Is There a Chapbook in the House



Brown Bread
(not the English expression, thank you)

The angel
And the angel
Sat
And talked
One angel older
So to say
(in heaven years are
reckoned
differently
I’m sure)
The other like an apprentice
Angel
Really
So may I say
Old and young
(portrayed by
Fred Gwynne
and Johnny Whittaker
respectively)
And the older angel spoke
Of brown bread
His mother
Had made
And served
When he was young

The brown bread
Was a totem
I suppose
Though it was firstly
Soft
Inviting
And maybe to the older angel
When a boy
His mother felt that way
As well

It’s not proper
Transmogrification
Since
Angels are
Or were not
People
But the story
With the brown bread has
Stayed with me
From when I was a child
To who I am
These days


(this was in a production of The Littlest Angel on TV from 1960-something)



Morning Becomes Electrons
(sorry for the pun and also all the parenthetically)

I woke up
Through a process
Of default
And rose
The creaks protesting
Or maybe the body’s fine
And it was
My spirit that protested

Either way was up
And made some coffee

Should have cleaned the cup
But counted on hot water
Doing that

Some sort of
Hygienic transmutation
As a spell
Provided by the fine
Black machine

I should have pulled
Some yogurt from
The fridge
But I couldn’t bear the prospect
Though I like
The yogurt
But eating something
Did not appeal
Maybe due to meatloaf
I had feasted
On the night
Before

And so with the cup
I sauntered over here
Re-worked
The pillows and
Got down
Physically
And also in my attitude
Half-closed
Half-opened set
To work

For this is my work
To write
Most days
First thing
It is
Like waking
A default of discipline
Something I mean to do
And has vitality
In action
And in purpose
(if closed in
and also nothing like
laps around a track
around
a field
and has no trophy at the end
but some words
that for now become
a long aside)

And I shall what I say not
Like Pharaoh in the
Movie who
Scripted
Commanded
Something
(like the thwarting of the stepson
Charlton Heston)
To be written
To be done

But some words
Set down
Without the noise
Of touch-typing
In fact
With hardly any noise
At all
And were an office filled with these
Machines
And everyone at work
Would make a symphony
Of padded sounds

But I write
(my padding)
And hope to write some
More
With your permission
Your allowance
Of machine time

Electricity
That doesn’t hum
But somehow in the background
Sings



Sense and Sensation

Sometimes
The caffeine
I believe
Contributes to a sense
A moment of
Satisfaction
With the world
And for the moment what
I’m doing for it

Not egoistically but
As a contribution
Nonetheless
As if I have a part
To play
And I am parting it and
Playing it

And satisfaction
Yes
Shall be mine
For a little while
Maybe a second cup
As well
Or simply rest here
And tap idly
For a while

Being pleased with myself
Will not last
And I might wonder
Later
How I got so far
Like a journey’s end
Barely having started
Supplies
And first steps
Unapproved



Last Words

And shall I take
To something short
For the satisfaction of
The two of us
And more upon the page
For something else

If after
I should leave it blank
And you might say something
Without the need
For margin-cramming but
Have half the page
Or so
To say something that you mean to
And in a crawl
Be so much bigger than
My fonting
Ever meant
To make it

Words
And messaging
You win
Thank goodness



Say the Word

There is great worth
In only
A single word
Such value in the unit
Of such measuring

You set down
You look
You hear
You might revise
Like taking out the “the”
And adding “a”
As if in a contest
Erstwhile

Though there will be a word
To keep
And then another
Maybe by accident
The cat’s
Secret name


(Monty Python, T. S. Eliot)



Is There a Chapbook in the House of Atreus
(or Atreides)

I write some
Things
They form a string
Maybe sensations in
The sounds
Made up inside my head
Or you
You might even read
Out loud
Once you have
It all

There is meaning in the
Units
Some morphology
At work
To be identifiable
By an -ologist

Symbol
Totem
Anything to indicate
The meaning might be shared
Arrangements
Appreciated

Unique expressions
With allusions
Something sort of recognizable
But all mine
Now all yours
From the banks of what’s been ours
To keep
And withdraw
From all the ages’
Rendering
And keeping

For application
Even in the crazy moments
Such as now
When you receive
All this
With you
And me
The ages’ recollection
Of it all

What’s been
Become
After us
Or at least later on
New
Artifacts
New patterns
Providing for the exigent
Nonce
New choices that
Can be
Newly expressed
Serving
Newly meant



30
C L Couch



Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash 
Orbs of the Multiverse, my new Soap & Oil Planet series.
(I thought it looked like Dune.)