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Syria

Toll

(x = space)

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Toll

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I started to write

Because it was twelve thousand

Now it’s more than twenty

There would be little left

Of my small town

Which is considering

The numbers only

Imagine people

I don’t want to

Imagine myself there

Would be easier

Because I would be doing something

And it would be awful

And my life would break

Like the earth

Beneath the nations

That might come back

Or we will fill it

Not with the dead

But with material

For building and for living

Apologies from government are fine

Maybe we could stop the war

Among the factions

And the other wars

In the region

To reassemble

Reknit the people

Not as Babel

Fallen

But as the New Jerusalem

A promise

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C L Couch

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Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash

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The Earth Is Not Round

(x = space)

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The Earth Is Not  Round

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Four thousand dead

In Turkey and in Syria

From earthquake

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Do we understand

How many?

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We could say

We could lost more in the Towers,

But do we understand

What that means

Save for being there?

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And if there,

How far could we see?

How far would our eyes

And ears

And hands—our

Spirits allow?

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The bodies piled here,

Now there:

Who understands?

And yet it happens,

All this happens—neither

Is done forever

Or for good

(that is a play on words)

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We need to know we can

Step back—that

It is all right, the stepping back

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As for disasters

We go in,

The brave go in,

Bags and boxes

Literal, awful

And sad treatments

That assuage

And do not heal

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Still, many will be saved

And perhaps there is a plan

For the next time

To forestall the next time:

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Real homes and towns,

Walls that bounce

And have a chance

To remain

And keep the mortal lives

Inside

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I don’t have these perspectives,

Though I have come

To certain places

After:

Sometimes generations

Yet in need of fixing

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Mostly, though,

The blood and gore

Have been my own

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I do worse with yours

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C L Couch

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Turkey and Syria earthquake: race to find survivors as death toll passes 6,000 and hundreds of thousands seek shelter – latest

The Guardian via MSN, 11 minutes ago (12:24 EDT)

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/turkey-and-syria-earthquake-race-to-find-survivors-as-hundreds-of-thousands-seek-shelter-and-death-toll-passes-5000-latest/ar-AA17bdhM

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(I wrote this morning after sleeping with the news last night)

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Photo by Parker Johnson on Unsplash

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1

Escape Room

(x = space)

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Escape Room

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Once again

For Passover,

Too many now

Are refugees

Fleeing Pharaohnic tyranny

Fear from explosions

Falling walls

Broken bodies

Family annihilation

Other countries take them

Sacred and secular

The people

The new homes

More than Jews in Ukraine

More people leaving

Refugees from Syria

Those who are “repatriated”

(strategic term)

From island nations

To the south

Those who want to leave for life

From Mexico,

Parts of Central America

And when there’s disaster,

We flee from parts

Of our land as well

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Passover

For so many, many now

Might the angel of death

Give leave

For space and means

For victims

For escape

Blood on the lintels

Before leaving

Death for the victimizers

As angels

As an agency of God

See fit

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Passover

For Jews in Ukraine

Jews in Israel

And everywhere

Good people have to run

For life

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C L Couch

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For Jews fleeing Ukraine, Passover takes on new meaning

“Good morning! Happy morning!” Rabbi Avraham Wolff exclaimed, with a big smile, as he walked into the Chabad synagogue in Odesa on a recent morning. Russian missiles had just struck an oil refinery in . . .

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Photo by Vitamina Poleznova on Unsplash

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Proportional Response

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Proportional Response

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It’s an eye for eye

Without, we hope,

Everyone going blind

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But then the blind we have,

Over-sensate in four ways,

Might have to lead

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The only ones who know

How to have sight

Without the eyes

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C L Couch

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https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-carries-airstrike-against-233431848.html

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By Airman 1st Class Chad Warren – US Air Force Public Affairs [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7377988

A flight of F-15C Eagles from the flies during a solar eclipse in Okinawa July 22, 2009.

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The Girl Who Died

The Girl Who Died

 

It is a miracle we live

On an Earth that cares

When we only allow

Worst magics

Against the planet’s will

Her inclination toward

Sunlit food and love

 

We counter God

And all the better parts

Because we must have this or that

The blood on it

To ignore

Or kept there as an eldritch

Badge

An accomplishment that only demons

Cannot ignore

At judgment

 

C L Couch

 

THE HORRIFYING DEATH OF A SYRIAN INFANT UNDERSCORES THE BRUTALITY OF ASSAD’S SIEGE WARFARE “Sahar Dofdaa lived a tragically short and painful life. With sunken eyes and frail, protruding bones, the famished infant hardly stood a chance. Trapped in a Syrian conflict zone, her mother was too malnourished to breastfeed, and her father too impoverished to afford milk supplements.” [HuffPost]

 

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The End of the Story

The End of the Story

 

My Pittsburgh neighborhood of Aleppo

Is dying

The last reports are terrors

Military action lost strategically

To killing

Civilians who lived there only

Or came to help the ones already wounded

 

Final words are spoken through

Electrons, visiting upon the world

The revulsion of the void

Of life, which is all that is

Increasing here

 

Wait, my mistake, it’s Aleppo

In Syria

The first city

Still dying, still dead

Still a message to those of us

Who read and pray

And politic and must go on

 

The last Marx brother

In a raucous comedy turned horror story

 

Convicted, we establish

A new front for life

In places we might own for

A while longer

 

Otherwise, there might be nothing

All around

 

C L Couch

 

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Chlorine

Chlorine

 

It kills our people

We cannot breathe

And when we do

Oxygen is poison

We are Aleppo

Please save us from

Your warring efforts

To bring peace by

Delivering to us the

Gas bombs first

 

 

Mustard gas from the First World War.  Dissolving lung tissue.  There are reasons—compelling decent reasons—for not using these.  When we do, we surrender all humanity.  Starting with ours.

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Aleppo, Pennsylvania

Aleppo, Pennsylvania

 

Neighborhood is

Near three rivers

 

Reminding us that

Syria, native or

Immigrant (like the

Rest of ours), has

 

Been America for

A long, long time

3

Half the Nation

Half the Nation

Half of all Syrians trying to escape—
Too many, for one reason or
Another—failing

Running not due to defiance, not
Because they are combatants

They run because otherwise
They’re killed

Can you imagine half of a nation’s
People trying to run from war?

I’m not sure I can

Help,
Please, help

That is my cry from my safe,
If disabled place

At least, for lack of bombs exploding
Near my children’s ears, I can hear
And feel to think

What else shall we do?

To make homes not over-wrought
But simply safe from civil—civil, we
Call it that—extinction

After half are gone, what can the
Remainder do? This is not simple
Math:

Half a nation left is not division,
There is no numeric cohesion, for

What is left is unmeasured ones of
Split in twos

First ones fled into frightening beyond-
Numbering equations

 

 
(news covered in The Skimm,
dailyskimm@morning7.theskimm.com)

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