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TABLE OF CONTENTS

XVIII: 1 February,  2003

LYNX  
A Journal for Linking Poets   

 
   
 

SYMBIOTIC
POETRY:

ICSK
Jim Leftwich
John M. Bennett


ONE WILD CHOOK CAFE
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair

THE CLAPPED-OUT MICROPHONE
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair

A SUMMER FUNERAL
John E. Carley
Deborah P. Kolodji

FRIENDSHIP RENGA
Giselle Maya
Jane Reichhold

PROBABLY #14
 'a deer'
Marlene Mountain
Francine Porad

PROBABLY #15 'open house'
Francine Porad
Marlene Mountain


PROBABLY #16 'discrimination'
Marlene Mountain
Francine Porad

PROBABLY #17 'advances'
Francine Porad
Marlene Mountain

Commentary on the Collaborative Work by Jane and Werner Reichhold


A BOX OF RENGA
Jane Reichhold
Werner Reichhold

    ICSK
Jim Leftwich
John M. Bennett

ice-pick, fontanel
sang, shoulder clot

ausculation cult,
slung tamper, boom,

flood an ear, push,
kiosk on one ski

 

ONE WILD CHOOK CAFE
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair

in the cafe, photos of Tibet taken by the owner
ancient oak & rhododendron forests in black & white
traders travelling the high pass on horseback
thousands of goats driven from Tibet to Katmandu
snow clad peaks - flags keep mountain demons at bay
clouds collect around Annapurna

 cold draught from the street finds our backs
surprise companion, her Napalese baby now 7 years old
dental nurse - shine of teeth against olive complexion

a farmer comes in, orders sausages, eggs & hash browns
best chef - the engraving on a knife block
"special" . . . Asian chicken broth with noodles
waitress's giggle as our fingers touch over extra cutlery
criss-crossed with spider's webs, a tiny lattice window

 


THE CLAPPED-OUT MICROPHONE
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair

Several of the audience dressed as "poets" - flowers and ribbons in the women’s' hair, a man with a goatee and beret.

Fred, the compere, not able to place Sarah (one of the guest poets), calls her by the wrong name again.

For the first bracket of the evening the microphone remains obstinate: voices whisper around the room.

                        collapsing on the floor
                              the blackboard
                               listing readers

From the back of the group a little old lady comes forward  to fill her five-minute slot and reads with panache, one haiku.  A bowl of hot chocolate splashes across a folder.  In the corner some of the children are writing haiku at a table.

Shaking like a leaf, but not wanting to explain her Parkinson's again, Sheila comes to the mike, nearly tripping over the leads on the floor

                                        a baby's
                                       highchair
                                     for a lectern

Many of the audience have come to have their first experience of haiku.  A chuckle is heard when a poet reads

                                      bus terminal
                                     a skateboarder
                                   bounces off seats

Halfway through the evening they sort out the microphone and Moira says "Our group nearly bought the temperamental thing!"  Fred declares he's having a bad hair day.  "When things start to go wrong at the beginning, it's hard to get them back on track!"  Pausing for effect, but merely loosing the place in her notebook, Judy shows off her Library of Congress T-shirt.  Exotic Tamsin (a nutritionist) reads her poem "The Sugar Demon", whilst nearly swallowing the microphone.

Near the end Fred salvages his credibility by quoting one of the guest poet's haiku without missing a beat.

                                        dahlia
                           tucked into the microphone
                                  falls to the floor

 


A SUMMER FUNERAL
John E. Carley
Deborah P. Kolodji

a summer funeral
they slowly dismantle
the hanging basket                 

the soloist's final note
lingers in the breeze
                 

aqua minerale oh
the sulphur burst
upon my tongue                        

soothing babble
of an unknown language -
the infant sleeps
                     

a darkness more profound
than the absence of light             

alone on the hill
waiting for the sunrise -
a rooster crows   
     

 

               

FRIENDSHIP RENGA
Giselle Maya
Jane Reichhold

after a long walk
a flicker of friendship
over tea and cake              

the sweetness of a fire
listening to our stories 
      

so many lives to recall
unwinding spools
of memories and joys        

sewing dollies again
each one looks like me

vast greenhouse
all the cyclamen
waiting for adoption       

guests - so full
of things I do not know 

unshared secrets
I take from the hands
extended in greeting 
  

a chance meeting
hearts spontaneously open     

similar symptoms
we compare treatments
and herb remedies
 

lower back soothed
sage and rosemary oil      

summer-hot
hills folding together
dry creek beds
   

unskillful words
unintended discord       

meeting again
the weaver friend
tied in knots

untangled threads
woven again and again    

between clouds
the moon shuttles
opal light  
     

looking for wild mushrooms
remember not to lecture         

the topic turns
to the subject of ticks
everyone scratches
 

winter's advantage
no need to check the cat        

how fragile
& tentative the innermost
core of friendship            

sharing our picnic lunch
we both brought apples
       

December moon
healing our soul                   
healing the earth         

feminist solstice party
wholeness - holy-ness
 

is there a friend
in the world who senses
the mystery of things     

tree limbs teaching
birds to build nests
   

a germ of friendship
plants and humans and animals
linked in peace        

her Christmas card
comes from Africa
 

giving and receiving
a sheep for the year to come
brush and ink shikishi         

with a misty moon arrives
a new vision of the world
   

friendship
delicate as a snowflake
spun by the wind            

children making angels
in cold blue shadow shapes
  

footprints
following us home
violets underground  
                                 

intimacy
our cheeks touch briefly       

parting
with so much to share
in our books        
                    

in the three-mat tea room
sentient beings become close                

a trembling
in the spray of flowers
the taken branch   
         

a ginkgo tree planted                             
kokoro courageous and gentle          

       

December 4, 2002 – January 3, 2003

 

PROBABLY #14 ('real' renga sorta)
One-line Linked Haiku
Marlene Mountain
Francine Porad

'a deer'

  a deer drinks in the surroundings then drinks in the pond

painting delivered worry mirrored in the glass

the plug pulled on ricci's brain is elizabeth hidden deep within

a nation of skeptics the ongoing search for bin Laden

trotted out of comfy digs for a weekend of tough talk the veep

time to attack Iraq? in all ways the astounding cost

 

'You're one in a million!' updated to '...one in a hundred million!'

dozens of swifts follow dusk into a chimney of their own

sculpture of basalt the centerpiece of Costco corporate offices

'labor day' do i have enough energy for nature

pickling spice and dill added to each jar of little green tomatoes

cookout with neighbors a serving of neolithic info

the foreigner ends his note by telling me he's 'greatfully mine'

a teaser the windows rolled up for nothing

Katie and 'fans' due at four this afternoon the cleaning lady too*

ready to call it a night tho the stars are in

six Elvis impersonators shooting dice at one crap table

who has the nerve not to define haiku

 

breeze in the hollow the kind a string of words might not catch

muttering his red hair spikes shampooed by schoolmarm

three wasp stings at once spit and tobacco almost too handy

doctor's tank fish swim around and around and around

rescued from the blacktop a turtle's feet on bottomland for now

another birthday 26,663 days on earth

a gift the yellowest of the butterflies on the pinkest of a thistle

easy to believe in rebirth and it's not even spring

'person of interest' a compliment except from the improved fbi

mystery of a 'volunteer' plant in the rockery

a 130 mph ace on the hard court wins the tiebreak but good

entire story: JC, spouse, kids through great-grandkids

'As I was traveling to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives...'

alone in the stir that god-fearing mormon

weeds sending up shoots a three-pronged fork plunges further

in the kitchen and the heat martha stewart

weatherman forecasts gray clouds and rain wrong again

the mailbox waits my out-of-date walk

 

*fans = parents, aunts & uncles

Started: September 1, 2002   Ended: September 5, 2002

 

PROBABLY #15 ('real' renga sorta)
One-line Linked Haiku
Francine Porad
Marlene Mountain

'open house'

open house on the porch out of the rain a pile of shoes

the flashlight with its yellow in plain sight

near-record salmon runs Indian tribes gather in Puget Sound

new reasons to go to war old ones not to go

will the public be convinced the memorial candle for peace

say what 'every 30 seconds someone disappears'*

 

'tis the season for yet another purple asters native and tamed

at services mesmerized by the girl with blue hair

did little boys truly kill their dad or did one's middle-aged lover

he refuses dialysis summer’s end

a clump of hot pokers divided each with a fresh outlook on life

magazine cover barely recognizable Carol Burnett

latest book of linked haiku confident enough to call it probably

no doubt about it collaborative writing is fun

relative relief from pain first good week just shy of 20 years

visible jolt at the sound of her high C

a chill in the air then cicadas then the 'elevated alert' elevated

repeated 9/11 scenes of trauma at the Twin Towers

 

cell phone exchange between father and son from hope to horror

'insider information' the biggest cuke saved for seeds

mid-September songbirds at the feeder plumper than usual

one more bugged pine plenty of beaks to debug

a stack of wood rounds nature prepares to be dormant

fallen far too long the drought-looking sky

Tate Gallery spectator: Babe, ever hear of a guy named Turner?

pastoral setting cows in the creek eliminate it

in the moist fields abundant skunk cabbages rhizome collecting

tough talk shunned apparently no smoking nuclear gun

a cigarette the perfect icon for film-noir movies of the '50's

bad actor to bad prez one of my better 'bad' deliveries

 

as the saying goes they live only a step above a chicken coop

Hooverville a geranium on a window sill

inward-seeking black-eyed susans broken across the land

'eighty dugres today, Grandma' my Tucson 'weather guru'**

too close for comfort a nest of used blankets on a katydid night

low-key Friday the 13th I water the garden 'good'

 

*promo for a CBS program
** Instant Message about Seattle weather

Started: September 8, 2002   Ended: September 13, 2002

 

 

PROBABLY #16 ('real' renga sorta)
One-line Linked Haiku
Marlene Mountain
Francine Porad

 

'discrimination'

discrimination in america in everywhere even on mars

Arab men questioned logical profiling

at risk a red [or is it pink] turtlehead leans into the rocky road

'outcropping' removed by dump truck dust rises

we wait on 'hanna' to satisfy our thirst the little pond and i

wind picks up a white butterfly from flower to flower

 

so many wallpaper books Mama helps me choose a rosebud bouquet

boxed in by wormy chestnut & oak a rundown fortune

no sleep lost over Bill Gates losing eleven billion in the last year

more than double trouble all those saddam doubles

'after five margaritas Bernard and Francine peer from a drain pipe'*

someday it might be said a piece 'formally known as' haiku**

my writing stages include syrupy to intellectual to moderately OK

a fine day if a sprinkle turns into a drizzle

summer’s end at the bus stop passengers carrying umbrellas

something dug up and replanted it doesn't matter what

Day of Atonement sermon...the meaning of the word 'contrite'

I pace off 80 x 20 feet literally and figuratively

 

'home on the range' the kitchen would be insignificant if possible

kid's choice all odd-jobs-list items checked off

to make big bucks a big host interrupts & disapproves of a big guest

repeated crawl across the TV set <<TERROR ALERT HIGH

hey don dick john condy colin and george 'where's the beef?'

Iraq concedes: unconditional return of U.N. inspectors

in transition pampas grass where praying mantises once hung

so quiet I can hear the crickets and my heart

a mind that won't turn off even in the face of forgetfulness

at the pan game first sign of 'old-timers'***

headline news like yesterday's the way i want my little news to be

I wake from a nap thinking it's tomorrow

 

primary absentee ballot mailed in with no concern for chads

in the case of freedom united we don't stand

he objects if I say he's sick he objects if I say he's well

'natural male enhancement' bob's friend has it now****

money works for me great notion to strike it rich with a Lotto win

on a moment's notice the wren begins dawn

 

* déjè vu wordplay by Robert Major, based on a Porad haiku from a Mexican sequence
**after Prince (Artist formally known as)
***Alzheimer's
****tv ad for hard-on pills

Started: September 13, 2002   Ended: September 19, 2002

 

 

PROBABLY #17 ('real' renga sorta)
One-line Linked Haiku
Francine Porad
Marlene Mountain

'advances'

awesome technical advances can we get past bombings and hatred

life will be better once all the black gold's ill-gotten

a full tank of gas little traffic and a coupon for fish and chips

rain delay as glad bulbs loaded with peach harden off

thoughts turn to spring planting parrot tulips in portable pots

free as a bird unless habitatly-challenged

 

'home of the brave' have you turned in your suspicious nature

tip of the cat's tail last seen under the fence

a long day until it began to darken beneath the fluffy clouds

adding a dab of purple in the shadows

no workable pen in the truck a poem stays just inside an oak

with a journal and a computer handy I'm happy

seasonal change the cucumber beetles outnumber the cukes

'buddy system' 25% of rapes by more than one man

how to kill females under the guise of how females were killed

drive-by shooting not found in an instruction manual

tattoos stretch into neolithic times where earth meant something

red ocher on cave walls an I-was-here handprint

 

another slightly-varied monotype seaweed pieces in the press

gone to his head with plenty of room dubya's egomania

photographing up women's skirts OK'd by WA Supreme Court

j edgar's name still 'tackied' on the peoples' wall

hundreds of thousands without power in Yucatan Peninsula*

tho tired lavender and pink now bedded together

I pluck the spent blossoms then start my exercise routine

autumn sky after the mist settles down

overhead in ever-widening circles the route of the hawk

pretty much ignored albert gore's view of iraq and me

if Saddam treats others the way he treats his own countrymen...

clear and present how fall has exaggerated the pines

 

will young martha too-good's mom do prison or do parenting again

verdict on Mad (Madelyne shortened) still out

prediction of a colder than last year's winter which was warmish

for the first time seed clusters on our ivy

ready for almost anything a passed-along elvis shirt unfolded

the kitten disappears before the neutering

 

 

*Hurricane Isidore

Started: September 19, 2002  Ended: September 25, 2002

 

Commentary on the Collaborative Work by Jane and Werner Reichhold

Five years ago, in the book titled, Invitation - the story of the invitation  by the Imperial Family of Japan to the New Year's Poetry Party at the Palace on January 14th, 1998, the Reichholds wrote and published a haibun, interwoven with haiku and tanka sequences, solo-renga, free verse and prose poems, adding a chapter to the fields of Symbiotic Poetry. New at that time was the integration of photographic material, not at all used as illustrations but in itself handled as photo sequences containing superimpositions, situation-associated shifts and time-analogous leaps organized in correlation to prose and poetry, and therefore creating electric fields from which the readers /spectators can switch forth and back as they please.
Today, with the February issue of Lynx 2003, we publish the "A Box of Renga", a collaborative work as a multi-media composition in which Jane and Werner Reichhold both worked equally and alternately on the photo sequences as well as on the haiku.
We realized how influential the work with a digital camera has been to our artistic concept, and to the act of transforming it through the second tool, the personal computer. On a computer screen, picture-and-text locations appear simultaneously. They seem to change the reception of our esthetics. In a strange and not fully recognized way, the spirits on one hand and the energies produced by a computer transmitting them on the other hand, are not two things anymore. In respect to the arts as a whole, they appear as a self-organized factor we have to deal with. As an online production, our work becomes part of a rapidly recognized medium, spreading and promoting the message of intertwined, socially effective creations.

 

 



A BOX OF RENGA
Jane Reichhold
Werner Reichhold

the box
put on the morning table
open

Dali’s painting
the masturbator folding

 

eyes wide
the mask allows
a shyness

listening to the circle
the wire winds around

 

time to rise
the moon-faced lad
appears

 

our sonny boy asleep
awakened by the news

 

released dream
from the broken dolly
another curve

ah-ha our affair begins
as a deck of cards

 

a joker
holds the cutter
in a distance

 

divination proves
everything is possible

 

four hands
six coins
the service

 

 

 

 

 

the stickiness
of another relationship

 

 

 

 

 

more suspicious
the moon takes away
its sweetness

 

 

 

 

celebrating the light
bright colors on paper

 

 

 

 

chicken – please
turn around
I love you!

 

 

 

 

 

to make an omelet
quick take a photo

 

 

 

 

the way
we travel
boxed

 

 

 

 

California holidays
the rose parade at home

 

 

 

 

red and white
candles saved

 

 

 

 

for black-outs
wax tray joined time
swimming around a wick?

 

 

 

 

outdoors
the fire goes
out

 

 

 

 

the catch she knows
is close to catching

 

 

 

 

 

box
meet box
in box

 

 

 

 

 

so quiet when the past
shines through the present

 

 

 

 

with better ears
could one hear
the apple's cry?

in the year of the snake
Eve isn’t sure of what to eat

 

 

 

 

 

magic markers
ink in the book leads
into enlightenment

 

 

 

 

we open the treasure chest
light jumps out feathered

 

 

 

turning around
the ideal resolution
a diet

 

 

 

 

too late for festivities
the moon comes with a guest

 

 

 

the morning
after in a nut
left in the shell

 

 

 

 

 

the pregnancy test strip
in a purple glow

 

 

 

 

starbox
all of its shine
in one hand

 

 

 

 

forty years of work
finally a greeting card

 

 

 

still snow
the first that touches
flowers

 

 

 

sipping more blessings
to begin another spring

 

Done on the very last day of 2002
Happy New Year!

 

   
   
  Submission  Procedures

Who We Are

Deadline for the next issue is
May 1, 2003

  Poems and comments Copyright © Designated Authors 2003.
Page Copyright©  Jane Reichhold 2003.

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