the sparrow falls and
maybe God picks the spirit
up to take it home
c l couch
(Matthew 10:29-31)
photo by Jacques LE HENAFF on Unsplash
Steel Brass Plastic Agenda, Never the Last Word
(2 poems)
Steel Brass Plastic Agenda
There was an argument
In Kansas City
And evidently
Lots of guns
At the scene
So who wants to be powerful
Who wants to be famous
First
Who is more superior
By bullets
An argument
Is not enough
Except perhaps
For pretense
I am ready
I have the final volume
With my gun
Keep talking
Keep rising
I’ll have you
With the last word
My own
Explosion
To settle everything
Then come and get me
You should
Know me now
Never the Last Word
This is no last word
But taking a breath
To breathe
Without the news
And all things
That press on me
On us
I can’t do this without you
And don’t want
To
But let’s all take time
To breathe
And we can drink
And talk
Besides
We could sit
At table
In that made-up
Lakeside café
I keep making up
Adding details
For our ease
And for reflection
On reflection
Of the water
And we could leave
Better than before
Join me
In breathing
If you will
In sipping
Also nibbling something
For small pleasure
Great pleasure
In the interacting
Relief in
Trying to be ourselves
A little more
Each time
We meet
You send me something
And I send you things
While the café waits
And other good
Imagined things
In between
The substance of ourselves
And what we choose
In greater and more open
Health
(let’s try)
To share
C L Couch
Photo by Fern M. Lomibao on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Juneteenth in Days
x
Juneteenth
Again
It’s coming
Don’t you like the sound
There might be
A proclamation
Somewhere
But we know how it sounds
It sounds for freedom
Ring a bell
On the day
Those who know
Shall know
And shall proclaim
Inside the heart
That this was a good day
A needful day
Against the tragedy
Of people
Who possess the sin
Believing
We may own another person
Other people
x
Treating
Counting them
As assets
Treating them
Like harvest
From the field
Or the factory
While building
Cities
Homely or large
Across the nation
In the heart
Of the land
And air and water
So many things
That should be willing
At no cost
x
Burn
Then
For freedom
Have good days
And set
Domestic fires
Carefully
For warmth
And for tomorrow
The twentieth
And then midsummer
And all seasons
To be free
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Wolf Zimmermann on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Five in Five
(memoriam)
x
Out, out, brief candle! but
A candle isn’t brief
That’s on us for
A metaphor
Sometimes a real one, I guess
Sometimes the candles
In the church
Are pretty short
And thus available
For show
x
But the candle length
Is years,
I guess we know
Three score and ten
In made-up inches
Or in centimeters
Or real ones
(as in church)
To illustrate
x
You see, they are ubiquitous
Both real and imagined
x
The length may vary
By abstraction
Fate
I guess
And relativity
Macbeth’s flame is undone
Too soon by happy counting,
Not as an end
To tyranny,
His tragedy of making
x
But this is not a nation
Or a clan
Though Scots be in it,
Great text
Or a metaphor
(sorry to mention
then dismantle)
Simply a life
As it was
And as it’s gone
Always
Every hour I think on it
Too soon
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Rob Wicks on Unsplash
x
The Formal Feeling
(title from Emily Dickinson)
Catharsis after tragedy
The sad rush we feel, knowing
The experience is over, that we got it
Vicariously,
That it will not happen to us
And by the way
The community depicted now is stronger
It’s after the terrible and blessed
Have both transpired
And watchers leave the scene
(we leave the theatre)
To go home, chastened and relieved
It wasn’t us
They got their due
Their nation will be better
Let’s go home
It’s not closure
(what is)
For a future ticket will bring it all to
Action, opportunity, and desire
For mortal flaws to seed
And then to flourish
And are these analogues for
Life outside
Well, for those who must
Who will not learn
By mastery of organs or
Of language
Who will not hear
And will not heed delaying paradise
So not to have it at all
C L Couch
image from a production of Hamlet, 1899
Life Goes On
The name of a television
Show, I think,
As well as an old saying
And it does—
Life does go on, that is
Like one, unending sentence
Written and read
Throughout the years
An Edgar Poe-like sentence;
He could write a sentence
That would take up a page
And be no less fascinating
For the length and, what
Turned out, the breadth
A single-sentence life,
Broken up with punctuation
A question mark when
There is doubt, an
Exclamation point when
And where
Something needs affirming
Say, a celebration
A period when things must
Stop for a while, tragedy
Or wonder of accomplishment
Today is a comma
A pause
C is for Chorus
We bend our knee to no one;
No one surrenders to us
Human players are tragic:
Even in our comedies, vicious
We bend our knee to no one;
No one surrenders to us
What we see can blind, but
Unlike Oedipus can’t self-maim
We bend our knee to no one;
No one surrenders to us
Our role is comment for you
Who attend our seeing-place
We bend our knee to no one;
No one surrenders to us
Like Antigone, we’re horrified
In forsaking our heroic dead
We bend our knee to no one;
No one surrenders to us
Cynics abandon Parnassus;
We will stay, the human voice
We bend our knee to no one;
No one surrenders to us
Psalm 8
a song of sorrow
a tragedy on the news
and it is real
the media gets the message across
this time
a dream of sorrow
after watching, learning of
the tragedies
dreams are real, too
the real development of feeling
so that in the day
we might better understand
there was no sense here
only death
this in two nights’ time of
illumination and subcutaneous
unearthing on what further
deeper
to think and feel
the tragedy is real
the deaths are real
everything is real but the motive
murder needs no motive
not for our knowing and certainly not
for our understanding
on the third day, there is nothing
more to know that will make it
less a millstone
for the living
still to bear
clcouch123 
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