Neighborly

Neighborly

 

My neighbors have the touch

I don’t

 

College plate on the car

Bumper stickers back of the van:

Honor students ride here

Gymnast and ball player

Two girls I know

Boys, too

 

Existential crises don’t rate

Stickers (until maybe they do—

Do you brake for existential crises?)

 

My place rests in piles

They don’t match

Books have melding themes

No organic particles (the

food stays in the fridge)

But nothing else set right

 

Aesthetes inattentive

To theory or approach

To dissertation on the better handling

Of things

 

They do it with unconscious serenity

Of their own way, my

My friends who live original rites

Realized

Small-town perfection

East Main Street

 

C L Couch

Solstice 3

Solstice 3

 

Because something smacked the Earth

Billions of years ago,

We lost our axis to ninety degrees

And gained the seasons

 

Everything we sing about

All the agriculture,

The seasons of our labor

The romance of tilting under windmills

(axis upon axis)

 

We have what we have because an alien thing struck

Us

 

Sometimes intrusion

As cosmic intervention

(how would life be without its turns)

Can be wonderful

 

C L Couch

 

Land of Treats and Water

Land of Treats and Water

 

Old Dachshund and Old Poodle

Will one day find this

They look for it all the time

I hope in the kairotic way of keeping divine time

We will be there to meet them

To walk on grass that rolls just right

Up to the edge of heaven

 

C L Couch

 

Before the Formal Feeling

Before the Formal Feeling

 

When there’s pain,

Everything enwrapped that might be good

‘Til sight is pushed down toward the ground

And placing arms around

Takes nothing but

Dust and air

 

And ashes that rise to sting the face

And render bitter tasting in the mouth

What then is left

That’s hale or promising

The hope of life for

Tomorrow or even in time that remains today

 

I think I’ll have the drink that bites

And chew on some bread that’s burnt:

Salt and ashes

Herbs that sting,

Spells of ordinary stuff

Quotidian magic

 

The miracle in the day might be a breeze;

Some of the dust of flesh

Cobwebs

Might rise off the nightmare,

Lets gazing up to see some yellow light

 

Falling on new leaves

Caught in early spring

First breaths upon the earth

 

C L Couch

 

Chechnya

Chechnya

 

Where, reportedly,

Our sons are murdered

They will not sin anymore

Or commit the crimes

The states say are capital

They will not bring

Us down with them in shame

And loss of standing

Though we are prostrate in

Outrage and

 

In grief

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chechen-authorities-kill-gay-sons_us_590b4038e4b0e7021e9521aa?24823947&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Morning%20Email%20050517&utm_content=The%20Morning%20Email%20050517+CID_42339fa1e0c9b39e94528d5c6c29d010&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=families%20are%20following%20through&ncid=newsltushpmgnewsThe%20Morning%20Email%20050517

 

Crime Scene

Crime Scene

 

She was asleep

And it fell upon her

Trapped from life

That left her never

To wake again

 

It is a still scene, now

Xes on the trees

Still riddled with disease

But will not

Fall now except to mortality

 

Her home crushed

She will not live there again

The roof is gone, and

The better home will not have her

Again

Unless haunted in memory

 

The bitterness in life

That will go on

If in arrhythmia

A halting step to pace

The life that will persist

That must

 

C L Couch

 

http://abc27.com/2017/05/01/tree-falls-kills-child-at-lancaster-county-campground/

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