Sliced

Sliced

 

I shouldn’t write when sick

I shouldn’t do much of anything

I shouldn’t commit myself to what

Might need defending

From ignorance, later on

 

But

When I write some truer part of me leaks out

Anyway

And that seems good

Maybe healthy—I don’t know

Because I am not whole

 

Because I breathe in parts

 

C L Couch

 

Look

Look

 

I know the children

And I know the children die

It happens every day

All the time

In real fires and in our strategies

Denying food

Denying safety

Denying home

 

Do we turn away to say

Not mine

Or do we look at it

To say

All ours

 

C L Couch

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/24/new-york-city-house-fire-kills-five-including-three-children?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=222999&subid=16706344&CMP=GT_US_collection

 

Housesitting

Housesitting

 

I open the cupboard

It smells like meat and spice in there

Does the bread turn into meat and bone

Flesh of my God?

 

God under the sink

It is dark with known and unknown faces

On cartons and bottles

Pipes that traipse and current on

To who knows where

A filtration plant

So that water might return someday

 

Water, wine, and blood

The earth weeps I know in

Native sadness

Lands bleeds into water

Ocean’s tears and sadness of

The distance from creation

 

When molecules

Were shiny and new

And compounds yawned themselves

Into existence

 

The car is outside

Waiting to carry me temporarily

Somewhere

There is a crease in back

Over which “forgiveness” in a decal

Declares pardon for the small

Collision that nonetheless

Threw me into the intersection

With enough brake force

Applied so that

Only I, my car, was hit

 

Where is God in this?

God is in the civil conversation

That we had after

In the gears and fluids of the car

That still work and convey me

Thence and whence

In the shadows of the house

Whose objects I don’t

Know so well

 

God is in the corners

And the spotlights

Of our lives

 

C L Couch

 

Easter Saturday 2017

Easter Saturday 2017

 

Grey house near a sodden hilltop

Under a sky of ashes

We all live there from time to time

One by one

 

Our own Golgotha

Gehenna, Calvary

 

Our own ordinary crucifixions

Bereft of hope

And faith

Waiting for life

 

C L Couch