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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

 

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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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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.

 

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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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