cooking lessons
the patterns in
the sky
the stories
and the messages
Orion hunts
forever
while
the Pleiades escape
forever
that do not
change
that do
but we don’t notice
any more than
noticing
the hands upon the clock
on the wall
or by the bed
or in
the kitchen while
we cook
thinking on results
though maybe
all the stories
that
returns us here
this day
stories in the sky
we have to have them
even as
an anonymous umbrella
‘til we’re told
what this group is
and what
it means
though we have
parochial in
the mean time
what the family members
tell us
what the world
teaches us
somehow or
rather through
indifference
told with care
the stories
we might own
that even
heal
maybe with laughter
first
and then
the learning kind
reminding us
that family lore
might matter most
to have us
rising
working
cooking maybe
in the morning
come
the evening
then maybe going for
the holidays
feeding
even more
more
story time
c l couch
photo by Gaku Suyama on Unsplash
(one is looking up at
me
and-or to
the sky)
I hope you won’t mind a brief note to say that a poem of mine, previously unpublished, is now published. I just got the good news from MasticadoresUSA. The poem is “Necessary Stories” and is at https://masticadoresusa.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/necessary-stories-by-c-l-couch/.
I know experiences vary, but I worked with Barbara from the site and group, and she was terrific. Yes, because she published my work but more so because she responded constructively, specifically, and positively to what I had submitted for consideration. I’ve rarely experienced the helpful interaction I enjoyed with her. It was substantive and friendly. As an educator and an evaluator of writing (say, that of nervous students), I can say that both aspects are vital.
Anyway, thank you MasticadoresUSA. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you, my readers here.
C L Couch
(Christopher)
I didn’t, by the way, write to a prompt. (Prompts are good.) I was simply writing on the theme of story.
(x = space)
x
x
this was written to a prompt, requesting that we each write a flash horror story; I chose science fiction and verse
x
x
The Haunted Spaceship
x
How did it happen
Everything so new
It shone until it didn’t
Dials webbed over
Levers tarred
Footsteps on the ladders
No one there
A crew long dead
Remains reduced
To bones and ashes
What had happened
Smiles into cameras
Perfect launch
More smiles
Funding possibilities
Enhanced
First step into space
This far
To chase the satellites
That sang of Earth
Sending the best images
Of us
x
So far away
Holo-communications
Brought them near
And we were glad to see them
The balanced crew
Representative
Diverse
And curious
Standing for nations newly
Treated into harmony
The fates of nations
Then
Riding along
x
Voyager 9 had sent
A message as a surrogate
That said
Basically
Y’all come
X-y-z coordinates were sent
Along with certain helps
To make the journey
Doable and done
And so went
All Earth along
x
And now a year or so
Into it
Passing a dark star in
Every way
Not foreseen
And then they started dying
Believing they were haunted
First
The ghosts in the machines
Entrails in food
Eyeballs in coffee
Someone did the research
On how to frighten Earthers
Locked in a ship
Passing through outer space
So far between worlds
x
The air grew thin
According to the meters
Hallucinations thus enhanced
Even if they knew
They drew within themselves
And then took to each other
Unlocked weapons
Made their own
Attacked with nails
So well-manicured
Pretending claws
x
The last two killed each other
There was no final message
The sun poured in
With unseen rays
Into chambers unadjusting
Atomizing everything
Except the ship
Become like consequences
Used to say
Of the breeder bomb
x
A resource now
The Everest now rests
A peak in space
Of our adventure
It waits
Someone will come
From either place
Who knows
Or doesn’t know
What happened
And what happens now
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
The Garden of Scheherazade
x
Imagine
An Arabian portico
A ceiling to the side
Under which is
Furniture with pillows
It is day
Then it is night
And in another place
Deeper inside
She meets with the husband
She volunteered to take
Even though
He is a maniac
Who kills after one night
To secure fidelity
x
And so you tell a story
Recalling all the things you studied
Texts
Everything told you
By your father the vizier
By his advisors
Students
The servants of the house
And when allowed to wander
(covered up)
Making stories out of comments made
Along the streets
Of a desert country
With oases
And mountains
As well
x
Legends
Narratives from
Math and philosophy
The history of men
(mostly men
aware of audience)
Through the ages
Sinbad
Aladdin
Ali Baba
So many more
Nearly three years’ worth
x
Though it was the first night
That mattered
And the day that followed
Keeping life
By keeping the killer
Entertained
And then the second night
Made all the difference
And the third
x
While you stood
Or sat
Or walked
The garden outside
The blood-filled palace
Deciding
Crafting
Revising
Each narrative
For the night
Aiming for salvation
For another day
x
coda
x
I don’t know why I think of this
x
It
She
Came to me yesterday
Probably because
I was thinking about story
On its own
Not so much the content
But the abstract
And the purpose
The importance
The reality
A telling makes
x
Maybe not
To life and limb
Bur all the stories she got to tell
We got to hear
That were in context
So much fighting
For her life
x
C L Couch
x
x
A Thousand and One Arabian Nights is a collection framed by the telling of stories by Scheherazade, the daughter of the vizier. She volunteered against her father’s wish, naturally enough, to marry the king as a defensive measure for the women of the realm—and because the realm was losing all its women, at least those suitable for a king to marry. Whatever suitable means, especially given the circumstances. And as an overarching cause because the king whose first wife cheated on him and was summarily executed made in the king an attitude of mania regarding fidelity. And so each day he would marry a virgin and then each night have her killed. Scheherazade, who was not only skilled in storytelling but in story content, went to the king, married him, and entertained him on the first night with a story and then, because he wanted more, on the second night and so on. The king found good stories more enticing than slaying wives, which I guess is some kind of virtue even in one we can’t overall admire. Finally, the king’s madness broke or something like that happened; and he thought to keep Scheherazade as his one (and lasting) wife.
Well, it’s a story within stories. Or I should say without. But it adds an edge in the telling and our hearing. An added edge like that of a sword, perhaps that of an executioner.
x
Photo by Arsalan Rad on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
MS. Found in an Electric Bottle
x
How do I keep
These?
x
Mostly, they’re electrons now,
Some of these a day
Over some years
Now
x
Shall I print them all,
Keep them like spells
Inside my crystal cave?
x
Well,
Maybe
Maybe I should
x
I can select from there
With those
To hope for publication
Or another egress
Out to you
To share
x
My part in the circle
And the stars
And the spells
x
We share our pages
With the magic words
That say
I’m here
With everyone
x
Read us;
Hear us
x
C L Couch
x
x
“MS. Found in a Bottle,” a short story by Edgar Allan Poe
x
Photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
prose poem about an—
x
–found and read a story about an angel. A long time ago, I had a book of stories about angels. As far as I know, I don’t have that book now; and I don’t know where I got it. I don’t where I was when I read this story. I seem to recall an institution-like place, a school cafeteria or something, though the light was not widespread and where it was was divided starkly between itself and shadow. Maybe I’m imagining my imagining of the setting of the story. This angel looked like a tramp. He appeared in tattered clothes with a tattered raincoat over all. He didn’t like where he was or that he had to look and feel this way. I think he tended not to like his assignments all that much. In this story, he saved someone; and I think he did this rather often, saving people. At the moment just before salvation, he manifested as an angel. As an angel should be. He was majesty, all power and fear. His wings were wide and they reached high. There was great light through him (hmm, I guess he was depicted as male); and the evil in the story was overwhelmed, the human client rescued. Afterward, he felt some contentment as an angel, though he knew he would be leaving and would be changing into whatever the next place and time required—not by his reckoning. So he was about to leave and then—and this was the style of the writer—vanish in the middle of a–.
x
this story was written I believe by Stephen Donaldson who has composed the chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever; if I’m wrong then I apologize all around; I don’t recall the name of the anthology or the particular story cited, and I don’t know who else wrote the other stories—the theme was angels, that’s what I know and that I often think of this story, this time strongly enough to set something down
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
2 disclosing pieces
x
x
In the Mood
x
I am not sure what
To say
I never am
There is an empty page
(there you are)
I look away sometimes
Then start to write
I say
What there is to say
My mind is on God
And hoping
Frankly
For a good day
In all persons
I and you and we
And shall God give us (all)
A good day
Or something like
Often the wish is
To have the means
To get through
The bad
The means material
And abstract
Miracles
Would be gladly received
Material and abstract
Material would mean
What
Money
Treasure in the cave
Or sometimes simply
(miraculously)
A way out
While abstract is a good thought
A steady faith the medium
For good thoughts
Hope
How about
Dealing here not there
Founding philosophies
Of virtue
Values
(life has value)
Everything based on a directive
To
Love and be loved
Meaning
And gratitude
And when everything is wrecked
What seems what must be
The chance for living well
Living at all
Around us
Or inside us
Due to wrecks
Outside inside
Inside outside
War and the fear of war
Fire
Ruined ground
Where there was verdure
Even where we used to live
Our habitats
Are gone
With how we thought
To be social
To be at all well-knit inside
There are wounds
With the pain and stress
In healing, too
The burdens and ennui
Of getting by
At best
When we need something better
In both places
External
And internal
Grant us peace
Grant us hope
Grant us enough satiation
We could day
This day was gratefully asked for
And received
Thank you
Divinity
Each other
And ourselves
x
x
x
A String of Pearls
x
For me when I was young
A horn was
Chosen
For me by someone
Who
Merely looked
At my lips
x
Whose sound
(the horn)
I liked
But did not to play
Success was only in first chair (first)
Driven to drive
And park there,
Which I did
I could have been
First second
Or given up
Not bothered in the first place
Maybe piano
Sung instead
Once I discovered these
And then for me
The joy in conducting
x
I could have compromised
With the world
Stayed quiet
When
Go noisy
When not
Stopped being told to settle down
As if Greeley were talking to
A young man in the east
Contemplating west
x
I could have had
A few things that I liked
Not so many things
That broke too easily
Things
Of all kinds
Or I could have learned more
Experimented
With taking parts of things I had
To meld
Them into the new and odd
Setting an eccentric path
On which I find
Or receive
Pieces on the way
Look, feel
For beauty in what’s there
What might be the possibilities
In new combinations
New whole things
x
Had I adolesced this way
I’d be on a weird way,
I suppose
Accepted enough by the world
With all my second places
On a creative way
Releasing rock
You know
From the unformed statue
Or other work
For senses
And appreciation
x
Thanks
How about
Safe drinks all around
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash
x
titles of Big Band songs made popular by Glenn Miller (Glenn Miller and His Orchestra)
x
(x = space)
x
x
Till We Have Faces
x
Black History Month begins
Black experience
Recorded
Call it Black experience month
Black testimony
Black story
x
Till
Evers
Amistad
Empires in Africa
Black and white
Greedy
Murderous
Raid
Take
Transport
Sell
And so begins a nation
You may say that others did it, too
So what
So fucking what
x
We have a month to cringe
A month to listen
Get it right
Fix something small
Fix something huge
Enormous
Like a nation
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash
HDR shot of a sunset over downtown Memphis with the pyramid and bridge.
x
(x = space)
x
x
First Page of Every Book
x
What might God say
But that
There was a word
The word in fact
Was God
And in our words
God breathes
And the making of the Earth
Was God’s
And our keeping
Or rejecting
Is our own
x
This from opening
The gospel
Pick a book of books
For all the horror
The unmaking
The possessing
And abandoning
Of spirits
We say good news
Inhabits
And abounds
Hope for ourselves
The grownups
And the children
Hope for the world
Of people
And of ground and water
x
For in the beginning
Was a word
Beside all words
It was love
And inspiration
Breath of God
And God
A word that made
From nothing
Gave us
Everything
With the proviso of
Two trees
And one rule
x
So much for that
We’re here as are here
There is hope left
In the box
Made of word perhaps
And this its second purpose
x
So many stories
Now
For elucidation
And companionship
Upon the journey
In the other way
From a detail of
A flaming sentinel
An ersatz beacon
Showing us
The way
We may not go
x
C L Couch
x
x
x
clcouch123 
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