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TABLE OF CONTENTS

XVII:1 February,  2002

LYNX  
A Journal for Linking Poets   
 
   
 

SYMBIOTIC
POETRY:


WHAT WE HAVE LOVED
Debra Woolard Bender &
Marjorie Buettner

 
A KITCHEN TABLE
paul.conneally &
John Carley


METROPOLIS paul t conneally &
alan j summers


FLYING ANTS Allan Dystrup & Cindy Zackowitz


GOOD FORTUNE IN EVERY POT kirsty karkow & an'ya


A GARDENER'S BLUES
Marlene Mountain
 &

Jean Jorgensen

TOWARD HOME
Marlene Mountain

Francine Porad

WHAT'S LEFT
Marlene Mountain
 & 
Francine Porad


CHAT BOARDS Francine Porad & Marlene Mountain

 
THE TOUCHING OF IT
Jane Reichhold &

Werner Reichhold,

UNDER A STAR: 
Maria Steyn &
Karma Tenzing
Wangchuk aka Dennis Dutton

Tanka of Toshiko Makino translated by Eiko Yachimoto 

 

    WHAT WE HAVE LOVED
Debra Woolard Bender

Marjorie Buettner

Because the written words were mine yet unexpressed
I fell in love as I read a book.

How hydrangea is coloured by the soil from which it grows.

What then, did I love? The flower or the earth?

 

Because the snow collected from the sky
then landed like wing-led birds everywhere I see:


How the air knows the taste of this cold-ripe wind.


What is there not to love; this winter-ladened world!

 

As evening left, trailing miles of rippled cloud,
what slowly filled those open depths between the stars?

When first I knew your kiss, I also found my emptiness.

The darkness and the fire meet only at night.

 

How many ways you have sealed yourself from me,
so dark this cloud-obscured moon.

Once there was a time when we were one; now this division defines.

And like a patient artificially alive, who will be the one to pull
the plug?

 

Winter deepens; blighted field and withered tree companion in rampant weeds.

Day before the holy day, such sadness overwhelmed me, lingering on.

How can the land be purified?
Without a covering of white, how will the field be redeemed?

 

Was it too much to ask for blossoms in the dead of winter?

Tonight I feel like Rumi's "stringless harp."

Somewhere I am an incense stick unlit
and you are the forgotten fire.

 

Nothing is lost in the land of dreams
where rose scent and the feathers of our bodies are each the other.

Remember when, together, we sang snatches of old swoon songs?

Even now, imaginings entice me toward paths I would surely take.

 

When we find ourselves revealed and revealing
 we will no longer need a mirror.

Take my hand and talk to me as if for the first time.

Will we remember what we have loved in each other? 


A KITCHEN TABLE
paul.conneally 

John Carley

       friends around   a kitchen table

the clock in the hall   strikes ten                

   shouting the odds   Sir Alex   backs a loser   

             dressed up   in top hat and tails

    the groom kisses   the bride's mother                     

     an early evening   rain falls   dark as sherry              

         towards dawn   dad leaves for work

           geese flying   across the full moon                       

     her fingers trace   the coils   of the cable                  

           smoke rises   over the rooftops

            a black cat   making for home                             

        I turn the key   wearily   the engine coughs          

.         a long queue   of schoolboys

       waiting outside   the nurse's office                          

   scarlet jam   clots   the tapioca pudding                      

                 his uncle   got too friendly

      with the woman   in the guest house                         

      an old black dog   chained up   to a new kennel       

              somewhere   in the thickening fog

          an impression   of mountains                                

            the windows   of Betty's Tea Shop all steamed up       

a young girl stares at   the change in the till

                dreaming   of life-boats

 

              shamefaced   I pass on the church collection-plate    

    beyond the hurdles   past the cow shed

                   charcoal   blights the pasture

       in this hard frost   fallen oak leaves   catch the sun

                   a tramp   among the litter bins

             gets noticed   by a pigeon

         these daffodils   seem to shout out come back soon!      

 

METROPOLIS
linked to Spike Milligan's "Metropolis"
paul t conneally

alan j summers

early hours
fox cubs playing tag
under a street-lamp
he walks  very deliberately
to his home

the shrill whistle
interrupts
a train of thought
rabbits swerving to escape
an owl

stepping on the brakes
a young woman dressed
in white pyjamas
alone out here
she pats her new life

a wash of orange light
the metallic scream lingers
beyond its time
a firework piercing
the November sky

November 2001

 

FLYING ANTS
Allan Dystrup 
Cindy Zackowitz 

  flying ants -
  a swift glides past
  the sickle moon

  a queue of new students
  under the changing leaves

  through the fog
  the sound of oars thrown
  into a dinghy

  in each rain-filled footprint
  a piece of the autumn sky

  above the dock
  a string of fish hangs
  in the diesel fumes

  he breaks an icicle
  to slide down her back

  "it's because he likes you"
   Mama says

  over the city
  the morning star between
  night and day

  parting the curtains
  she makes a wish

  Las Vegas honeymoon
  the roulette wheel
  comes to a stop

  a quiet 'Old Faithful'
  in pouring spring rain

  among the Indian Paintbrushes
  a buffalo mother
  and her white-faced calf

begun 07/29/01

 


GOOD FORTUNE IN EVERY POT 
kirsty karkow
 
an'ya

lucky find -
my favorite knife
in the compost

winter solstice:
market prices slashed

stock pot -
plucking pin feathers
from a chicken

in darkness
porcupine quills . . .
just miss me


searching the sky
to make a wish upon a star

schools' out -
on the highway headed
for disneyland

 

 

A GARDENER'S BLUES
Marlene Mountain
 

Jean Jorgensen

a gardener's blues along with the pinks whites and yellows

          not a care in the world busy hummingbird

anything to hang a hat on the male version of yin/yang august heat

           bus stop pregnant lady rests on a bench

evening news the president still wrinkled over stem cells and such

           well into the night a sudden thunderclap

 

a chance happening downtown when the royal couple take a walkabout

flora & fauna the many military & religious names i'd change

St. Christopher medal around his neck rookie long-distance trucker

was she taken for a ride the 100-day missing chandra

just fooling around can get you in trouble nine months later a
baby boy

so many rules of grammar a bath of humidity

folk festival as the sun goes down a hot air balloon slowly rises

thoughts wander to a watermelon in the fridge

four days of 'world music' so many loving vibes good for the soul

insecurity in the middle east plenty of rocks & bombs

part of life our housecat catches a young sparrow then plays with it

sounds like mine a neighbor's talk of deer

 

after the flash flood trash and fence wires caught in a creek of rocks

'Moulin Rouge' Mom weeps for her lost love

the last day lily bloom melts on the line clothes pins begin to dry

husband builds a patio deck ignores the mosquitoes

a roof that leaks floors that sag walls that let in nature these 30 years

mostly for show now Indian teepees in city square

white man's liquor and religion and 'beefalo' the revenge of tobacco

awoken by a migraine sick sick sick

noncreative streak at least some of the flower patches partly weeded

 free trade freer for U.S. than Canada?

someone's come up with art & someone's come up with suppression

hand embroidered quilt a gift from Grandma

 

all night rain this morning a large footprint drying in the sun

where to turn what to do next with no goals

 before she falls asleep a silent prayer of thanksgiving . . . healing

 katy and the dids scrape a bit of pain from my legs

path beside the river a young man on a motorized scooter

wild iris trapped in the park the heat to snitch a clump

 

august 3-23 2001

 

TOWARD HOME
Marlene Mountain
 
Francine Porad
 

toward home the mountain on the left moves to the right

dream enigma ends with an aha!

bed now beside the computer anxious for a fresh notebook

via email Florida friends say goodnight

 'all politics is local' with well-placed relatives & 5 supremes

front page: newspaper strike

 

Seattle Times: the usual 'drive-by,' weather report, fire, hero

mike with the new part an ancient green fridge

scrounging for dinner fixin's salami sandwich and an orange 'works'

at a scary part of the film scrape of the night plow

cold with sunshine here on the West coast no snow no snow please

i take liberties in haiku only beyond my liberties

 no one claims 'responsibility' simultaneous bomb attacks in Manila

a tough life from clenched teeth to clenched fists

waiting for 01/01/01 hopes for peace in the 'real' millennium

so far so good: electricity and telephone and spring water

Victorian mansion with modern amenities $10 extra for haunted room

 

the squirrel resettles between ceiling & flooring

fallen branches through the wood stove then back on the land

dust to dust a child tasting dirt

too early to wonder about seeds in a cardboard box under the table

on the wedding quilt each stage of plant growth

one of the gang members a head taller than those in the lineup

 'just the facts, Mam' slanted

japanese poets i sense prefer we write with american sensibilities

online two-day contest: World-wide Double Kukai

all the trees sold for a view from their double-wide set on a hill

window washers canvas the neighborhood

deputies on the prowl for the combo of moonshine and black ice

a more satisfying mix: ice cream and Kahlua

 

New Year's Eve Space Needle party fireworks on local TV

half a hermit's glee stuff by post & thru a wire or two

regular chores too much of a chore no one will chastise if I ignore

a longer day the snow outlasts it by a foot

to be at home and all that implies decorator pillows on the floor

 almost past midnight probably


12/27-31/00


WHAT'S LEFT
Marlene Mountain
  Tennessee
Francine Porad
    Washington 

 

'supreme' injustice well there goes what's left of the wilderness

want a bite of a red juicy apple?

gone south or west the migrant workers without food stamps

'snowbirds' arrive in Arizona a book store in each mall

electricity bill in the mail wind rattles across the old tin roof

falling snow thirty-five days from Election Day

 

a concession speech brings home the finality: President-Elect Bush

still in the camp of the 'underpeople'

Mom to the rescue jumper cables on the dashboard

will mcveigh have another death wish realized

fighting with the doctors, nurses & his wife fighting for his life

stormy seattle on the line a wet blanket i need

hospital roomie jabbers in a foreign tongue or he needs new teeth

not a fat lady at all a black-robed 'unjustice' sang

at a ballgame Rosanne Barr spits out 'Oh, say can you see...'

half the errands done back to doing not much

topping today's list holiday and New Year's greeting cards to mail

my ip to her ip begins dhoward.notspam@

 

clinton please pardon aileen wuornos who shot only violent johns*

'...I never promised you a rose garden'**

warm winter day now that the vacuum's repaired and plugged in

 stitches healed with no tell-tale signs

abrupt change of weather four brownlike socks that needn't match

designer sweater kachina dolls swinging from the hem

and disputed by the 'world's great religions' for their children

now if Moses had just turned right instead of left...

a bad dream that so many of us cannot dream past our potential

 the scramble to the top a drop in stock prices

 things taken away and things put in the carton of orange juice

speaking of food...his diabetic diet ignored

 

not a link about love getting 'kicks' from TV's erotic late-night shows

 new 'presidensy' when the comedy begins

the man in the moon might hear shouts of 'we should have counted'

 tomorrow the day will be longer toward spring

 human-embryo cloning! pink blossoms on the flowering cherry

 just think haiku about those who don't haiku

*Florida death row
**Rose Garden: words & music by Joe South, 1967

12/13-20/00

 

CHAT BOARDS
Francine Porad 
Marlene Mountain 

bitter cold 'Demonocrats' and 'Repulsicans' on chat boards

i've switched to the rae carruth death penalty trial

 all-day surveillance hearing others' thoughts in What Women Think

 test to son's new pager: put in your digital message

first day of winter nothing disturbs the stillness of the lake

baby born by accident in a highway crash motherless

 

in georgespeak the head of a non-existing department announced

doomsayers abound the dot.com sell-off

'send your comments' as if corps care money in one's online identity

the next best thing holding hands electronically

2:00 am a yell from the porch a 911 call a car off the curve the chill

secret to softening anxiety: worry beads

a nonhaiku-content fridge dies some of the contents ok for haiku

power outage the menorah found by flashlight

whatta week but today the thermometer hovers around freezing

requested gift stick it in your ear when feeling punk

 sometimes i wonder if i make sense to anyone but myself sometimes

she winks at her mirror image

 

sexy passages starred in the borrowed magazine 'hold me...'

 left out of the updated anthology update on haiku

pinhole-in-a-box view of the solar eclipse budding astronomer

no lights no tourists in the 'prince-of-peace land'

when will it end rumors of a peace agreement travel like wildfire

my quiet life i bring a world that doesn't work into it

 free screen-saver downloads offered in place of the usual polls

cobwebs swept odor of sacred wood in the stove

 European grandma could gauge the temperature two mill ends worth

 across the bridge pointed toward town toyota pickup

each in their own car we meet at the theater to see The Family Man

candy so good i don't dare ask for the recipe

 

on the garden program the mixture not dirty enough to be soil

bleach bath for the whites tinged blue

little jon benet still dead in america little elian still alive in cuba

what my life might have been no regrets

a good day nothing accomplished but unaccomplished haiku

'this message is no longer available'

 

12/20-26/00

 

THE TOUCHING OF IT
Jane Reichhold

Werner Reichhold

Phantom-filled night heat the tiger and the lion lay down on the feather of a window - all eyes on the incoming wave. One blue-green roll of salt waters with a fairer one flung white. Unseen, yes! but felt as fire in water. Such a room, spun from mud, moved to the sea.

It breaks upon cliffs, the first in the vast, birdsong. To a geography of motion the light of its flying song surpasses the shadow of thought. Two tongues, mapping on paper, travel nests.

Back among the hills and streams for the first time since the T’ang Dynasty. Ah, to be solid again on firm land how heavy and slow it all is. The lightest sunlight seems a coating poured a thick golden syrup that day by day oozes over people and land.

Today's more elastic inner climates are linking porcelain blue to layers of ethnic communication, like this: my neighbors boy licking a stamp to Beijing, I watch his transparent milk tees. The three year old kid wears a plastic watch showing no time.

The dial a luminescent face without hands slanting from mountain peaks with corridors of time. Echoes, the glassless mirrors recall the full moon. Hidden by the night rain, darkness talks coast to coast. Some say the Goddess listens when we pray. Some turn the other cheek to

something immobile as silence. On a ladder, the apple picker steps up a tree higher and higher without a basket, feeling her body's blood raging in conjunction with the apple-red sphere all over.

How to develop a variety of fruit in which the product itself doesn't loose its flavor, its magic smell? The gamble of growing new voices during a summer of itches and scratches and then, the cutting open, the drowning in it, the pleasure of biting, biting

gentle morning kisses catch fire, the honey flame licks each cell, next cell, a shell of hell burning, raging desire with one goal: answer! oh, please do come in,

folded, I and the names I give you, peaces instead of places. How many tears are shed making a river swell? Spread of a tide, driven from the mouth, upstream fog of spawn attracting bird-light?

The flight of fancy sets free association ignited by the finest essences rising through the nose, entering the bony cavern between the eyes as the single one engages the past

at night, striving for one mind with others. While sleepwalking, a knife cuts tree bark. Slow flow of resin- or blood? Morning, red rebirth, in a bowl of colors I gather flowering sponges for an under-water canvas

floating out to draw the dream with ink writing the morning mind re-enters the strangely lit scenes searching for clues to link the dialogue of two worlds: planets and moons

in between remembrance? Years ago, mauve was the rich ladies' choice; now it's mango, woven into black nights' starless hangers. In Tunisia, I looked back from our tourist bus: road dust dressed the long haired camels. I listened to their trumpets, step related, drummers' swirl,

circus life. The midget was paid to appear ridiculous so he thanked them profusely for the opportunity. To Knut, a flaming hand’s son, this was a readable mystery related to why the young man committed suicide.

Too early to get control over a new beginning? Is a physical body already chosen as the dancer in a mysterious choreography, determined to try out this one big almost unrelated leap, the leap into ignited air

newborn, nine months growing into her heart, seems such a stranger, yet a perfect stranger veiled in a dream history disappearing as the blood dries. Again this bright color on his hands and face.

Son of a calligrapher, playing the samisen, he joints a shame-faced monk setting up the framework for a meditation room, all bamboo, in the center: slightest touch, the fibers shaking, hours with the gong

carried off on the waves of sound, a ship’s hull and echo chamber, the mind enters the temple-cave glowing with the stored light of other voices and the electric ages of memory.

August a vision-quest to Zechariahs, my experienced guide leads me up the wide stairs, where we usually meet, to a high place. There sits a wizen old man, amused at my stumbling, laughing at my questions, but serious about the straightness of my spine.

Johann Sebastian Bach talked about sitting balanced on the organ bench so the spirits of music can operate both the feet and ten fingers at the same time; the bellows pumping his breath back into the pipes, their lips articulating b a c h

lines of musical score leap and lunge at the dyslexic child so eager to please, yet unseen, untested, a physical limitation draws a mark at the end of her nose, saying, "Cross it." and she does with memory.

North of San Francisco, where horses still like to rest on grassy hills, it is 3.1.1992, 4 pm. I listen to the BBC News on head phones, they announce there in London it is 3.2.1992, 11 am, Greenwich-time. News of tomorrow, and the weather? March noon

moves into her territory/terror story. Who owns the water? Whose eyes have the right to look? Where can I sit? How much sky is allowed for a lifetime? Davina Kosh says she has only a cupful and too soon it will be filled with earth.

Buena Vista, next exit. No return for eyes from fur-red coated foothills. We're pulled over toward a dust devil elevating flower pollen. Coast line, deepening in low light, faults and wrinkles.

Hidden by candlelight, her years less by ten alone in the dining room just one sleepy waiter, dishes with traces, the unspoken words already shared, agreed upon, written in stone wary, yet willingly the knife lay across the fork under the mountain of the crumpled napkin

of whom is it in trance? Whose imagination does stop in the dark or doesn't appear as best friend in the morning? Leap year, between my fingers, one more day. Sudden April rain, one step sideways, no rain

no man in his right mind would be knocked out with smackers. Breast size isn’t like getting a haircut it is surgery. It is all you need to sew up the winners. There is something awfully convenient you couldn’t fit into a bra. "Sure," says Tom, "and I am sick and tired of it."

"Waltz', she says, feeling the z on her tongue touching three of her teeth at once. "Waltz, the leaning back, the moving forward, exchanging breath, the air between us pregnant."

"I want her to be my partner every night." Thus charity hounds feasted on him right up to the very end, sealing out damaging environmental elements worn with pearls and lipstick. The shirt wakes you without the trouble with men. News about yeast infections keeps you in touch with nature.

"I'll do the rising, in bread. Honey, are you sweetening the dough?" "See the spume of waves on beaches? Foam-fungus, on the bubbles' dome, fish-eyed pictures."

Later, my hand shapes a white V reaching out for the ceramic cup. Milk drops are sliding down into the coffee, stopping twice or three times. First they swim like a question mark, then they disappear.

Shadows frozen to the branch of our lives waiting to see the fin in the sea Virginia Woolf saw finished without fear following her even when wind is fastened to the bottom of the page.

"Reindeer-miles, each step the hoofs imprint their letters. Time of a sheltered animal, feeding shutters, look at the dusty side open to a flock of sparrows."

"Rites of snow drifts: guilt shall shrink, measured on greater distance."

A curse of "cork and plaster"! The spider webs of two hundred year old figurines still dressed in Italian splendor to kneel before the naked child in the crèche.

As the violin maker knows, his hands are preparing a playground for the mystics. In the night of a wooden body lust is giving in, stringed.

In spring, passing vacation houses shuttered against the glare of dreams we return to our own wondering what we are thinking when we flowered walls out of the opalescence of our love.

February 15, 1992


UNDER A STAR: 
By Maria Steyn (Africa)
Karma Tenzing Wangchuk (Mexico)


 
news at seven
my ten year old draws . . .
another planet
   the little prince
   his rose wilting

 



Tanka of Toshiko Makino
translated by Eiko Yachimoto 


since the brief moment
our red subway was above,
overwhelming
s-a-k-u-r-a fills my senses
emitting pale light to me

akaki densha chijoo ni isshun ideshi nochi sakura wa miteri honoakari shite

 

the arch of roses
reflected symmetrically
in a small pool
there flickers my face
distorted

bara no aach sakashimani utsuru mizutamari watashi no kao ga yugamite itari

 

off the mailbox
that must be holding
a confession or two
beads of raindrops
in petal-trickle

kokuhaku no tegami mo aran posuto yori kaben no yona ame ga shitataru

 

not a row of
gorgeous paintings
but one at a corner
grabs and never let me leave -
the gloomy sea of the north

kareinaru kaiga narabishi ichiguni kuraki umi no e ware wo hanatazu

 

a truthful
dialogue starts after
the death -
I'm here nodding
to the monk's words

shishite nochi shin no taiwa ga hajimaruto soo no kotoba ni ubenaiitari

 

in the pitch darkness
of my heart
there exists poetry -
say, like a maple leaf
bright red with clarity

yami narishi waga kokoronizo uta ariki omoeba momiji saetaru aka no


 

   
   
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Deadline for the next issue is: May 1, 2002

  Poems Copyright © Designated Authors 2002.
Page Copyright©  Jane Reichhold 2002.

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