New Year

New Year

 

The rooster

Takes a turn

(the monkey

Is my year)

Oriental means eastern

But in China it is meridian

The center

For people and the life

 

We take these years

In twelve,

Which is significant for

Occidentals, too

Maybe we should learn to count

Together, dismiss compass

Names

 

Respecting the zenith

Of each degree

Each one

 

C L Couch

 

Happy Gregorian new year.  Happy lunar new year.

Still writing from a place of pain that tends to overwhelm.  I’ll be rethinking that relationship between art and suffering, sometime.

Meanwhile I’m trying.

 

Inauguration

Inauguration

 

A blue light in the sky

Maybe green

Depends upon perspective

Looking out along the silver sea

Of an ancient world

The truth is this:

Matter exists

So does the abstract

Earth and harmony

Air and loyalty

Water and benevolence

All things come together at the last

For judgment and better

Placement in the heavens

Meantime we breathe

We move

We love the seasons

I fall and maybe you are there

To pick me up

 

The risk, the chance, the danger

In saying, today we live

 

We step, we reach

We are aware

Living is chosen for the day

Our enemies might scoff

We in turn scorn

But better worlds than these await

And we have only time until

True glory is manifest

And a paradise of grace and will travels

Arriving in our atoms,

Saving electrons, all energy

Accounted

 

This is what we have

Who we are is how we choose

Salvation comes from love

And the faith

That persists

In you, in me, in all

 

C L Couch

 

(in my journal, after drafting for what’s above)

There.  Message for the day.  Persist.  Endure.  Celebrate a little.  Find small pleasures.  Look forward.  Move now.

My headache is bad.  The coffee helps.

 

Brain Burn

Brain Burn

 

Or the Quixote syndrome

(unofficial, made it up)

Idealism cannot last

But in my mind, it’s cauterized

 

After the fires, it’s clear

The windmill’s won

I ride away on my pink horse

Thankful Sancho Panza

Hadn’t seen

Or heard or felt or touched or savored

 

Any of this,

Flame or ash

 

C L Couch

 

Portland Oregon (haiku)

Portland Oregon

I have family there I

Think I lost four more

 

C L Couch

 

Four homeless people die of exposure in Portland in first 10 days of 2017

 

Medieval Morning

Medieval Morning

 

A bright, open, empty field

Ready for blackbird pins to touch,

Scratch, and leave tracks

That become illumination

 

This is the riddle:

Write me an answer;

Illustrate your solution,

Please

 

C L Couch