(x = space)
x
x
osiris rex tremendae
x
we brought back part of an asteroid
today
while I was in church
what do you know
it happened anyway
I caught the replay
people near the capsule
sample in a box?
blackened spacecraft back on Earth
now left alone
(and I gloss
these are preliminaries
then
a bag
not a box)
and now someone should consider
quarantine
I’m sure someone has already thought of this
uh
we wish those closest
well
x
c l couch
x
x
x
(x = space)
x
x
ring
x
God is here
thank goodness
God is there
in Ukraine
in war
and Morocco
split earth
many lives taken
x
in the hundred-plus
degree days
in Texas
for those
trying to live there
and before the hurricane
call one Lee
while we are in ships
on land
securing
waiting
knowing there will be destruction
during
and after
re-life-building
keening
grieving
for the loss of us
anywhere
x
we still wait for freedom
God approves
and works resistance
and diplomacy
risks offense
Jesus was offensive
and still turns
the heads of certain people
x
souls
and daily lives
devotion on a string
that breaks
that someone cuts
to ruin
or to barricade
x
God persists
in presence
in numbers
yes
God has the Earth
all given satellites
and other worlds
but take it one by one
even
with respect
and certainly with truth
the kind a Pilate
may not know
or want to know
x
debate
sure
work your fallacies
and jaw agendas
or shut up
shut down
look at the world
with any
and all senses
in all seasons
x
God is there
you won’t believe
and it’s a place to start
like rain
to put out our fires
snow to cool the deserts
or fire
parametered
to thaw the frozen
x
listen
talk
give up
what must be given up
yes
me
too
x
enough grammar to share
and all civility
that’s dignified
respectful
God will take us there
as in the wilderness
the chaos
we can no longer
count
because the crazy overwhelms
sometimes
x
God is here
sorry
we can go rounds on this
or leave it go
experience it
or not
we could step over this
to save in our ways
that are constructive
building up
that is
tearing down what only
tears down
x
love and live the rest
even God might say
that is enough
for now
stepping around
certain stanzas
that divide
unusefully
not for distinction
or thick conformity
x
rather the unique
formal
free
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
x
3 poems of encounters
x
x
x
Love, NOAA
x
Emily
Franklin
Gert
Harold
x
The writer on
The wuthering heights
The character from PBS
Maybe the nickname
For Ms Stein
And I heard one forecaster
At least
Call it Harry
x
Our alphabet
Our panoply
Of names for the destruction
Small gods as small pilgrims
Manifesting through the portal
Moving away at last
To foreign altars
x
And what they do to us
Who would be faithful
If we knew the rites
The saints
For weather and
Forfending the destruction
Of an age
Each time
x
x
x
Grocery Store Evangelists
x
I met two evangelists
Last evening
After I got all the pills
That I needed
Well
Nearly
(the count after
means I need to order
more
silly
heart disease)
And was shopping
For a little more
When a tract appeared
x
Do I believe in God
How about Jesus
And the Holy Spirit
Am I saved
Do I read my Bible
x
I could say yes
And so we had
A pleasant conversation
In the spirit
We invoked
As two and three were gathered
(that’s in the Bible
too)
x
Their work is urgent
And actually
They’re happy
In it
Still the greater task
Not to take on faith-attackers in the forum
But to reach
The dispossessed
Who are indifferent
x
The lukewarm dogs
That Revelation says
Are the greater challenges
To see
To hear
To taste
The need for faith
x
Through all the rings of Earth
The rounds
Of worldly agendas
x
I wish them well
I wish no violence
I wish smooth rhetoric
All love through
Everything
They are
And move
And have their being
x
x
For through God we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets (Aratus, say) have said, “We are God’s offspring.”
Acts of the Apostles 17:28
NIV with paraphrase
x
x
x
These Girls, These Women
x
I wish I were more
Like Meg
But I don’t have a seeing rock
And I’m not that faithful
Though my feelings
Toward my father
Moved
Evolved
As well
x
I wish I were like Angharad
But I’m not a warrior
And have not won
A blue sword
x
Or the young women in
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Who was running
From her persecutors
Turned
And beheld
Her ship of rescue
x
I have the managerial acumen
Of Mom
Some of her anger
Too
And there’s my sister
Who does everything
So well
x
Maintains a jungle
In her home
While I take my few plants
To turn them brittle
Though
The pots look nice
x
These girls
These women
We should learn so much
About being boys
And men
And girls
And women
And scions of great literature
Ourselves to qualify
Among them
Should someone tell
With fictive elegance
Our stories
x
x
A Wrinkle in Time
x
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
x
Photo by Vlad Frolov on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
trinitarian
x
nothing shall separate us
from the love of God
which is a promise
x
so why do we feel differently
why do we shirk
why does doubt work so well
x
we can say that it’s a sin
that it’s a fallen world
well enough
x
but faith and love are so attractive
and so active
why back away
x
there is the world
the match of us that says
none of it’s real
x
that real is flesh and metal
while evidence of faith and love
has neither
x
invisibility
dark glass
land of shadows
x
these are what we have for proof
and means of proof
all of which is unconvincing
x
peace passing understanding
but it’s understanding
that we need
x
and will not get it
unadulterated
by the hard means of the world
x
a world we feel
a world we have
and must live in for now
x
and for an age
after the Anthropocene
and afterward
x
who knows
and that is it
who knows
x
promises as metaphors
streets of transparent gold
advocacy always in our favor
x
should we choose
and we must choose
from lack of evidence
x
we choose
and we do
and we believe
x
crops are promised
in our seasons
wonderful abstracts
x
turned real
and that is it
it’s all turned real
x
faith
hope
and love
x
a Celtic knot
tied and loose
three parts everywhere
x
God
Earth
and us
x
c l couch
x
nothing shall separate us from the love of God
romans 8:38-39
x
x
5,000 year-old triskelion on an orthostat at newgrange
by young shanahan – https://www.flickr.com/photos/youngshanahan/10644977574/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110911537
x
(x = space)
x
x
The Lonely Makers
(an accounting for geneses)
x
There is God
There is the Spirit
There has been Christ
As we have the story
There is Christ
Before Sarah
In fact
To speak to bring the world
Ex nihilo
Into something
x
The world was made in six days
Each day therein
An age
Such as the day of the dinosaur
Or the days of Camelot
Count twenty-four
God could do it
But there was void at first
Then light and dark
How shall one count
In that
Before the world of clocks
x
Christ speaks
And all is made
The Spirit moves
Behested to breathe life
After the first
Breath
Into the sky
Over the water
x
Abstracts are done
And then
The species
Of the Earth
Come forth
x
Creatures
With small spirits
Even
Our own
x
Breathed out of dust
To live
To make our way
To make
Our own
Shares in creativity
By will
Because later on
We ask for this
Alone
And alone
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Christine Kozak on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Prevaricating Sharks
x
I don’t know what
To share
With you today
x
How are things with you
How is your health
x
How are your
Relations
And your story
x
I hope you’re really well
x
I’m not sure what
To ask
Without specifics
x
I don’t know what
To ask
But we can pray for friends
And strangers
Can’t we
x
Sure
We can
And I hope
This day is grand for you
x
The sharks swim closely to us
But they’re not
Attacking
Without meaning
Without purpose
x
Let’s not give them
A reason
Today
x
Live in cooperation
Maybe with nature as the
Romantics
Sought
The Victorians eschewed
x
In harmony with nature
x
Certainly
Let’s live out
The contracts natural
With each other
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
A Jazz Mass
(recovering lost verse)
x
Jazz mass
A mass of jazz
Inside the church
That might
Be
Preservation Hall
x
Or come with me
To Cleveland
Or
New Liberty
Or a flat place in a field
With divots
Happening to happen
Just right for
Our instruments
To rest
While we musicians
Get to listen,
While exhaling,
Too
x
Inside the halls
Of the Lord
Which might have heaven
For a ceiling
With hell beneath the basement
So let’s stay here
On Earth
To worship
In good syncopation
(planned,
unplanned)
With an aim
Sometimes
To raise that roof
More heaven-toward
x
Loud
Or soft,
Sharing the stories
Of both places
And our prophets
And
Our prospects
x
Don’t charge for tickets
Maybe leave
A jar
Inside the door
More visible
When leaving
Should
We leave
Because there might be food
(after spiritual food)
And then another
Set-to
All of us
Jazzy playing
Jazzy-praying
To the Lord
x
C L Couch
x
x
A Jazz Mass is a worship service with service music and hymns played in a Jazz genre.
Jazz Mass | Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church
x
Photo by Mary Hammel on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Gestation
x
I don’t know
It’s Friday
It’s raining
We need the rain
The clouds have little texture
At least from here
x
Nothing much to look at
A wet street
Spatter on the windows
We need the rain
x
There is war
In Ukraine
More death today
More wounded
And in Sudan
We’re drawing up our diplomats
Telling tourists
To go home
Choose another
(for now)
x
We know there’s trafficking
Where
Here
Of drugs
Of people
Contraband things that
Otherwise
Could be all right
x
But you know
People
Never people
Sold
Which means someone is
Buying
Where
Here
x
Struggles for freedom’s
Hard enough
On good days in
(relative)
Safe places
x
And they
The captured
Kidnapped
Bought and sold
Are not all
But tend to be
Children
Women
Who
We know
Struggle for freedom
Already
Hard enough
More than should be
Enough
x
On Friday I could cry
But the sky
Provides
As if behooving
I could say
Nature weeps for me
As in
Instead of me
And that
Nature weeps for all of us
In distress
But it is nature’s
Well
Nature
x
That’s all
And that’s enough
The rain
Provides
Other good things
x
But I’m thinking now
There should be
Laws
For freedom
To work within one’s
Bearing
Bearing
Who we are
What can we do
x
And freedom of our bodes
Politic
Personal
That many of us
Think we have
x
Let’s check the laws of nature
And our charters
I think it’s there
Many
Freedoms
Already
There
Officially
And by
Who made rain
x
We may read wet leaves
Or our own pages
Fearfully
Consider
Wonderfully made
And what
To do
With what and whom
When made
When with accountability
Co-making
x
Rain
Tears
Freedoms
Fridays
Notions
Not like the old
Department-store
Departments
(but) Full-blown
Like glass
Full-grown
Into ideas
x
We do
Need these
A good weekend
Please
For you
You deserve it
It’s deserved
x
Does rain mean freedom
I don’t think so
Sometimes
It’s relaxing to watch
To hear
Sometimes
It’s fearful
The median response
Might have something to do
With inconvenience
Maybe this is part
Part Friday
Too
Of freedom
x
C L Couch
x
x
Psalm 139:14
x
Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash
x
Imaginaria
(insight, sci-fi, speculation)
x
x
Machine Life
x
Ain’t devices grand
Until they’re not
And how long is
A generation, anyway
Things work
They slow down
There is no message
Though the problems could be
Indications as they are
In old age
The old age of us,
That is
x
Machine life
Oxymoron
Maybe
Maybe with A-I for real
The opposite are nearer
To the same thing
In us all
Man and machine
They (ubiquitous) used to say
But let the women try
All shall be well
As a woman said
x
x
note
x
Saint Julian of Norwich
(we ubiquitous do not know her name—maybe her cat sussed it through any sublimation)
x
x
Visitors
x
They landed
And found a plethora
Of DNA
On our machines
On the insides
Even blood
Inside
Who were these people, then,
Was soon discovered
Helixes reconstructed
And their features
And their colors
And the shapes of
So many of them
x
The machines they talk to
And brought them here
In fact
Shall interpret
And reconstitute
Everything
Planetside
As well as
From the things in orbit
That have been falling
While a few remain
For boarding
Or retrieval
x
This was a race
Or races
Many kinds of one race
They covered themselves
For the atmospheres
And seasons
Up to four of these
It seems
They were preventive
Though mostly reactive,
Waiting for a crisis
Then responding
x
There might have been those
(translating documents
reshaping the shaping
of their flesh
and all the things they made
for prosperity
or expression)
Who tried in sciences
And arts
To say something
Warn them about
How to live
And what might be coming
x
Well,
Library these
Revive some as we can
Or may
They had the rudiments
A-I and androids
We can work off of these
As templates
The name
Many references to ground
And we have encountered
Worlds named water,
Fire, and air
Smoke and fog
Pollution
And clarity
x
x
Prophecy
x
Three kinds
I was taught this
I’ve thought about it
(these)
Maybe I’ve done some
Merging
On the inside
All about it, too
x
There is the kind
That foretells the future,
Which is the kind
We think about
The most
It seems
x
There is the kind
That foretells the present
That tells the monarchs
There is invasion
Here
Or a great fire there
x
Then there is the kind
That interprets
The present
With insight
And a voice
That can serve the queen
And should they arrange it
Assist today’s administration
Well
And overall
Overall
And well
x
But then prophets
Often get into trouble
Even in democracies
Who are they
Why should we listen
Are they saying
What we want
To hear
Is prosperity promised
And God’s approval
Because God is in our side
Because
We say so
x
Go to the launchpads
Go to the modern museums
Enjoy
Be warned
Grow
Live better
x
As for disagreements
Or outraged
If not ignorant
(usually ignorant)
Confusion
Well,
Weather that
And try not to burn
The saints
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Nathan Duck on Unsplash
x
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