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Life in Fiction

Life in Fiction

 

I can’t recommend it

Though I’ve tried it

There are dangers

You can enumerate as well

As I

But we can incorporate

We like our heroes, after all

And want to have them with us

Better yet, inside us

Or the ingenue

The clever mentor

Master-mistress of arms

Or the crafty villain

Who may or may not repent

 

There are heroes in reality

To emulate

Such as the Ganders in Newfoundland

On 9/11

But sometimes exaggeration helps,

Which is what we get in stories

Sometimes in poems

Certainly in sagas

 

C L Couch

 

 

Gregory Peck publicity photo for the film To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962

Universal Pictures – eBay, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67270089

 

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede

 

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I Want to be a Real Boy

I Want to be a Real Boy

 

I want to be a real boy

For the telling of one story, then another

 

We were beautiful once

Then chips and lines

A crack

Evidence of erosion

The strings need replacing

There should be more paint

And maybe I could have more writing

For the show

 

We were lean

But then came dessication

We thought we knew better

Than Gepetto,

Went out on our own

For metamorphosis

 

With the final threads

Last ligaments

We crawl home

To beg the crafter use some skill

Toward our repentance

 

Being in the world

Has not made us real

The question presses into

All the places that were open,

Bleeding

To the sky

 

What might happen

Once I’m better

Tears would warp fine lines

Now fixed

 

But if I might split open

As lightning opens night,

I must do something

Maybe I could talk with the maker

For allowance

Then gather experience

And evidence more carefully

 

Little do I know

A shark, big enough for two or three

Or maybe more,

Is on the way

 

C L Couch

 

 

Escultura articulada de Pinotxo, Museu Internacional de Titelles d’Albaida (MITA).

Joanbanjo – Own work

 

The Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi

(1883)

 

1

Look Outside

Look Outside

 

Sunlight is white

Emanating from

A ball behind a veil that

Covers everything

Might take dissolution

Some going away

Before real colors return

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Nick Nijhuis – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47363213

 

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Flesh and Blood

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

 

 

Index of /teaching/g/circles

 

4

Not a Trick

Not a Trick

Easter is a surprise, the
Rabbit out of the hat, one
Might wryly think

From where and when
Comes the trick-tradition
From Easter and the tomb,
I think, and Spring, generally,
In the land and from the
Time and place in which
Top Hats were popular

Something living retrieved
Out of nothing—something
Drawn out from the void

The rabbit is fecund (rabbits
Always are, aren’t they?),
The hat circular for the cycle
Of mortality, moving in
An immortal way

Hoping that, in coming ‘round,
One will pass the door to
Eternity, maybe to pause
There

Our magic with the rabbit
Is illusion—dedicated that
Way—but here’s what is
Real: the pure, created one
Has escaped the rounded
Maw of death, leaving (this
Time real) magic words working
As miracle

What is lifted now is living
Truth to behold

No applause needed or any
Desired, for this is grace

The cost of admission offered
Always, for all, a price to us
That’s free

6

Desert Mother and Father

Desert Mother and Father
(contemplating Holy Family narratives)

With her husband, she
Flees with her child;

They go in the desert way,
If anyone can hurry.

They arrive in pharaohs’
Land, now a Roman colony.

What happens now?
They will live in exile,

Then return to native land,
Moving toward home in

Relative safety. She is
The desert mother, now—

He the desert father.
Child of the wilderness,

He will be taken there
Again, driven by God and

God-made agencies. He
will defeat the devil: after

To home and elsewhere in
The land, nevermore in

Safety. In millennial ages,
Spirit-led parents, not

Attached, will live in
Heathen caves and cells

To mentor the will of God,
To recall in scoured

Understanding and
Legacied devotion—what

This first desert family
Rescued and made real.

 

5

celebration of the season 3, Ghost

Ghost

it is like us because it was us
breathing, living once like us
ghost become, be-turned in death, untimely
and unfinished

are they real?—we are real, and
we’re the ones who make the ghosts, for
they were us

we know a ghost of one kind lives
we meet it every day: anything that
haunts us in our daylight lives, the
choices and the acts we want to leave

behind but carry with us in a lingering
way not finished

we make our ghosts, and they haunt us

the other kind?—well, why not, since
so much of us is left behind, undone
so that we carry it in some
unresolving way

after dust, before heaven
what we leave that’s extreme and
exigent persists

so we make the ghosts, and they persist

is it bad, then, on one day a year, we celebrate
the ghosts this once?—and then again next year

Happy Hallowe’en
while remembering

they will be

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