(x = space)
x
x
Protocol
x
Sorry that this must be news
This should be ordinary
x
There will be a shot today
Not heard ‘round the world
Simply a needle into skin
With the release of
New chemicals inside
The body
x
Then another shot, as is the
Protocol, in a while
x
C L Couch
x
x
Image by Markus Distelrath from Pixabay
x
Coronavirus Is Republican
(or Democrat)
Is the virus partisan?
Does it respect one group
Over another?
If you get to be
Surrounded by doctors
Then maybe you’re okay,
Though even then
With fifties Martian-like antennae
‘Round a bulbous planet,
I don’t think the virus
Cares except to replicate
Make more of itself
Trying to take out whatever
Might be in the way
Until it meets the stronger thing
Like Nietzsche
But it is not a politician
Who should wear a mask
As an example,
Public servant
It is not the people who
Try to do it right
And might still get sick
There is no quid pro quo
The virus doesn’t bargain
Maybe summer heat will help us
As good as any other
Don’t campaign on the virus
You will lose
Like the gambling house,
The virus wins
C L Couch
Photo by Odysseas Chloridis on Unsplash
A visual depiction of the corona virus outbreak and the isolation it has caused throughout the world.
Ending of the Week
(through the sickness)
It’s a special day
A day in Ramadan
Sabbath time will start for Jews
Christians may anticipate
A sabbath, too
For those who don’t believe,
It’s Friday
And it’s now
There is no better time
For breathing and for other
Action
Speaking of breathing,
The Buddhists can teach
The rest
Something about that
And they do
As far as I know, we are between
Times for special Hindu
Celebrations
But fauna call for
Remembrance all the time
We all should respect nature
So well
And this is what I know
Not so much, really
So many stories to see,
To hear
I won’t receive them all
But I want to
For those without a weekend,
It is different
I can feel for you,
If you don’t mind
I used to have my weekends
In the week
But for the front-liners
Standing, acting against disease
With everything that
Conflagrates
I don’t know what to say except
You rank me
And thank you
C L Couch
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash
Plague Daze
The day is Shakespeare’s birthday
The day he was christened
His death was around the same date, too
Someone took the head
From the grave
The governor wants to open the state
Though people are still dying
The economy is life-and-death, too,
At least to politicians
Corporate deciders
Two groups so out of touch
What do they know of life but
How to turn it toward a matter of
Control?
I feel the air
Reopening would bring
Simply to think about it
The lifting off the shoulders of
The weight of shutting-in
Factories open
Schools resume, somehow
All the pubs along the second street
Invite us in again
But readers of “The Masque” can
See the lunacy in attitude
Alone without a treatment
A thousand sixteen hundred twenty-two
Dead in Pennsylvania,
One state among
Many states
How is it where you are?
Do you want to know?
I don’t, here or there
I want to have a pint in Boiling Springs
As I’ve never enjoyed one before
But here and there it is
Now the announcement that
Certain testing sites are closing
Everyone it seems
Wants to be normal
Well, why not?
Why not, because it’s far from done
We’ve left it now a
Game of dodge-ball
Hope you’re not hit
Me, too
The danger is for all of us
All of us connected like
Scratches on an antique metal plate
A month away, we think we’ve had
Enough
C L Couch
Source: Esri; Johns Hopkins
Photo by Edu Lauton on Unsplash
A Now That Must Also Look Ahead
It’s Tuesday
It’s a nuthin’ day
A sick day
Among sick days
The novelty’s worn off
Some learning’s needed
With the cooking
And the cleaning
The boxing
(of both kinds)
All the games that
Walls and cyber-walls allow
Thank goodness, we can
Look outside and go there
There’s real talking, too
In many ways
A face to face
That’s a comfort
And we learn from this
A different kind
Of schooling, maybe
There are books
Paper and pencil, too
Or let them be totems for
Pens or the electron kind,
What it all might represent
The faces
All the forms
We can through this, now
Until the angel passes
Our own kind of rite
The Jewish own so well
Singing for pass-over
Blood upon the lintel
Chair for the prophet, should
The prophet come to call
Food, some of it with bitter herbs
But everything we need
For the journey
Into such desert and
At last
A homeland
The Passover is family
Each tradition has its form
And if we have none,
What better time than pandemic’s
For making something new?
For the world needs cleaning
Not a purging
But a dusting off
Soap and water
Disinfectant for the worst
While we wait
Research
And wait
With everything that passes over
Having something of the new
Inside,
Maybe inexorably, ineffably
Once shared,
New ritual
Based on care for what we’ve learned
Of who we’ve been
And who we are
Again and for the first time
As for death and mourning,
Each tradition knows that well
And those without
However we might feel
I don’t know how to count
While others do
Remember, in the future,
It was this kind of plague
I might not be here
Or another witness
Closer and more qualified
You’ll have to have a story
Back to learning, again
Sad lessons
And tragic
And a void
We learn this other kind of life
Lived through emptiness
It is time for a wake, the Irish say
(who also know bread
and bitter herbs for sin and hope,
Irish Jews more so)
Though this party if too big
Too many coffins to line up
Along the bar
What the dead drink
Will do nothing for a tab
Only take coins in readiness for
Ferry pilots
Announced by banshees
These groups I know a little of
You have your own
And stories
Set them down and tell them
Try not to worry about variants
They happen
There is a narrative here
Part of the story of the Earth
If we tell it well,
The Earth might weep
For us
C L Couch
Holey Week 3
Crazy Boy
(get cool)
Cattails
One word
Cat tails
Two words
When referring to the actual
Cat’s tail
Don’t pull at it
Cattails might not hit back
Cats with tails do
They should
That’s as much advice
As I have for you
My head hurts
And my nose
Yippee-allergens
I know they could be the other thing
I’m hot from moving things around
And I wish I had all my pills
In this uncertain time
There’s sun today
I hear the virus doesn’t like the sun
If it had preferences
But also doesn’t like cool weather
So my MidAtlantic spring might be
Salubrious for a time
Cool, sunny days?
I could wish them ‘round the world
For health’s sake
Light for buoyancy
Of skin and spirit
Enough cold, not too much,
To relax our ninety-eight degrees or so
Inside
C L Couch
recently, I read about the sun and about cold air in two different places where I think crazy people do not write or otherwise contribute
I am not a doctor and don’t play one on television
“Cool” by Leonard Bernstein
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Updating
There is a virus in the world that’s
Killing people
(there are other things that kill us, too)
Some people, many, most in fact
Have responded well
Quietly, not so quietly
Watching after
Each other
Enduring hoarding that is
The villain’s privilege
Governments have
Responded, some much
Later than the others
Some are doing well, though the more
Fractious institutions
(not so much the scientific ones,
we hope)
The more the stumping
As if this were a matter more
For Indifferent reelection
Than the health
Of nations, cities, villages, and
Outlying—families, one
Person by one
So more will die
And the privileged
Will not take credit for this
In the scientific places,
Teams are working hard, to say the least,
The right kind of aggression
Understanding that
There are no politics in molecules,
That a virus doesn’t care
Who gets elected
Who stamps harder in
The podium floor
Like Rumpelstiltskin, until disappearing
Molecules don’t care
The molecules of viruses simply
Want to thrive
C L Couch
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Kras-Driven Lung Cancer. Created by Eric Snyder, 2015.
Mortals Thinking
There’s such pain in my shoulders
I guess I slept too hard
And too briefly
There are noises in the house
Some of which I’m tired of
But in the be-thankful-for-small-favors
Department,
It could be worse—
Does that cancel out philosophies?
We should be stuck here in
Willing confinement
‘Til the onslaught of disease has passed
If it’s a wave that only washes once
If it spirals ‘round, what then?
Patchworks of isolation
Until a cure is found
Then distributed with some sense of
Democracy (in oligarchies,
call it equanimity)
At least, there’s air
No one is trying to sell
And water from the tap or
Through a filter, while we have one
There’s food, a median between
Hoarding and scarcity
For the moment, shelter is broadening
In possibilities for some places
Hitherto homeless folk entering
Abandoned, government houses
If they’re abandoned, let them stay
Useful government
As a change
I don’t know about our attitudes
They’re everywhere, I’d say
The gross rich who are on TV
To say that everything’s fine
Trust us
We don’t
The angry and the righteous
More so (and everyone), there’s
Fear
Of illness and mortality
Reasonable terrors
For the unfaithful
And for those who believe still living inside
Human husks
I know I don’t want to be shed of my shell
Just yet
Today, tomorrow, far into the future
I don’t have
This side of the dark glass
C L Couch
Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash
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