The Free Renbun Thread ***READ RULES**

[Hansha Teki]

Gulls wheel over head and trail the wake of the boat, swooping in to snatchs bits of gristle and offal from the air as I flick them to starboard, I finish one tuna and throw the carcass—weighty head and the empty, exposed spine wobbling through the air—and the gulls dive toward it en masse. The smell of diesel exhaust and sea air mix with the iron tang of viscera as I put the next fish up to the cutting board and line the edge of the slender knife behind the pectoral fin for the first slice.

late examen—
Ishmael's narrative
cuts to the quick

[Ray Caligiuri]

Hansha, no excuse for being so good!

[Clayton Beach]

late examen—
Ishmael's narrative
cuts to the quick

David Allen Coe’s “you never even called me by my name” belts from the stereo as the old brown Ford barrels down a west Texas country backroad. The stick shift is between my legs and I have to move my skinny knees every time my uncle shifts to avoid it rapping painfully against a funny bone. He smells of concrete, alcohol and sour sweat, and he occasionally stops singing to take a swig from the can of Coors Light propped up against the crotch of his faded Levi’s.

[Ray Caligiuri]

David Allen Coe’s “you never even called me by my name” belts from the stereo as the old brown Ford barrels down a west Texas country backroad. The stick shift is between my legs and I have to move my skinny knees every time my uncle shifts to avoid it rapping painfully against a funny bone. He smells of concrete, alcohol and sour sweat, and he occasionally stops singing to take a swig from the can of Coors Light propped up against the crotch of his faded Levi’s.

evensong
the calf bleats
for her mother

[Dave Read]

evensong
the calf bleats
for her mother

On a tour of the petting zoo, I notice rectangular bales of hay stacked into a small hill behind the barn. While they are familiar to me from previous drives through the prairie, I’d never had the chance to see them up close. I sneak away from the group. Surprised by how hard the bales are, and by how itchy I begin to feel, I nonetheless climb to the top. With a longer view across the plains than I ever imagined having, I remain on my perch: ignore the increasingly panicked calls of my Mom.

[Hansha Teki]

On a tour of the petting zoo, I notice rectangular bales of hay stacked into a small hill behind the barn. While they are familiar to me from previous drives through the prairie, I’d never had the chance to see them up close. I sneak away from the group. Surprised by how hard the bales are, and by how itchy I begin to feel, I nonetheless climb to the top. With a longer view across the plains than I ever imagined having, I remain on my perch: ignore the increasingly panicked calls of my Mom.

a young lad
with out-stretched arms
is the skylark's song

[Dave Read]

a young lad
with out-stretched arms
is the skylark’s song

In the front pew I sit awaiting my parents. Before me is a huge old cross to which a wooden Jesus is nailed. I examine His outstretched arms, the way His head hangs down. My atheist uncle once told me, smugly, that death on a cross comes through asphyxiation. There’s no way, he argued, that Jesus could have called “Why has Thou foresaken me?” while choking to His death.

The Pastor’s hand on my shoulder startles me. He meets my eye, then looks up to that same cross. “What’s amazing,” he says while pointing with his Bible, “is that everything inside this Book is true.”

My parents arrive as the service begins. As much as I try to pay attention, I get distracted when the Pastor clears his throat.

[Dave Read]

Thank you very much Susan!

[Hansha Teki]

In the front pew I sit awaiting my parents. Before me is a huge old cross to which a wooden Jesus is nailed. I examine His outstretched arms, the way His head hangs down. My atheist uncle once told me, smugly, that death on a cross comes through asphyxiation. There’s no way, he argued, that Jesus could have called “Why has Thou foresaken me?” while choking to His death.

The Pastor’s hand on my shoulder startles me. He meets my eye, then looks up to that same cross. “What’s amazing,” he says while pointing with his Bible, “is that everything inside this Book is true.”

My parents arrive as the service begins. As much as I try to pay attention, I get distracted when the Pastor clears his throat.

a tui plays
one voicebox against
its other

[Hansha Teki]

"Tui have complex variety of songs and calls, much like parrots. They also resemble parrots in their ability to clearly imitate human speech, and were trained by Māori to replicate complex speech. Tui are also known for their noisy, unusual call, different for each individual, that combine bellbird-like notes with clicks, cackles, timber-like creaks and groans, and wheezing sounds. Songbirds have two voice boxes (syrinxes) and this is what enables them to perform such a myriad of vocalisations. Tui song also exhibits geographical, microgeographic, seasonal, sex and individual variation.

Some of the wide range of tui sounds are beyond the human register. Watching a tui sing, one can observe gaps in the sound when the beak is agape and throat tufts throbbing. However, ongoing research has so far failed to detect ultrasound within tui vocalisations. Tui will also sing at night, especially around the full moon period."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tui_(bird)

[Dave Read]

a tui plays
one voicebox against
its other

He wanders through the woods with a hammock but can’t find two trees the right distance apart to hang it. Every pair yields unsatisfactory results. The trees are either too close together (leaving the hammock to sag to the ground), too far apart (stretching it past a comfortable length), too thick at the base to complete a knot, or too thin and weak to hold his weight.

It’s a forest for chrissakes, he thinks. How hard can this be?

Frustrated and weary of the effort, he rolls his hammock into a pillow-sized ball — lies down on a bed of leaves.

[Clayton Beach]

He wanders through the woods with a hammock but can’t find two trees the right distance apart to hang it. Every pair yields unsatisfactory results. The trees are either too close together (leaving the hammock to sag to the ground), too far apart (stretching it past a comfortable length), too thick at the base to complete a knot, or too thin and weak to hold his weight.

It’s a forest for chrissakes, he thinks. How hard can this be?

Frustrated and weary of the effort, he rolls his hammock into a pillow-sized ball — lies down on a bed of leaves.

lunar halo—
even the cry of a wolf
has substance

[Hansha Teki]

lunar halo—
even the cry of a wolf
has substance

It seems only yesterday that all seemed so right with the world but there were signs of a gathering disturbance to the balance that we all had taken for granted. Unnamed anxieties crept out from the shadows as darkness fell.

[Ray Caligiuri]

It seems only yesterday that all seemed so right with the world but there were signs of a gathering disturbance to the balance that we all had taken for granted. Unnamed anxieties crept out from the shadows as darkness fell.

another unmarked grave
pissed off
into the wind

[Clayton Beach]

another unmarked grave
pissed off
into the wind

Staggering away from the wall and through the bushes the vagrant passes a roadside memorial with plastic flowers and a teddy bear that has started to look a little worse for wear. He darts between the cars that are lined up to enter the busy parking lot of the mall, some with little reindeer antlers on the roof and Rudolph noses glued on their grills. On the other side his companions are warming their hands at a 50 gallon drum filled with roaring flame. A few large, wet snowflakes begin to splatter on the asphalt.

[Hansha Teki]

Staggering away from the wall and through the bushes the vagrant passes a roadside memorial with plastic flowers and a teddy bear that has started to look a little worse for wear. He darts between the cars that are lined up to enter the busy parking lot of the mall, some with little reindeer antlers on the roof and Rudolph noses glued on their grills. On the other side his companions are warming their hands at a 50 gallon drum filled with roaring flame. A few large, wet snowflakes begin to splatter on the asphalt.

soul swoon, slow swoon
upon all the living
and the dead

(after James Joyce)

[Clayton Beach]

I love this ku, excellent!

[Clayton Beach]

soul swoon, slow swoon
upon all the living
and the dead

It all seems to be unfurling in slow motion, a carnival grotesquery with the atmosphere of reality television, a machine running by rote, inexorably leading to another farcically pointless but deadly serious conflict. Amid ballistic missiles fly cavalier tweets about erasing some of the jewels of human culture from the face of the earth. Soon enough people in a square in Tehran will be burning American flags while someone in Montgomery douses the Koran in gasoline. Will the Pink Mosque survive this current spasm of xenophobic bluster and the world's most deadly arsenal being steered by naught but authoritarian petulance?

What would Hafiz say in the face of the unholy madness that drives this material world, not to ecstasy, but extinction? I know he would find a way to urge us to come and play, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Long ago, in Shiraz, he wrote a poem about two bears. The last half goes something like this:
.

The one bear said
"Did you hear about Rustam?
He has become famous
And travels from city to city
In a golden cage;

He performs to hundreds of people
Who laugh and applaud
His Carnival Stunts."

The other bear thought for
A few seconds

Then started
Weeping."

trans. Daniel Ladinsky

[Hansha Teki]

It all seems to be unfurling in slow motion, a carnival grotesquery with the atmosphere of reality television, a machine running by rote, inexorably leading to another farcically pointless but deadly serious conflict. Amid ballistic missiles fly cavalier tweets about erasing some of the jewels of human culture from the face of the earth. Soon enough people in a square in Tehran will be burning American flags while someone in Montgomery douses the Koran in gasoline. Will the Pink Mosque survive this current spasm of xenophobic bluster and the world's most deadly arsenal being steered by naught but authoritarian petulance?

What would Hafiz say in the face of the unholy madness that drives this material world, not to ecstasy, but extinction? I know he would find a way to urge us to come and play, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Long ago, in Shiraz, he wrote a poem about two bears. The last half goes something like this:
.
The one bear said
"Did you hear about Rustam?
He has become famous
And travels from city to city
In a golden cage;

He performs to hundreds of people
Who laugh and applaud
His Carnival Stunts."

The other bear thought for
A few seconds

Then started
Weeping."

trans. Daniel Ladinsky

atop a pin
a whirling butterfly
ends its dance