Random
Now
The town that has a gal,
According to Glenn Miller’s band
Has lost that trust in wrecked
Romance; the “sweetest gal”
No longer waits in Kalamazoo,
Does she?
And does he want to explain
Himself? The driver who took
Fares when bouts of shooting
Anyone was done
Silently, she now attends
In another state of place,
Gated from harm
(random shootings in Kalamazoo,
one killer who worked taxi-like)
Delhi and Flint
Pay for water; no water comes
Forth
There is no Moses at the spring
To channel water from an
Ordinary source made
Miraculously (cleanly) abundant
Through divine agency
Flint, a town in Michigan,
Faced with lead-infecting water
For the families and the other
Centers of community
Delhi, the second most-populated
City, now with broken waterways
Facing silent threats of thirst
And starvation and disease
Mis-directed plans, protests
Aggressive, violent
Innocents trapped between;
For lack of clean, living currents,
Why cannot—in global, protected
Pipes the size of bunkers made
Of (lead-free) new solid kinds
Of concrete and PVC (see, plastic
Can have its use)—why cannot
The world simply drink?
I’d do the same with food to
Stave off starving, if I could, and
Disease, if it could be tunneled
Under without harming anything,
Beneath
But instead of magic utterances
Or nations’ decrees
I have only these
Half the Nation
Half of all Syrians trying to escape—
Too many, for one reason or
Another—failing
Running not due to defiance, not
Because they are combatants
They run because otherwise
They’re killed
Can you imagine half of a nation’s
People trying to run from war?
I’m not sure I can
Help,
Please, help
That is my cry from my safe,
If disabled place
At least, for lack of bombs exploding
Near my children’s ears, I can hear
And feel to think
What else shall we do?
To make homes not over-wrought
But simply safe from civil—civil, we
Call it that—extinction
After half are gone, what can the
Remainder do? This is not simple
Math:
Half a nation left is not division,
There is no numeric cohesion, for
What is left is unmeasured ones of
Split in twos
First ones fled into frightening beyond-
Numbering equations
(news covered in The Skimm,
dailyskimm@morning7.theskimm.com)
an opinion expressed potently
in a White House meeting about
murdered Blacks, the living
marginalized—here’s my response
Black Life Matters
Do I even need to say it
Yes, I do
My best friend was Black
He died too young—
Complications from surgery
What a teacher
And a humorist as well
At least, to me
I am not Black, part
Native American according
To a family historian,
Which is good, though
Looking at me, I doubt
That you could tell
I am not female; I am
The enemy: an older,
White male
I eschewed the ol’-boy
Invitation and have
Often paid the price
Not in my life (though
Maybe there, too)
But in my work
In which I’ve lost the
Favored political place
Maybe each one has
A circle drawn around
From fear and politics
Leaving that (or never
Entering) means that
Protection from the
Core is not available
And some measure of
Persecution too easily
Is acted on
“Loving Engagement”
From a better Black-drawn
Circle of union and
Society change—I don’t
Know if I’ll be let in,
Resembling and, appropriately
(Regrettably), perceived
I’d stay in the back
And write my verse
In which I argue that
All are free
And should be free
That to usurp the job of
God in assessing human
Worth is about as wrong
As this world can get
Black folk (Black discourse
Uses that word; and,
Being from Kentucky, I like
Folk and folks, though I’d
Change the old state-song
Lyrics, too)—Black folk are
Self-determining, of course
I cringe to have to make the
The claim, as all persons,
Being made, are free and
Free to choose
Psalm 28
a song when I feel haunted
I need, Lord, your love
Who doesn’t need the love of
God?
And yet I fear
I fear the ghosts that haunt me
From the past into the present
How do you proceed in this
How do you love?
How might I know peace this
Day from all the days wrought
In iron pain, now fully steel-
Dimensional?
You are here, I know
You can bear sinuous demon’s
Presence away, even into
Annihilation
Yet I feel possessed, perhaps in
Lack of faith:
Past wrongs, mine and theirs, that
Aberrate the life that you first
Shaped
Maybe this is why, in life, the (first)
Psalmists say, Make straight your
Way
For the line of majesty arriving as
The lord of care
Travels truly—with economy and
All divine electricity—on the line
Made edged and replete when we
Ally in your design
Psalm 27
a birthdate song
My day once a month,
Nine times three or
Thrice three multiplied
Such numeric niceties:
How much do they
Matter?
I make special one day
In my own way, taking
The number to own
Eccentrically
My little arrangement,
My small deal, to
Negotiate in the world
A little something
Shadowed that is mine
Small possessions, Lord,
Do you mind?
I’m guessing not
We all need to remake
Certain days
Recessionista
My word for the day,
My gift from Oxford
Dictionaries (add a
Circle-R or TM, I’m
Sure)
Define—a woman who
Remains stylish, given
Limited means (I
Paraphrase)
That’s good work
Now define a woman
North American Union
(not NAFTA, more than)
So my friend Dennis
Who taught me how
To smoke a pipe (don’t
Worry; the pipe for
Years now serves only
As a decoration)
Well, Dennis once
Posited a plan—that
Canada and Mexico
Merge with USA
Dennis from Canada,
I the USA, while we
Lived and worked
Close by the San-Diego-
Tijuana border; we
Spoke of our
Now-new nation (and,
Admittedly, this is
Somewhat stereotypical
Thinking from thirty
Years ago), a country
Enjoined: vast resources
Of nature in the north
With great human ability,
From the south with ever-
New technologies from
The land between
So there, Dennis, shared
In time of friendship,
Knowing that all mortal
Things are finite and
So need care to last then
Maybe last again,
Shall we disassemble
Walls—add a writhing
Serpent into bald eagle’s
Claws, all set upon
Autumnal maple leaf—
This our new metaphor
To try?
Perhaps this is a time
To arrange triangles of
Tables, negotiating
Continents of possibility
clcouch123 
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