Because We Can Doesn’t Mean We May
And where is conscience
In all this
May we agree
This is a secular value
Maybe not
Maybe we’d say
It’s a confluence of chemicals
And so adjust the chemicals
According to agenda
And this is it
We’ll say
We can do anything
And so might as well
And so the anarchies of one
Guided by something
Because we are
Guided by something
We will release
All anathema
All destruction
Because
We could
So might as well
All this
Without a conscience
Without a human try
At salvation
Our part preceding
Armageddon
That we could line up for
Weapons down
Bringing drink with food
Instead
And also medicine
With the medicine of joy
As another
Secular choice
We could do this
We can do it
C L Couch
Photo by John Benitez on Unsplash
“Donate Blood Today” (which might translate more easily than part of an image on a page)
We Want to Make This Classic
Two years
Plus three months
Two wars
The ones we know about
Who are the combatants
How much material
Is left
To each side
How much longer
Even supplied
By the bigger thugs outside
Who claim
Defense defending
How much robbing
Peter
To pay Paul
And then Paul
Demands more and more
Of Peter
And it’s us
Is the idea
All us
We lose
We run down
We run out
We manufacture more
To say
It’s good for the economy
While the vaults in
Hell
Or waiting by the river Styx
Are the only things
That are full
And this become our legacy
We lose
Things from the Earth
That cannot be restored
Life in which
We had only given
Love
And there is less
The surplus population
Whom did we not need
And did we push them
Toward the front
Uriah-like
Of course
We wish it over
We wish them done
So we could walk across the fields
And say
This happened here
But statues
And they are meaningful
Fly flags
The same
By force
A fallow field
Unchanneled water
And who knows what
Congeals inside
Our natural
And plastic substances
To raise
Hate
Or something else we hide
Ongoing tries
For greed
Until we say
There
Someone made money
Out of this
Someone got a bit of power
Well
The illusion of it
Anyway
But that’s the best we have
In shadowlands
Expanse
There is the sun
At last
It will rise into the clouds
Maybe into a day
That’s only gray
Until the setting hour
When all these lines of yellow
Turn toward red
Then blue
Then black of night
It happens all the time
And is not
What’s happening
There are orbits
There are rings
Of different shapes and sizes
There are fields of gravity
There is magnetism
We try
To ken it all
To suss the meaning
In the measure
Or get a damn fine story
Out of it
Feature
Human interest
Sci-fi tome
That tells us where we’ve been
And where fancifully
We might be going
Out of these rounded places
Into an
Unbounded expanse
With only our imagination
For a shield
C L Couch
Photo by Krisztian Matyas on Unsplash
Our Many Faces
Aleppo, yes, I know
Sounds like a sixth
Marx brother from
Post-Vaudevillian
Capers
But children die there
From what war takes
Which is all right
Since we don’t value
Children, anyway:
If we did, we’d see
They were not shot
And killed, they never
Suffered in want
Of food or a good
School
We’d value them like
Prizes won in the
Most precious bingo
Game or ski-ball
We’d sit with them,
We’d watch them eat,
See that they are
Clean inside and out
And have temerity
To ask for help when
Needed
We’d celebrate the
Family that we are
Part of, even if we’re
Not their parents
Because in the most
Worldly way we are
We’d say, it’s for the
Children; and we’d
Mean it
We’d change
Everything to have
Them safe and well
And jiggly playful at
Home
We’d do the world
Right this time
C L Couch
Provenance
Record and trace of ownership
Beguiling proof and certainty that
What we have is precious and
Priceworthy
I have books I like
I like to look at them (wish they
Were better arranged), though
Mostly I like to use them
Once signed or deemed valued
In any other way, the book
Becomes artifact, then as such
Not used again
I guess we have many things
Like that: with provenance
Proved or started with the first
Costly thing that now needs
Tracking of its own
I’d rather try the things—touch
Them, enjoy them in the world
Of rough dimension they came
From
There’s beauty in raw elegance
Unproved
clcouch123 
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