Sick days (not the good kind)–be back soon.
A Gift to be Free
It’s a Saturday for God-thinking in
The easiest way possible
No one expects anything at least
In my culture
(weekend in the USA)
There’s mass on Saturday
A smart invention of the Catholic church
But even then it will go easier
Litany from a hammock
Prayers while kneeling
In the garden
What does God want of Saturday?
Sixth day of creation
I think we were made
Though a day to God
Might as well be an eternity
To our thinking
We are the human gift
Invention for our industry
Now limit the hours
Keep it to five days
(four days in Europe)
Send all the children home
From factories forever
(the world waits for this)
It can be a day for thinking and rethinking
For new ways to slide in
Supplanting what needs to be overthrown
Inside,
Confirming what is wise and
Always
Let’s enjoy the first half of the weekend
Tomorrow should be even better
And if your sabbath’s done
Then divine gifting
Is already yours
And if your sabbath’s an invention
Enjoy humanism-giving
In rest or play
In other words, the day is yours
The day is ours
C L Couch
Photo by Erda Estremera on Unsplash
Cheerleaders
Friday’s Children
It’s Friday
I should say something
About cats
And to be fair
Dogs
And if you have a rabbit
Pet your rabbit
Be careful ‘round the ears
Otherwise, I think they like it
Friday’s child is loving and giving
Cats, it’s true
Are a source of affection
And encouragement
Through seeming indifference
Dogs are obvious about it,
Aren’t they?
Sometimes that’s just what we need
Obvious affection
I’ve spent most of my life
Around both
Not both kinds of cats (though
that’s true)
But contrary cats
And thorough dogs
C L Couch
Image by Peter Morth from Pixabay
Process of Prayer
God
I love you
I don’t know if you know that
But you are perfect
So you must
And know this better than I
What is real
What is faked
What is performance
From a holy script
Or my own from the ground
The dirt, the dust of my own use
Of words
I hope that if I reach out with my mind
You are receiving
So many of my prayers are silent
They wouldn’t have to be, I guess
I count on you for reading thoughts
Is that all right?
Thought is reality
Is has to be
I hope it may also be
Salutation
Supplication
Air into which
I might air grievances
Also dreams
And gratitude
If not for dreams, then for life
Itself
I guess I trust you hear me
That silences still count
So as my words go out
They must go in as well
C L Couch
A nonconformist chapel in Pwllheli, Wales. Unlike historic chapels, this is not attached to a larger place of worship.
Alan Fryer, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12537842
Haze
(through the unlooking glass)
For now, we see through a glass darkly
So we’re told
I imagine it is made of amethyst
Like looking through dark purple
Maybe there is a shape
Maybe movement
On the other side
Nothing we can know for sure,
Which makes faith the only alternative
Not for looking but for living
In a place where definition
Has no clarity
But must be visited
(we are here)
And traversed from
A pole of birth toward the pole of
Death and what comes after,
Half a world at least
Though maybe at its zenith
(or the nadir)
There is a launchpoint
Upside-down—
Maybe the dark glass is an asset here
Forestalling disoriented feeling—until
Right side up again
We are in something like
The sea of stars,
A passageway toward
Our arrival
For having everything we needed
Without regret
And with clarity of looking, by the way
C L Couch
Chinatown through the looking glass, kidding, just a freaking hole from the iron gate.
The Other Side of Prayer
I hear you, rascal
Talking with me as if I were
A pal with loaded pockets,
Which is all right
You know I love you, anyway
I could solve and resolve
Everything for you, it’s true
And I won’t say
But then you wouldn’t learn anything
(because I did)
As for turning back and forward time
Take that up with Einstein
And with Rosen
About a bridge
But here’s what I will do
I will love you, anyway
I will always be here
Even when you don’t want me to
Because you do
When you remind yourself
I’ll wait
I’m not as jealous as some others say
(I don’t think that’s
understood, a problem in translation)
Not do I easily take offense
Though I am demanding
Maybe if you serve
I will prove a fit leader
And your troubles helped
At the same time
Maybe not
I know you love me, anyway
C L Couch
Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash
Walked in on this great seating situation with very forgiving light. Shot on the X100F.
One-Sided Catechism
Lord,
I wonder Tevye-like,
Lord,
When will I be rich
And healthy enough
To take it and relish the
Easy pleasures of the
Earth?
When will I be young again
(and in so many ways
the first time)
To have a spirit free
Of mortal weights
Or maybe a few
To start
Of the more pernicious
To be rid of
So I might leap the
Barricades of illness
And of penury?
When, O Lord,
Will you love me less and
More than enough
That I might walk the world
In ignorance with
Something in my pocket
For a change
(more than change)?
I know you love me, Lord:
Would you make that at least
A little less challenging?
Well
(exasperated sighs),
I’m waiting, Lord
Please
C L Couch
kamshots – Fiddler in Darband, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19976441
Secular Gospel
We cannot save ourselves
Though there is something for us
In soteriology
There is a cracked notion
(I tried it once in college
as an exercise)
That a ruinous approach to everything
Will hasten Armageddon
As designed by God
To think that we can hasten divinities
Is vanity
That aliens would not presume
In visitation,
Our unbelieving version
Passing for so much heaven
We must do what we can
We should
In tandem
Propelling our machines
That forward health
(that kind of prosperity)
Dismantling others
Swords into ploughshares, maybe
Cooling off the world
For fuel and forward-thinking
The gospel that’s enough
For now
Securing then beginning
The next chapter
C L Couch
Arts of Peace in Washington, D.C. Sculpted by James Earle Fraser.
Dan Vera – Photograph of public monument, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6616749
Kaptah
Not the thing
That proves to bloodless machines
We are, indeed, human
But a character in
A novel so sad
With beauty,
The sting, the agony of tragedy
He is not the hero
Not a villain
For a foil
He exists, and his motivation
Is self-interest,
Which is to say, he’s like us
A common man
Is he common woman?
Early on, he is a servant,
And he steals enough to keep his job
While his hiding places are secure
The protagonist forgets
About him in the midst of terror
And sadness for the state
And for one’s own
A common man
Is he a common woman?
One day, when few surprises remain,
Kaptah is found, fat and wealthy
Lording it over his own
All is otherwise destruction
And reimagined chaos
For certain things go on
Only on the next generation’s form
He doesn’t care
He has his own
Glamour, glitz, tastelessness of
Rococo (not rococo itself)
He is fashionably grotesque
(relation to the living is not
coincidental)
There is a promise that comes across
While reading as
Demon-mischief, say,
To those who want to co-create a better world
That Kaptah will endure
Enjoy the excesses of each day
To die in bed one day
Surrounded, if not
Barricaded,
By many wealthy status-things
He might know the illusion
And the lesson
Again, he will not care
For he is the common man
Is he the common woman,
I don’t know
C L Couch
The Egyptian by Mika Waltari
The Common Man by R K Laxman at Symbiosis Institute, Pune.
Hari Prasad Nadig – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hpnadig/5537675936, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38047206
clcouch123 
Recent Comments