Encounter

(x = space)

x

x

Encounter

x

Is there a spiritual answer

To everything?

Well, yes

But we are flesh and blood as well;

And muscles, organs, veins,

And capillaries

Sometimes need appeased

x

The body keeps the feelings;

The flesh owns

All the senses,

And that’s good

It’s natural,

If limited

The soul is in here somewhere

Incited by a spark of life

That no one seems to understand

x

We seem to house everything

The world, the flesh, and the devil

As I’ve heard

The answers are in here,

I suppose,

Which means that the answers are

In you—maybe

We could share

That would be smart, I think,

And comforting

x

C L Couch

x

x

These young guys were chatting at a cafe, where they caught my eyes. They were a group of friends having coffee and dinner together and talking about movies, videogames, tech and stuff like that. I guess you could say that these are the stories of our younger years.

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

Atrin Café, Ahvaz, Iran

x

Waking

(x = space)

x

x

Waking

The backs of my front teeth

x

That I ground in my sleep

Skin tags

The iffy vision when I needed

Clarity

My ingrown or overgrown

Toenails

White hair (dark again)

The perils of left-handedness

In a right-handed, mortal world

x

Fears resolved

All the fear

That drove

The body and the brain

x

The soul that speaks

At last

To say, I knew you were there

Thank you for the journey home

To end at last

To start

x

C L Couch

x

x

Watchmaker’s Junkyard

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

x

Whose Calling

Whose Calling

 

I haven’t spoken to my soul today

Or maybe that’s all I do

Some would say the dialogue is prayer

Maybe so

Maybe the angel is

Listening in,

Which is fine with me

How else will it advise itself

Or send for orders?

Then sometimes I’m only speaking with

My duller, outside self

Closer to the surface, anyway

And this is how time passes, while

I’m trying to keep up

With other things

While part of me in silence, too,

Is waiting for the angel to return

With suggestions

 

Being suggestions I imagine that

Angels cannot understand, since will

By them has been

Perfectly surrendered,

Somehow a war in heaven

Notwithstanding

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jason marquis on Unsplash

Belleville, Illinois, USA

 

Soul Music

Soul Music

 

Start in Africa

Carry through to the Caribbean

To New Orleans

Then travel up to Detroit

And with a kind of partnership

In New York and Nashville,

You have soul

 

The other kind, we know

From long ago

When breath entered earth

To form a person, rising

 

Was there music in the garden?

I think there must have been

A shame that in a lull

Between certain movements,

The serpent talked with Eve

And then Adam

All too easily

Fell, too

Then there must have been a kind

Of silence for a time

In mourning, angels set to guard

Then maybe once emptied of us,

Music returned to Eden,

Which was its nature

 

It we listen, will we hear it,

The music in our souls?

Back in Detroit, maybe

Or in the backyard,

Where a picnic turns to small

And loving concerting

For the family

And for friends

 

It might be gone or hidden

(hiding’s a kind of gone),

But like the soul

The music might be found again

Turn to archaeologists,

Turn inward

We can have it

We can play it all

 

C L Couch

 

 

Last concert of Ray Charles at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of the Place des Arts during the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in 2003. Photo by Victor Diaz Lamich.

Victor Diaz Lamich, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3606167

 

Tree of Life

Tree of Life

 

The soul must be amazing

Some say it’s like a bird

And why not

 

I don’t mean a matter for debate

I mean the spirit that’s inside us

That leaves us when

We can bear no more

 

Where it catches next, I do not know

Branches in a tree

What has it for keeping

 

I think it is somewhere

I guess it might be doctrine

And so for argument

To say it owns eternal

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Kushagra Kevat on Unsplash

 

Lessons

Lessons

 

Simple, elegant verse about God

Jesus loves me, this I know

For the Bible tells me so

But I want it on my own, from my

Own words and thoughts and sentiments

The strings of my soul

The lines that go from me to you

That must be played

That must be worked

That must be played

 

C L Couch

 

 

sculpture at the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington

Alex Hendricks – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39290671

 

Clergy Sex Abuse

Clergy Sex Abuse

 

I don’t know how to sound

Holier than thou

When thou art rancid hate

And destruction of a soul

 

It happened to me

It happened to you

I know some of the names

Maybe you do, too

 

They truck with intimacy

Allowing it to slip from God

Into human spirits

Trusting

Even to think the pastor boring

Well, there is another kind

 

Earth weeps enough

And why would God need more tears

From God’s own

Relegated

Abrogated

To the underside of things

Unto the part of us that’s shocked

Broken

Alone

 

C L Couch

 

 

Anil Kumar

HeartBroken – Tears are the Baptism of Soul

 

S is for Science

S is for Science

 

Science is skill

Practice and progress

Discipline, consistent

Method and trial

 

So is poetry-making

Poeia in ancient Greek

(The process of

Making)

 

Both are spiritual acts

Dealing with creation

And miracle

 

Though scientists and

Poem-makers might

Not see the fabulous

Beyond amazing

Accomplishments of

People

 

In effect, the miracle

Being us

 

Well, so be it

 

I see the soul, and

That’s my science

 

Global, adhesive

Respect will keep our

World together

 

And so I will look

Forward to your way

 

And we may measure

And skillfully remake

The cosmos together

 

 

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