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Well, Go Upstairs and Write Something

Well, Go Upstairs and Write Something

 

I hope it’s true, this story

We were told by the poet:

There was a christening,

All the family there

They arrived, and it was only

Upon entry that these two understood

That everyone had brought

A gift but, sigh, them

They had nothing but attendance,

Which maybe should have

Been enough

But she leaned into him

And said, Well, go upstairs

And write something!

He did, a lyric for a child just

Entering the world with a

Name and little else

But the gifts and now some

Brand-new words

 

C L Couch

 

 

(Seamus Heaney in a talk at school, given in the late eighties)

 

Picture of the Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney at the University College Dublin, February 11, 2009.

Sean O’Connor, cropped by Sabahrat – File:Seamus Heaney.jpg

 

3

Process-Serving

Process-Serving

 

The morning is enlivened

Mister Coffee’s gurgling

Hot water’s running for the dishes

I wouldn’t call this a quickening

But the day feels

More official, now

 

The typing here is quiet

No touch-typing, certainly no

Banging on a manual

Keyboards are largely quiet

Except when many clack together

The monkeys writing War and Peace

Why is it War and Peace

That’s cited in the hypothetical—

Why not Origin of Species?

 

Maybe we should write “War and Peace”

A hundred times on a blackboard

To value the former, keep the latter

And then

 

Write something new

Something with words that

Anyone might apprehend,

Which elevates the need for language

 

First steps taken by Cyril and Methodius

When evangelizing on the steppes

The factions understood

Not them, not one another

So the mission’s gift of love was

Words to hear

For those who would

 

But back behind a half a world

I have coffee

And a program loaded

Time to listen to the birds outside

And scratch black tracks of claw marks here

The solution

To an ancient riddle

Letters across the page

 

Pauses and diacriticals

Maybe to make meaning

Form a message

Then to send it

 

C L Couch

 

 

Public Domain (Pixabay)

 

1

Word Up

Word Up

 

There was no red phone

I learned that recently

Khrushchev and Kennedy used a teletype

To stand up over Cuba, negotiate

Through hardheadedness

A cold war

 

Now they might text

Or tweet if

Saints won’t abey their thumbs

 

There’s meeting face to face

And I guess the telephone might do

But we need direct communication

I learned this in school

How about you

 

Nothing like talking

Or writing with intent and art

Don’t worry

I never perfected either

And tire way too easily these days

From trying

But the message

 

The message

Still exists in words

That must be shared

From time to time

With care’s articulation

 

Call it ceremony

Call it ritual

Call it marriage day to day

Or the energy of friendship

Yes at the game, at work,

At home

 

Keep talking

Use words

In your better way

Sometimes, that’s all we got

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Vmenkov – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2910085

A pair of Laughing Doves sit on the electric (or telephone?) wires in Milyanfan village, in Kyrgyzstan’s Chuy Valley.

 

0

blank page

blank page

 

don’t look at me that way

I can’t help it if

there’s nothing there

I try, you know

and it isn’t easy

you don’t know, do you

why don’t you try it

 

okay, here

goes

 

remember the old riddle

birds tracking feet

across a page

meant a gospel record

had been written

good news

to tell

the Gospel and the fact of

a book

 

and then there was the writer

chaining herself to

a desk neavy

an alarm clock

I don’t recall how it worked

exactly

but it got her writing

which was

maybe only in the novel

I was reading

by

Martha Grimes

 

and was this aspect

autobiographical

or the story of a peer

 

we now have machines

to guarantee a process

the monkeys

who typed out War and Peace

have been replaced

now a feminized voice

might do this for us

if we ask aright

or else we might get electron laughter

 

so now there’s something

and I’m thankful

now your turn

 

c l couch

 

(c.f. The Horse You Came In On by Martha Grimes

and

Alexa’s ‘evil laugh’ is freaking people out | The Sacramento Bee)

 

blank page

https://oneparentshort.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/not-a-good-year-for-triskaidekaphobia/blank-page/

 

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