How Are You

(x = space)

x

x

How Are You

x

We have shot four youth

This week

In the USA

One young person’s dead

All were hit

Wounded first

One died

Three are treated

One hopefully recovers if, oh,

So slowly

x

None can be the same

In Earth

Or heaven

(our daily petitions

for)

x

Now we pray

We shouldn’t have to

We should be

Praying for

Their joy

In youthful living

Not in

Struggling

To live

At all

x

Cheerleaders,

For goodness sake

Honor students

Good people, all

The kind you’d like

To get

To know

x

And if not our cup of tea,

We don’t shoot

At them

For that(,

crazy people)

x

And now

Their lives are changed

For the worse

Forever

x

We shoot our children

We can say

We are afraid

We are threatened by

The unfamiliar,

Anymore

x

But really, now,

We shoot children

Because

We can

The shooters being with us,

After all,

These locked in due process

And shall be heard

x

The victims cannot speak

Nearly so well

At all

And had no plans

Before

Except to live

You know, to adolesce

To grow

To live

And be alive

x

That’s over now

If they live,

They’re grown up now

We grew them

When we shot them

This week

In the USA

Our nation of

Domestic

Intimate

Gunplay

x

n. b.

x

Yes, without guns

We’d say

We’d use knives and sticks—well,

Okay

x

C L Couch

x

x

In Six Days, Four Young Americans Have Been Shot after …

1 day ago · KANSAS CITY, Missouri. In the span of six days, four young people across the U.S. have been shot — one fatally — for making one of the most ordinary and …

Nobody Is Talking about the Four Black Students Shot in …

February 17, 2023 · It’s hard to believe, for instance, that had four teenagers been shot leaving school in one of Pittsburgh’s wealthier, whiter suburbs — say Mount Lebanon, a borough …

x

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash

x

(well, there’s Pogo who observed that we have met the enemy and it is us)

x

two poems for young people

(x = space)

x

x

two poems for young people

x

x

Youth

x

They (you) look so young

Not like those near altars

Of antiquity

Who are forever beautiful

But cannot move

x

These might be cared for carefully

That youth might be preserved

Youth cannot be preserved

x

Youth might invest their own

(your own)

So that the coming days

Are rich

With age and wisdom,

Maybe things put by

x

But (you) run without avarice

Or even long ambition

Become parts of a transitory mural

That is bright

All colors

Shapes

At least three dimensions,

Which will have no museum

Save in memory

x

x

Locksmithing

x

Who holds the keys?

Why are there keys?

Why are their locks?

What is kept?

What must be freed

Up with which

From being locked?

x

Behind the door

Once opened

Nothing might be withheld

But secrets of the arrogance

The avarice in

Withholding

Private parties

Boring,

Frightening without joy

From the absconded powerful

x

There might be secrets

For the young to own

(they, you

should have mentors)

If taught or teach themselves

(yourselves)

How to

Break out

x

This is the story

Of the end of age’s

Generation

The beginning of another

An ownership

That could calcify

So-called in privilege

Or turn around

Turn everything around

Toward all the growth

In revelation

And unwithheld resources

For life

With invention

Food, that is, and challenge

x

Keeping democracy

(boo say some, but)

We need it

x

x

C L Couch

x

x

Burned Out at the Salton Sea

Photo by Tina Rataj-Berard on Unsplash

x

Do Not Be Kept by Flowered Fields

(x = space)

x

x

Do Not Be Kept by Flowered Fields

(from a teacher)

x

Hump day, Amanda

Be nice, learners

Work and play with

Discipline and health

Do not rush to poppies

Or what might become

Another monument

We need you,

The young,

So much

On Wednesday

And for all the other days

You are so much more important

Than entities named

For exhausted gods

Than entities

At all

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash

x

A Child Doesn’t Have to Lead Them

(x = space)

x

x

A Child Doesn’t Have to Lead Them

x

When children have food

And people to talk with

Of a variety of ages

When their dreams aren’t stanched

And they have a chance

To grow into who they are

Then any child can make it

x

I know this: I see and hear it happen

On TV all the time

In scripted shows

x

C L Couch

x

x

Children are amazing.  And there are amazing young people who are leading in the areas of racism, sexism, and climate change (climate crisis).  The only fault in this arrangements is not with the youth but with adults.  Adults should be leading for the youth.

x

Photo by Foroozan Faraji on Unsplash

Shiraz, Iran

x

3 haiku about age

(x = space)

x

x

These are haiku.  I understand that haiku go untitled.  Maybe the series itself could be considered “The Modern Theban Riddle.”

x

x

[haiku on old]

x

I rock without a

chair and dream of golden age

when I’m nearing done

x

x

[haiku on youth]

x

I am new to Earth

and of my own volition

prizes on the way

x

x

[haiku on middle age]

x

they are on either

side, and I don’t know my own

inside anymore

x

x

c l couch

x

x

photo by zoe lin on Unsplash

Wellington, New Zealand

x

Me before You

(x = space)

x

x

Me before You

(for youth)

x

Peace in our time,

Which implied more strongly

Than the message

That there would be no peace

In their time,

The coming generation’s

x

We bargain with our children’s

Lives and should

Know better,

Abrogating wisdom

And the sacrifice of us

So that they have a world

Better than we found it

x

There used to be a message,

Parents investing

So that children should have

Better lives than theirs,

A message that had stopped

Variably in the seventies

And eighties,

Not to mention attitudes

Toward annihilation

From the war that was so cold

x

Sorry about all that,

All this

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

Freedom

x

Summation of the Heart

Summation of the Heart

 

Whites kill blacks

Sometimes blacks

Even the score

But when it’s four centuries

In one place

(there are other ages,

other places),

How can the pit be cleared

And turned over when

What we fill

Never bury

Is horror for horror?

 

Charity

Forgiveness

May we start again?

Will blacks offer it?

Will whites accept?

There are more races

Hatred, fear, and anger poured

Into pale ears

And, yes, sometimes in sable

By a devil poisoning

Thought,

The varied arts in creation

Rather making a mob

(this is not protest)

That has no sight

Or strategy

 

Asian, African,

Australian, Caribbean,

Flesh from Europe’s people

Not white enough, the

Subcontinent

First people in America,

Australia

Any native people whom

Developers have eyed

And power-mongers

Calculated

This is race

The human race

Racing humans

 

There is crime

Sometimes it’s organized

Maybe it’s exciting

To put one’s life on the edge

Of a knife

And live along mortality

Easy money, maybe

For a life

For a life

 

There is disease

The flu, Ebola, AIDS

The virus we have crowned

There is no treatment

No vaccine

There are measures

People are tired of following

Them

So don’t, and the sickness

Spikes again

We cannot learn

We cannot go back

All we want to do

Is go back

 

The children of the world

The world that is our child

Those of us in charge

Fully grown in measure

Also charged

To leave a planet

To the generations after

Who watch us now

Who see corruption, profiteering

(another word for politics)

Cutting, razing everything

 

We should retire

Giving them a chance

With all shame in leaving them

A world they saw us taking down

Our best option

Waiting for another

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Lara Puscas on Unsplash

281 – ATOMIUM, 1020 Bruxelles, Belgium, Bruxelles

The Atomium

 

Shadrach

Shadrach

 

They traded in vacated virtue

What was left of righteousness

 

Goodness rusted through,

Only a thin semblance, molecules-narrow perhaps,

Which was all right

They decided who could touch them

And how deep

They wouldn’t let me rest a finger

Tied my hands away

And bound my feet

Blindfolded me as well

And did so in a way that, while I could no longer

Move, I still thought I was free

 

I had no skill

I simply wanted to live

God gave me something, maybe

But a yen for freedom is what mattered most

God hurt those who bend the youth inside,

Who masquerade as truth

But mentor lies

 

But, worse, I must ask

That God judge

In perfect love

Remembering all parables

All messages and motives

Manifest

God judge me, too

For collaboration

And anger when the mask burned off

 

C L Couch

 

 

File:Fiery Furnace, Arches National Park.jpg – Wikimedia Commons

 

Too-Young Good-Bye

Too-Young Good-Bye

(youth, adults—the Humboldt team and friends)

 

In Canada

In Nipawin,

Youth and hockey

Care and safety

And something else transpires

Coaches and sponsors

Everyone does a job

And something else transpires

A bus and a truck tall and wide collide

And that’s it

There it is

An explosion perhaps not

In fiery effect

But of life regardless

And too terribly

I’ve been in vehicle crashes

So are many others

A truck crashed once into my car

I was sprayed with glass

And there was no question

The family station wagon would

Be replaced

People have been hurt in wrecks

This is what I know

Those who are close to this

Know so much more

And horrible

There are

Those who left

Pulled mortally from here,

The here and now we

Have

Those who remain

What shall be done

 

Too many must heal,

And we must return

To take each one gone

A gift

Of flesh and soul

And in quiet, be thankful he

Was with us

For a time—then

For each one still in sight,

Perception

 

All-gendered victims now

All ages then and since

All places

All relations

Thoughts and prayers are tired

Though we will inhale and

Pray for real, again

For faith however tried

And for answers that like deer

Are nimble and grace-filled

 

Look for authenticity

In choices of

Our love

Good-bye too soon

 

Each one

Not from eternal reach,

But the for hours we must count

‘Til heaven says all counting’s gone

Together

In a redemptive now

Always beginning

 

C L Couch

 

 

image above from Pinterest

image below from http://www.tripmondo.com/canada/saskatchewan/nipawin/