We Say, We Believe

(x = space)

x

x

We Say, We Believe

(maybe it’s Revelation 23)

x

God is love

The metaphor

Reality

So much better than

God is gold

Even

God is power

Though God is both

The metaphor

Reality

x

God made the gold, at least

And also power

Power lent

To us

And in the Earth

Inherent

x

Borrowing

And legacy

That’s not our own

No matter how many times

We name another name

x

We do not last

Not on our own

And everything on Earth

That was our own

Is naught

So that when everything’s renewed

There will no monuments

Except the living

In a city

Where the temple

Is a person

And water is provided

That’s life-giving

x

C L Couch

x

x

By Voky89 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72763611

This is a photo of a monument in Ukraine, number: 53-101-0501

x

Metaphors for Divinity

(x = space)

x

x

Metaphors for Divinity

x

God is love

God is a spirit

God is a lion

God is a rock

The rock of our salvation

And the Bible tells us so

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash

x

Metaphorism

(x = space)

x

x

Metaphorism

x

Are there candles

That burn

At both ends?

Is the illumination

Doubly helpful?

And what happens when

The ends meet

In between?

x

It’s an untried

Metaphor,

I guess

Like the silk purse

From the sow’s ear

Or trying to catch

The crocodile tears

x

Their value is

Instructive—still,

I’d like to see the candle,

Hear its twice-done

Hiss inside

The darkness

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Ronnie Overgoor on Unsplash

Everglades Alligator Farm, Homestead, USA

x

Hard-Going

(x = space)

x

x

Hard-Going

x

The metaphors

Should be everywhere

x

The land should be

Replete with them,

North and south

x

Here is the quiet earth,

There the earth is passionate

With green,

The seasons are alive

Either with slumber or with

Breaking through

x

Both are organic states,

Necessary,

And beautiful

x

In the human world,

There should be holidays

And there are:

Hanukkah enjoys a full menorah,

Christmas is but days away

So all is anticipation,

And the colors of

Kwanzaa adorn

x

Not to mention, anciently,

The solstice is tilting toward us

More and more;

There will be festivals

Set on stone

Or rather around them

x

The planet

With or without our help

In counting

Shall split into seasons

x

What is compelling?

I don’t know

x

The virus,

The ugliness of politics

In the USA,

Danger in so many other

Places

x

There’s room for verse,

The call is clarion

But heavy goes the craft:

Can you feel it?

x

Questions deserve answers,

Most of them;

Brittle is the monolith

The keeps on moving

To allow a phallic message

To be realized

x

Brittle yet taking

Many hits until it has a

Home or many homes,

Leaving scooped-out earth

So that the

Female has a say

x

Though one has to ask

Why the say is always second,

And there are more options

In the day

x

It is difficult;

Next time might be typical,

Greeting cards make

Silly sense again;

And the metaphors that

Make the text

And move the world be

Open from the cupboard

Of the Lord

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

x

Sometimes Older Metaphors

Sometimes Older Metaphors

(not always)

 

Silent and dry

Like the oasis near the desert

Nature can make the noise

To overwhelm cacophony

Of metal articulation

Plastic reasoning

I know that there’s romance

And romance becomes cliché

Oases, Baghdads, minarets,

Viziers, and genies you

Could call djinn

 

How novel (and in novels

and our poems)

Centuries ago

To what we think is

Trite imagination

Yet viziers become wizards

New packages and popularities

So I’ll take my oasis, thank you

In all it means

Or used to mean

A place to re-source life

Discover air and water

Make into verses

Eden in small patches

All that’s left

Upon our minds

Of paradise on outcast Earth

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Philipp Lublasser on Unsplash

Epupa Falls, Epupa, Namibia

Coffee Break in Namibia

 

two poems about associating

two poems about associating

 

 

(drafted today)

Loony Like a Tune

 

I don’t know much

But I know this

Carson City is the capital of Nevada

Bugs Bunny told me so

I think he was being pressed

By Yosemite Sam

 

I don’t mean to push a copyright

This was the stuff of childhood

I remember things

Associations

My older brother and I once

Ran around the basement,

Making woop-woop sounds because the

Three Stooges were on TV

 

And because I read about the Hardy boys

I found something good in reading

Read other things

And became the English teacher

 

Who owns these associations?

I have to wonder

We own our minds

In spite of agendas toward dystopia

And sometimes cultic ravings

 

I think I still need my

Cartoons and my easygoing stories

Found in books with little weight

We never know when a bad,

Mechanistic idea might

Come along

One response

To act like a fourth

Stooge rather than a minion

 

That last stanza looks like Minnesota

I wonder what cartoons

They need up there

 

 

(drafted yesterday, I realize)

Allusion

(an argument I’m never going to have)

 

You think I do this because

I don’t know enough words

Please

It has meaning

You know this when you use it

Home of the brave

The seventh-inning stretch

Lady Macbeth

She doth protest too much

(who is not that lady)

The referencing ties us all

In ties that bind

Silken cords, I imagine

(and I borrow)

And we refer to Genesis or anything

To say like Whos to Horton,

We are here

 

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash

Panther Pond, ME

Mother Loon Shakes Off

 

 

After a Kind of Rain

After a Kind of Rain

 

There is hope

While there is good

We don’t even have to know

It’s more than half

We only need to catch a gleam

In the morass of kidnapped night

That better roles have

Abrogated

That was, I think, the war

In heaven

 

And if the hopeful glint

Is not in evidence

On the field or in a corner

In case our spirits are abducted, too

In the metaphor, we can close

Our eyes and in a better

Darkness recall

The light,

Which lifts the cause for metaphor

And story

More poetry, more narrative

We need more, we must have more

In case so much depends upon

 

By all means, this is not a call

For this

There is so much around

Barely a kick will stir it up from

Dulling dust

Or here’s a thought:

Create

Co-create

Strike an agreement with a muse

A long-term contract

Don’t worry

She awaits

With clarity even within

The rolls of night

Even before the end of

Stormy weather

Over one plain or another

 

C L Couch

 

 

Fahad Hashmi – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40357621

Lahore

 

Again with the Sunday-Thinking

Again with the Sunday-Thinking

 

It’s Sunday, and

I should say something spiritual

But there’s Hamlet’s rub

(not a small town’s)

About mortality or, I should

Say, the end of it,

Which is what the Dane’s discussing

One side of the coin, as

It were, the other side

Well, spirituality

Who’d have thought?

 

So here we are

The coin I have,

The choice I have

Heads or tails

Or stand it on the edge,

Which I can do

 

Do you?

This is where we are

Where angels could dance

As slender as the pin

Though it goes around

Another way

Both things, the circle and the sphere,

Are endless

One comes back

And if a mark isn’t made

We’ll fool ourselves

In the illusion

A belief that we are always going

Somewhere

Somewhere else

 

So we need another metaphor

Metaphors as analogies

Always fail somewhere

Along the way

But we have the vine

The true vine and the faulty

And would that we graft ourselves

To the stronger,

Greener branch

And so grow

Like a magic beanstalk

Toward heaven

Though here’s where plants no longer

Serve analogy

For heaven’s not up

Where Claudius would send his prayers

Not forward, backward

Interior, exterior

Exit, arriving

I think you know

Where heaven is

Open the window of the soul

The air is good, at last

No teaching no longer necessary

Breathe the good and lasting

Air of heaven in

I wonder if in heaven

All we do is inhale

 

Better than direction

Better than metaphors

Better than Christmas morning

Or a birthday

(not analogies but real

remembrances I trust, I hope)

Heaven is an invitation

Please respond

r.s.v.p.

a.s.a.p.

I want to meet there

And maybe you

Will help me

Though there’s one who

Will bring us, both

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Thanks. All my pics are free! from Pixabay

church war syria civil war devastation devastated

 

Flat Earth Society

Flat Earth Society

 

Who decided that the Earth

Should have four corners?

Mapmakers, I guess

And a poet who could not resist

 

We make metaphors

So that something new might have

A meaning

Like the first day,

We need to separate night from day

One shape from another

Have touchstones for the texture of the thing

 

So that when

We hold something we don’t know

And wonder whether to feel squeamish

Or maybe grasp a little harder

As in the embrace of

Someone we haven’t seen for a while

 

The world is made of figures

(no need to fold it over;

take it as it is)

and the way to comprehend them

Is to line them up

Get to know them into metaphors, the similes

Induction to deduction,

We have

A rosy familiarity at last

We settle into something like a star

A source of light and radiance

Every place that has no pleasure

In the dark

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Konrad Miller – modified version of File:Karte Pomponius Mela.jpg; form Mappae Mundi Bd. Vi. “Rekonstruierte Karten”, Tafel 7., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38472341

An 1898 reconstruction of Pomponius Melas view of the World.