(x = space)
x
x
An Angel Drops the Mic
x
Show’s over
Time for applause
Be impressed with me
The talent
And the portent
The agency
I am
And represent
x
This was fun
Next time you see and hear me
The show will be the last
And best
And afterward
Maybe a revue in
Our new place
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by BRUNO EMMANUELLE on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Briefly, the Apocalypse
x
The circle won’t be broken
Angels will hold
The breaking places
‘Til we get there
x
We’ll keep the world together
Until an ending that is proper
Appropriate for
New heaven and
New Earth
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by bhuvanesh gupta on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Affectionately Yours
x
All the things
That drive us to aberrant
Distraction, should
We let them:
What if our autonomics
Fail and I must be responsible
For breathing, blinking
The beating of my heart?
You see,
That won’t happen
But we can get into states
From time to time
x
As if the wrong angel
On my shoulder
Has been given too much sway
And I have let
The silent one
Stay silent in its wisdom
x
The demons call
Now and then
With sugar-words
And honeyed expectation
They must seem irresistible
In certain moments
x
But utter no,
Laugh
Move on—there,
You’ve removed the
Curse and thus joined
The anti-damnation league
Whose numbers
Are unknown
Whose fee is nil
But do they shine
In Parousiac moments
x
C L Couch
x
x
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
x
angel in a cemetery, weathered by time but still a powerful image
Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
The Book of Numbers
(in pandemic time)
x
Lots of twos and ones
Tomorrow
And a zero,
And there could be church:
I think I’d cherish
Learning someone else’s
Story
If in a cyber way
x
To understand
How a narrative fits
Into the weaving,
The puzzle
Of the one great story
In which we each
Have a page
x
Monochrome
Or colorful
Burnt along the edges,
Gilded for the saints
After all the torn-up
Parts have been
Repaired
x
Not a book of judgment
Not a cache of
Clever evidence;
Rather the story of us
In part
And all the rest of us
And God inside, above
With tired angels
Tirelessly binding
Fixing binding
All the time
x
C L Couch
(for 2/21/2021)
x
x
Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash
Antelope Canyon, United States
Ladder to Nowhere
(reasonable skeptic)
x
Wilderness for Real
(before the angels or the promised land)
So what happens
In the wilderness?
We think more about its passing
Forty days in the wilderness
Forty years wandering
The desert
How were they led
Without any leading?
There was no direction but
Not to find the way
One day in a wilderness
Without means except
What might fall out of the sky
Stone into bread
Water from rocks, that is
And are we to live by miracle
For many days?
The holes inside of desert walls
Holes within holes
Drive in a couple pegs
To make a shelf
This life was considered wisdom?
There must have been
The company of food
If not of people bringing it
Water must have gotten there
Somehow,
Meaning wisdom must be patronized
Sponsors for each hermit
If not a dining hall
Is a hermitage allowed community?
Is there companionship
Inside the wilderness?
Who would be alone
To hear only the heart
Wait for nerve flashes
To shine behind the eye,
This is loneliness enough
The creator hasn’t left
Each one is not a pocket watch
Inside a deist vest
There is loneliness in wilderness
Underneath there is companionship
Something we feel
Less than God
But more than ego-censorship
Affords in crowds
Magnets are not good for us
They draw us without thinking
When we can get away
Or accept it, anyway
Because it happens
Something in us owns
The time, the chance
To say, this feels like home for now
I’ll stay here while I can
Even as a long-withheld surprise
I’ll learn
Employ some craft
Commune
It shouldn’t last forever
Then I get to return
Maybe encounter you
Before returning,
All changed
C L Couch
Photo by Arto Marttinen on Unsplash
Bible Angels
If I were in a market place
Four thousand years ago
And an angel came to me,
Would I laugh as Sarah laughed?
It would be understandable
We try it now
In comedies
Sometimes in melodrama
But it’s a tragedy of belief to have
The recognition come too late,
And so it never does
Tell Sodom and Gomorrah
And days before the rain
That meant the ark
Must be sealed
I’m sorry, but sometimes
There’s providence in this
But after rain
I have an angel on my shoulder
A miracle in my pocket
And King Jesus is my all
So that when I sing it
Sing it, too
There’s a
Choral host somewhere
Joining in
It was an angel, ordered
Painting red the lintels
Who lived inside the clouds
And pillars of fire by night
They bear news
It isn’t always good
Fear not
Have faith
We are nothing but the thing with feathers
Inside there is nothing but
The will of God
We warred in heaven
Tempered is the remnant
Choice assignments
Sometimes we act with tears
We all know why
There are lamentations
We will cry the end
We’ve been there
And cry once more for joy
In what is found afterward
For our keeping
C L Couch
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul . . .
Emily Dickinson
Photo by Allan Rolim on Unsplash
Rescue Me
Once, I was in trouble
It was fixed, I don’t know how
Someone appeared
And kept the fall from hurting worse
Somehow in fact
Abbreviated all the crisis
Pulled my substance
Soul-enfleshed
Back from the next edge, so
That I might go home
One more time that day
And with my spirit
Lean into tomorrow
I don’t think the saints are gone
Or angels, either
Like the elves from Middle-Earth
We won’t need
White shores
While we are defended, now
C L Couch
Georgia National Guard from United States – Air Rescue, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70915161
Lent 10
2
First, though,
We must have him
In the wilderness
Forty days because forty’s
Important
In a place for unbelievers
(for heathens dwell upon a heath)
Nowhere to rest well
To drink, to bathe
To have the food that comes
From green and ready plants and trees
He is there, and
The wild
Must consume him
Yet he is so vast inside
He has room for it and so much more
The space of all the world
And the needs for which it
Cries
He is not alone
One other must be there
An adversary
Who must tempt the man
And the child untested
In the world
Make bread out of rock
Throw your tired body headlong
Into nihilism
Worship me so I can give you
Empire
Of the strong, such as
Alexander took
We know how it ends
Jesus cites
Adjures the tempter and
His own need
The thing must depart
The entity, the plan
(wile away another)
Angels visit angels
This act is done
There is no more to say
Or learn
Time to visit other withered places
C L Couch
Hotchkiss, Jedediah, 1828-1899 – https://www.civilwar.org/learn/maps/sketch-battle-wilderness-position-2nd-corps-anv-thursday-may-5th, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63245863
All at Once Everywhere
(for Christmas day, anytime)
It’s a holiday everywhere
Except where it’s not
Sometimes in some places that
Is normal
Some places not so much
Where there is suffering
Where there is illness without comfort
Where there is nothing but alone
And, you know,
Christ came for these
An infant will grow up into infinity
We will treat him horribly
He will return, because he loves us
More than that
He is here
He is with us, now
And all the angels
With the saints
That’s us
C L Couch
https://pixabay.com/en/frost-winter-morning-snow-season-633826/
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