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Snoopyism

Snoopyism

 

Take out the “stormy” part,

And “It was a dark night”

As most nights are,

When it happened to rain

Snoopy went for this

(the words appear above

his doghouse, when

he’s typing—how does

the typewriter stay perched

along the top

like that?)

But the words were borrowed

From other sources (more

than one writer claims

the cliché!), and we

Smiled, because we were certain

We could do better

It was night; there was rain

Okay, now your turn

 

C L Couch

 

 

(see, Snoopy is a beagle character in the Peanuts comics and cartoons, and Snoopy like to write while on top of his doghouse (Snoopy’s always on top, not in, his doghouse), and the famous words he quotes are “It was a dark and stormy night” that have been used now and then by writers who evidently had nothing else to say

and I keep forgetting that Madeleine L’Engle uses the phrase intentionally (knowing it was cliché) to start her novel A Wrinkle in Time)

 

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

 

8

Future Tense

Future Tense

 

Mostly, I’m hoping

Some of this will lie around

Like Claudius’s second copy

According to the novel

To be found under an urn

Behind a shelf that no one sought

To look (behind)

For ages

 

That dusting off

(however that’s done

with electrons)

There will be some words

From someone we didn’t know

Maybe some initials,

Half a word for clues

 

We’ll read

And have two sets of wondering:

What was this person saying then?

What is this person saying now?

The first we’ll most likely

Never know

The second will be up to us

We own the words, now

 

C L Couch

 

 

(I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves)

Photo by Tistio on Unsplash

 

7

It Burns

It Burns

 

Do I have any more to

Say? There should

Be something every day, though

If I worry, nothing might be

Realized

 

But to empty all would then,

Well, to be empty

 

Inspiration, what is that?

A light, a spark,

An ember from an ancient fire,

Spirit from an epic-writer

 

Does the fire

Burn through all the ages?

Do we have a trust,

A pledge,

To carry heated parts to the next

Fire outside the house, having

Warmed ourselves

Once more?

 

What is there in

The torch that borrows from

The center of the Earth?

If hell is frozen, it is heaven

That burns

Alive without consuming,

Like the bush and then the pillar

Saving Israel

Then lighting up the faces

In the temple priests affirming

All the creeds

In the presence of the holy

 

And in a later age, carried off in battle:

So where is it now?

In pockets of the saints

To keep them warm

Inside a cell

For living

Or for execution

 

And to our time it goes,

The coal for inspiration, then

To the future, though

For now

We’ll keep it here—we

Need the fire to heat up

Our reason and the craft,

All come together

For a season and then quietly,

Still glowing,

To the next

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash

Tripoli, Libya

cold winter night

 

10

This Magic Moment

This Magic Moment

 

I don’t want anything right now

Except to breathe

And that’s conceit

I’m sure there all kinds of things I want

 

To feel a breeze (there,

I’ve adjusted the fan)

To have sleeves to push up my arms

(I have those)

Enough vision to see what I am writing

Enough sound to believe

There’s interaction

In reality

 

In reality, I’m writing free,

Which is not so bad

I bought this moment

And I own it

Now no one else can take it back

Like some, small precious thing

You know the kind I mean

Kept somewhere

 

A moment of your company

Is something more

I can only ask

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

HMAS Australia, Rotary Photographic Series, ‘The Only Girl I Ever Loved’, 1914 -1918

 

7

Reading the Next Day

Reading the Next Day

 

Going back to reading what

Was written

Sometimes there’s little sense

Like looking back on doodles

Or freewriting

Looking back on other things

That’s harder

Talking with fewer people in old age

Means less chance for faux pas

Or maybe it’s reclusion

Only

I don’t need a bigger pile

Piling in the in-box

Who does?

 

I go back to what I read

Having picked it up in the middle of the night

Because I wasn’t sleeping yet

And a story called

(I’m not sure who was more at fault)

When I return

Will I be welcome?

Will I be welcomed again?

I mean, yes, I bought the thing

But there’s more

An invitation

Riding like the girl who

Delivered most of the news

From Paul Revere

The book is here:

Will I take the message?

Will I accept responsibility for

Interpretation, then dissemination

Throughout the land?

 

You see, clearly there are questions

And there’s pressure

A lady or a tiger

Re-reading yesterday’s

New pages

In new hours

And then there’s what I’ve written

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Prasanna Kumar on Unsplash

Besant nagar beach, Chennai, India

Books, most loyal friends.

 

If true, Ludington’s story puts Revere’s to shame, writes Valerie DeBenedette for Mental Floss. She “rode twice as far as Revere did, by herself, over bad roads and in an area roamed by outlaws, to raise Patriot troops to fight in the Battle of Danbury and the Battle of Ridgefield in Connecticut,” DeBenedette writes. “And did we mention it was raining?”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/was-there-really-teenage-female-paul-revere-180962993/

 

3

A London Bridge

A London Bridge

 

The world might fall down

Like ashes and posies and the rose

And I might still be here

Not in a privileged place

Heavens, no

But in my corner near

A wide and tall, empty room

Where I keep passionate discipline

That must sound odd

But I’m here every day, it seems

(hospitals notwithstanding)

More and more, no matter what

(we’ll find out about the hospitals)

I create

Or better (truer) co-create

Something

 

Something good? I hope so

I don’t know

I’ve earned not enough to have

It all alone

But as each day affords

(in every way)

I will be in my place

Where I need few things:

Air, moving air, windows, walls for

The windows, a writing machine

And, as Erasmus has been cited

About books,

With whatever left some food and drink

 

I’m here right now

Maybe I’ll be with you soon

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Harshil Gudka on Unsplash

 

0

Record-Keeping

Record-Keeping

 

A new page

A blank slate

Shall I say it,

Tabula rasa

So my college wasn’t wasted

 

It isn’t real

And it is

There’s no paper

Or a quill

No bowl of ink for a brush

To make

Beautiful Japanese characters

 

No illuminated manuscript

With notes in the margin

A mischief illustration

Of a supervisor of a monk

In the scriptorum

 

No cutting into tablets

Made of Sumerian stone

Etching marks into the rock

We still try to decipher

 

Who were the scribes,

Who are they now?

Who keeps the records now

Seeds in a depository

To the north

 

The banks, the potential

All the things we were

And might be

Even better

 

The phonograph

The library

Keepers

Whose work we can enjoy

From the originals

 

I have a card

I have a flash drive

I believe in what was

Revel in it now

That’s for today

Tomorrow there’s a plan

Well, enough of one

For jazz

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

Leuven, Belgium

 

2

Riding Gimbals

Riding Gimbals

(blank page part 2, I think)

 

The blank page terrifies

No, it doesn’t terrify

It’s only a blank page

It has no weapons, no teeth

No agency to thwart us in

Our better aims

(well, maybe teeth

and when ink is added,

we say sharper than the sword

 

But) all we have to do is write

Try crayons as electric bits

There are some screens that let

Us do this

Take a paper page and apply paint

Relax or get excited

Whatever might compel, today

 

Or write then erase

(I might do that here)

Get something down, send it up

A muse might listen

Write André-Breton-like

But don’t pretend

Because if nonsense,

Say so to yourself

(me say so to me)

Yet we are meeting words again

 

Something like syntax

The grammar of creation might

Not be so far away

In the room, beyond the wall

Through the window flown like Pan

With lovely thoughts

 

Or in a recess unvisited

For a while

Pain, if we must find it there

Pleasure, if it’s due

 

But now some clay is on the wheel

We might need lessons

We might turn it into homework

Over days, who knows

 

We have what we have and want to do

To say

To be engaged

Maybe we can campaign in this

A conspiracy of art to

Break the trap

Release the net

To let us out

 

C L Couch

 

 

Jerrie Cobb, a well known female pilot in the 1950s, testing Gimbal Rig in the Altitude Wind Tunnel, AWT in April 1960.

NASA/GRC/Arden Wilfong – Great Images in NASA Description, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6448450

 

0

Lent 26

Lent 26

 

Sometimes, when I’m afraid

I write

Or when I’m sad

Indecisive

Or frustrated

But if I looked back through my journal

(I haven’t done that often)

I’d find, I believe, expressions of

Thanksgiving

Sometimes for sleep that didn’t go so badly

Sometimes for coffee in the morning

Sometimes for cold water, when

I’ve arranged it

I don’t know how much happiness I can have

But it seems I can have gratitude

Which has pieces, if only whittlings,

Of the larger parts

Of joy and peace

 

I think somewhere in there

Might be an invitation, which is

Why I write about this now

 

Because maybe

You’ll find something in the formula

I didn’t plan, and

I didn’t plan

 

Simply saying thank you

To the universe, to God

To a spirit, to an angel

For some measure of something

That will, if only as a single pea

(sorry if you don’t like peas, for

I know those who hate them),

Yet add nourishment to the day

 

A pea can accomplish something

It makes a whistle work

And disturbs the sleep of the

Princess

 

Something small can move along the tale

If only silent thanks

 

C L Couch

 

 

Mateusz Tokarski, ca. 1795 (National Museum in Warsaw)

Mateusz Tokarski – cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26953289

(still life with peas)

 

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