students


ides of December
(3 poems)


north time
(5:42 a.m.)

still so dark
still
so dark
remembering that it’s blue
is
all

practicing memory of daytime as
it’s
taken away

creeps back with the solstice
yet
we believe it is brief time
with

victory enough
in
enduring days
again

again like these
to the north
       to
       the far south


prayer while frankly things are bad
(though regardless could be daily)

God
please
forgive me
help me
in
your timing
I know
though endurance with some endings
along the way
would
really serve
you know
and
of course
you do

you love
you know
you help

and if invisible while suffering
is real
and so there seems a differences
help me in this
to undeceive my senses
to
that the paradox of evidence unseen
and even
life by death
is
understood

and with embraces
here
nonetheless looking elsewhere
is it
forward or more directions
fully everywhere
at last


the past few days at Brown and in Sydney
(and the other places)

to have lost someone through murder
to have lost a child
a lover
or a friend

or to know there is an absence
a gap in what we knew
with health
was
a totality of presence

school of learners

place where faithful gather

any place that should
be easy to walk
through
where normal then became
punishing
insane

so much innocence
and
cowardice
not perfection in the victims
maybe worse for being any
one of
us

walking
breathing
now the smallest valley
sliced
in smooth land
where we had been walking even
if
absently yet
side by side

now only gone
and
in way that was horror and
now
how must we remaining
get on

because we must
we’re called
to
and we must call ourselves

and yet
to face all there is to face
to look within
then
at the world
in
what must be a teary way and then
once scoured
from
the empty place


c l couch


       At about 4:20 p.m. on a cold Rhode Island Saturday, a message from Brown University flashed up on cellphones all over campus — everyone should run or take cover from an active shooter.
       Hours later, horror erupted again, on the other side of the globe, as two gunmen sprayed bullets into a Hanukkah celebration on iconic Bondi Beach in Sydney.
       At Brown, two students were killed and nine others were injured. At least 15 people died at Bondi Beach, and more than three dozen remain in the hospital.
       . . .
(CNN)


photo by Nikola Johnny Mirkovic on Unsplash

the killings at Kent State

prelude

the lists don’t show
who shot whom
except
for whom

we don’t know the perpetrators
with
the guns
and certainly there are sides

though only
one side
was
you know
armed

more so we could
search documents or
talk with folk
to
know and note
who
gave orders

as if to say to children then

don’t learn more
or
your elders
might just as well
kill you

requiem

if you were at Kent State
in 1970
on the fourth of
May
you should have heard
shots
and known some of your peers
had been killed
by intramural soldiers of your nation

learning the price
of protest
I suppose
except that’s absurd

because the nation’s youth
and anyone who’s here under rights
and that
everyone
should not have to speak out at the cost
of loss of
life

and who had guns
but only soldiers
the only thing destructive
on
the students’ sides were
voices
yes
and maybe
numbers

it was tragic all around
unreasonably
even
stupidly
frankly so

I mean
what parent generation calls for killing
of its children

what learning process
even with complexity
goes so far
so
terminally far
to send a message

don’t learn anymore
don’t grow
don’t try
ever
again

c l couch

Taking place in 1970, the Kent State Shootings (also known as the Kent State Massacre or May 4 Massacre) were the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus.
(Wikipedia and me)

Jeffrey Glenn Miller
Allison Beth Krause
William Knox Schroeder
Sandra Lee Scheuer
plus nine more students shot, wounded

photo by Ally Griffin on Unsplash
(stairways in Kent Ohio USA)