Heat
(a kind of review)
Fire burns
Which means that for survival
Fire’s good
And yet fire destroys
The fuel we place
But
Everything that gets away
The flames that ruin homes
For animals
For us
And everyone
And everything
Of course
That burns
The spirit of the Lord
We equate with
Fire
And I don’t know what is means
By denotation
To fire as in to separate from
A job
Still
It is ubiquitous
It seems
Like “they”
And though its forms seem drastic
As in warming
As in cooking
So we live
And by heat often through the night
And yet
To take away survival
Too
There being the matter of its
Wildness
That is the problem
That makes the thing hideous to
Destroy
Without fixing as much
As only to build over for
Recourse
Yet there is God
Again
Whose spirit is not wise the way
We think is wise
And is not
Tame
The way we think only in formal matters
Should God
Be relegated
Rather
God is wild
Even in wildness
You know
The wilderness
Which we won’t like for lack
Of building
Compartmentable
Purchasable
Convenience
(and the promoting of a market)
And
Who knows how God might feel but
Uses such heaths and
Pagan places
Anyway
Tame and wild
Which shall we have
Of course
But both
Let God normalize
And let go
If lovingingly
Amok
Like fire
In a frame
And who sets the flame
(out of
lovingly flammable
inflammable materials)
But the tame
The comfort in
The very God while also dwelling
In the zealous flame that both
And must
Love
As well as
And often even as
The heat
And I guess we must mean
The heat of all kinds
C L Couch
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
“Bonfire Night”
Ancient of Days
God
As God
Requires
That we love God
With our minds
With our hearts
With our souls
And that
We love our neighbors
As ourselves
Which does mean
Self-love
Must be in there
Too
It isn’t a request
It is a command
From God
First command
Second command
At least as Deuteronomy
And Jesus
Has arranged
What we are told
To do
I know we see all this
As optional
As if God required less
Than the military
Or our bosses
Or out contracts
Though these came first
And do not change
With rank
Or a new job
It is a
God who commands
For whom blood was required
And a nation follow
Or be brought down
Be outcast
By the power of
Worldly forces
That won the day
Because the people had
Abandoned
God
And faith
And certainly
Obedience
It all seems ancient
Irrelevant
And at best
Relative
Doesn’t it
We moderns do not live
This way
We don’t fret over altars
Or unblemished offerings
Not of animals
And certainly not
Ourselves
We take the dross of doctrine
Leave the rest
Inside the book
Inside the church or temple
That we enter and exit
Now and then
Even weekly
Without doubt for holidays
Yes
Without doubt
This year
God loves
God waits
God invites
God doesn’t require
Fancy dress
Or best behavior
God love us as we are
Wants no change
Might wait for deathbeds
For confessions
And an
Affirmation
Guaranteeing heaven
Or God’s our pal
And pals don’t leave other pals
Out in the dark
The rain
By the gate
That we’re sure will open for us
God’s our pal
The dross of doctrine
Looks
Behavior
What we give
Whom we serve
Tangential faith
Appreciation for the invitation
Please stand by
The modern spiritual life
Lukewarm at best
And it seems
God doesn’t cotton to
Lukewarm
Or bits of this or that
That might be good
If only by
Our arguments
Or statements
To the press
Or whoever might be listening
In the mirror
We’ll get around to God
Perhaps
The way God is
And what God wants
After work
And after home
And after neighborhood
Relations
Maybe during vacation
Or really
After
Maybe when we’re there
And hear a sermon
We could instead
Think about what God wants
Think in our own way
Decide
In our own way
Maybe after entertainment
And by the way
For a show I pay with some money
In the plate
This should all be more
Impressive
Than it is
On my own
I might do better
Find better
Maybe I don’t have to come back
So much
A touch of religion
Less of faith
Nothing like
The mind
The heart
The spirit
After all
Faith is not that smart
It’s not material
Enough
It doesn’t admire
What I do
And what I have
Enough
And I don’t see faith
Changing wars
Or floods
Or earthquakes
After all
And how did people
Used to believe
With dead animals on altars
No
Thank you
I’ll take life as it is
As it’s progressed
As it’s civilized
With all the medicines
And the technology
With the better weapons on our side
How relevant
Is a faith in God
How necessary
Children know what to do
They have Mister Rogers
Sesame Street
And everything else
Approved
For their good growth
They are healthy
I’m sure
And if not all of them
Well
They were slipped through
The loop
Somehow
And that’s too bad
But most of them are fine
As most of us are fine
What more
Can we want
And God
Well
God
An invitation
Well
That’s nice
Maybe when I’m older
Have less to do
Fewer things
To worry over
Figure out
Make plans for
Yes
Then I’ll have time
Really to think about
Religion
And what a God
Might really want
That I could give
I’ll have less money then
But I’ll time
Yes
I’ll have time
To give you
That’s all right
Isn’t it
I mean
You’re a loving God
Which means your patient
Right
You’ll give me all the time
I need
C L Couch
Photo by WILLIAN REIS on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
the way of all flesh
x
I thought about the title
first
title of a play
before that
something scriptural
x
three to five acts
the sphinx’s riddle gives us
four
x
there are tickets
paid
throughout mortality
the kind that
with a kind of magic
should become
the summons
of a claim
on erosion
loss of property
with less
with which
to pay
for greater need
x
but who
will be our advocate
who
will pay
x
there is no way
in this
unless history
plus the present
and guesses toward the future
should break
for a while
then reassembled
with adhesion
in the blood
of reconciliation
x
the way of our flesh
fleshly
otherwise
prevailing
x
c l couch
x
x
Photo by jurien huggins on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Encounter
x
Is there a spiritual answer
To everything?
Well, yes
But we are flesh and blood as well;
And muscles, organs, veins,
And capillaries
Sometimes need appeased
x
The body keeps the feelings;
The flesh owns
All the senses,
And that’s good
It’s natural,
If limited
The soul is in here somewhere
Incited by a spark of life
That no one seems to understand
x
We seem to house everything
The world, the flesh, and the devil
As I’ve heard
The answers are in here,
I suppose,
Which means that the answers are
In you—maybe
We could share
That would be smart, I think,
And comforting
x
C L Couch
x
x
These young guys were chatting at a cafe, where they caught my eyes. They were a group of friends having coffee and dinner together and talking about movies, videogames, tech and stuff like that. I guess you could say that these are the stories of our younger years.
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Waking
The backs of my front teeth
x
That I ground in my sleep
Skin tags
The iffy vision when I needed
Clarity
My ingrown or overgrown
Toenails
White hair (dark again)
The perils of left-handedness
In a right-handed, mortal world
x
Fears resolved
All the fear
That drove
The body and the brain
x
The soul that speaks
At last
To say, I knew you were there
Thank you for the journey home
To end at last
To start
x
C L Couch
x
x
Watchmaker’s Junkyard
Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash
x
Whose Calling
I haven’t spoken to my soul today
Or maybe that’s all I do
Some would say the dialogue is prayer
Maybe so
Maybe the angel is
Listening in,
Which is fine with me
How else will it advise itself
Or send for orders?
Then sometimes I’m only speaking with
My duller, outside self
Closer to the surface, anyway
And this is how time passes, while
I’m trying to keep up
With other things
While part of me in silence, too,
Is waiting for the angel to return
With suggestions
Being suggestions I imagine that
Angels cannot understand, since will
By them has been
Perfectly surrendered,
Somehow a war in heaven
Notwithstanding
C L Couch
Photo by Jason marquis on Unsplash
Soul Music
Start in Africa
Carry through to the Caribbean
To New Orleans
Then travel up to Detroit
And with a kind of partnership
In New York and Nashville,
You have soul
The other kind, we know
From long ago
When breath entered earth
To form a person, rising
Was there music in the garden?
I think there must have been
A shame that in a lull
Between certain movements,
The serpent talked with Eve
And then Adam
All too easily
Fell, too
Then there must have been a kind
Of silence for a time
In mourning, angels set to guard
Then maybe once emptied of us,
Music returned to Eden,
Which was its nature
It we listen, will we hear it,
The music in our souls?
Back in Detroit, maybe
Or in the backyard,
Where a picnic turns to small
And loving concerting
For the family
And for friends
It might be gone or hidden
(hiding’s a kind of gone),
But like the soul
The music might be found again
Turn to archaeologists,
Turn inward
We can have it
We can play it all
C L Couch
Last concert of Ray Charles at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of the Place des Arts during the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in 2003. Photo by Victor Diaz Lamich.
Victor Diaz Lamich, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3606167
Tree of Life
The soul must be amazing
Some say it’s like a bird
And why not
I don’t mean a matter for debate
I mean the spirit that’s inside us
That leaves us when
We can bear no more
Where it catches next, I do not know
Branches in a tree
What has it for keeping
I think it is somewhere
I guess it might be doctrine
And so for argument
To say it owns eternal
C L Couch
Photo by Kushagra Kevat on Unsplash
Lessons
Simple, elegant verse about God
Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so
But I want it on my own, from my
Own words and thoughts and sentiments
The strings of my soul
The lines that go from me to you
That must be played
That must be worked
That must be played
C L Couch
sculpture at the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington
Alex Hendricks – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39290671
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