sorry;

For those of you around them,

Take a moment to consider

x

I don’t know if it’s pollution

Of some kind

Or the tyranny of thought

That keeps us from free thinking

x

Well, more power

To you from the utility

Of time and grace

And maybe a surprise, that if

We try everything we know

(keep it safe, please—no

candles in the ear)

Then both of us will have

A better morning,

Thanks to

Maybe all our household gods

x

Leave an offering

Of grain upon the hearth

x

Photo by Bruce Kee on Unsplash

Patrica, Italy

x

x

No Contest

(1 Kings 18:20-40)*

x

Are there false gods

Or gods who are false?

Are there true gods

Who like to lie

And treat penitents with

Indiscretion?

Does Ba’al not exist

Or did it not give its profits

What they wanted?

x

Maybe it cows before

The God of Israel

Who holds the truth

That displays

Are for the chumps

While true belief

Has no need

x

And so Elijah won

The contest because to him

It was no deal:

Light a fire on wet wood?

Not only is it nothing

It proves nothing

x

Belief is a fire

Somewhere else,

And faith lives out a lifestyle of

Easy miracles

x

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%2018:20-40&version=ESV

*verse 40 is especially brutal

x

Photo by sarina gr on Unsplash

Forest

Campfire at night!

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

x

3

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑