LYNX XXIV:1 February, 2009


Table of Contents XXIV:1, February, 2009		LYNX A Journal for Linking Poets



		YEAR OF THE OX Linda Papanicolaou, US (Linda) Kathy Earsman, AU (Kathy) Moira Richards , ZA(Moi) Lynne Reese, UK (Lynne) Denis Holmes, US (Chibi) champagne glass in the kitchen sink – Year of the Ox Linda dong dong dong warm scents trail the bell Kathy cherry blossom waves from street to street it's a petal pink-out Moi the blush that lingers after his touch Lynne summer moon two eyes peer through the screen door Chibi graves of the stars on a Hollywood tour Linda so many ice floes and so few polar bears Kathy so little grain so many cars to feed Moi we wipe our plates and wipe away our tears Lynne the insightful placement of the last go stone Chibi in tall dry grass the archaeologist sifts arrowheads Linda from these chrysali a thousand butterflies! Moi Renku board at HaikuHut, December, 23 2008-Jan 1, 2009. It was directed by Chibi (Denis Holmes). Haiga by Maya Lyubenova and Colin Stewart Jones SHE TREADS LIGHTLY Frank Williams Vanessa Proctor Dick Pettit two days on… leaves on the pavement have changed to filigree FW paint peels off the verandah rails VP misty moon a girl goes up the steps to a lighted room DP is there a secret code in this ancient text? FW *** the papermaker smoothes his washi onto drying boards VP True Love is distributed every second Tuesday DP after the wedding the groom goes missing for an hour or two FW in the station waiting room the tick tick of the old clock VP effortless! a skylark haunts the crags along and back DP stunning views distract us from our picnic spread FW * in the pile of blood oranges one grapefruit VP the scrum half seized and thrown up in the line-out DP row after row of war graves stretch into the distance FW frosty breaths mingle as arms link on the common VP pub lights welcome the frozen group out of clear moonlight DP trickling into the dusk the church choir’s song FW * mum shakes out the heirloom robe this christening morning VP no-one has given a name to the orphaned lamb DP on her first date she treads lightly over jacaranda blossom VP my yellow duffel coat keeps off the April wind DP Composed via email Started: 17 November 2008 Finished: 2 December 2008 DEEP-BLACK FRAMED Silva Ley Jacques Verhoeven mirrors of a hundred years writing around the image from faces to abstractions an aquarium for shapes lines of glue along transparent floors type settings tumble old plague house -smell faded away in lead dust books lie open collections behind glass inventions in time thousand things together the on-looker gives sense a cry for attention valuables are polished eyes fill with tears behind window bars, the town silent as an illiterate ^^^^ finger locomotion the leap from animal to man the spot above our left ear up to a new fashion cocks crow victory voices and public to drink art eagerly in all the signals read lured to the miracle room a thunder of embracing pass on the message: no hierarchy here no law but clarity no search for secrecy no grope for the mystic flash in the middle of the hall as the diva of the Opera a Harley Davidson shops with neon texts don't leave with empty hands ^^^^ letters, funny figures to stick onto walls in the children's room snake trees twist and turn waving aa, bee, cee, dee household articles in Martin Parr's collecting room a case full of watches an orderly caboodle the rose-red traveler came the borders shove to log - poster - picture emotions break down metal frames fall apart the command of laughers slow scratch of the pen vague flat-screens move danger area al life's signatures watch with all your senses. Written in the National Graphic Design Museum, Breda NL 01 - 10 - 2008 Recently the ancient building, a mediaeval plague hospital, was partly renewed and re- opened by our Queen Beatrix. Because of the 'week of Breda Photo' two rooms showed work of Photographer Martin Parr, known all over the world. HAIKU IN TRANSLATION Volker Friebel – German Jane Reichhold – English Eine Buchecker tiefer treten, in den Schotter des Waldwegs. a beechnut stompt deeper into the gravel the forest path Niesel in die Karre des Straßenkehrers. Der Klang seiner Schaufel. drizzle in the cart the sound of the road sweeper’s shovel Den Schlitten zieht die Mutter, der Junge steht, staunt in das Funkeln. pulled by a mother the boy stands marveling at the sled’s sparkle Verschneite Weite. Den Weg zeigt der Bach. the path in the snowy distance a stream TRAVELLERS' TALES Dick Pettit – Denmark Paul Merken – Holland Francis Attard – Malta Term begins travellers & their tales return the wide world over Dick (autumn) please accept these humble gifts turmeric and liquorices Paul (autumn) one-year old's babble makes of grandpa's giant panda a welcome guest Francis (non-season) jar jef I say - the native corrects me: that's thank you in Wolof* PM (n-s) the cry of a fox icy moon at nightfall FA (Wi Mn) singing all the way home in patches of steaming breath DP (Wi) what is going on behind the imposing fan of the royal palm? PM (ns) gambling debts press, he begs for the price of a loaf FA (ns) summer evening on a bus station bench throwing crumbs to pigeons DP (su) kite rides a cool current paper wings beat the air FA (su) his hand on mine my heart turns soft, hugged by the Beaujolais PM (love) I feel his guidance heavy his presence a constraint DP (love) bitten once too often the cigar between the sculptor's teeth FA (ns) a fire in the pile of sheaves stacked for the harvest service DP(au) dragon dances at the Mooncake Festival and floating lanterns PM(au mn) last days of autumn, cries of insects its requiem FA(au) starry skies back in the village nothing but skeletons PM(ns) on the terraced mud beds a few dry stalks DP(ns) black coffee & the least denomination coin for a tip FA(ns) hot-pants and miniskirts define Spanish spring collection PM(sp) lambs play and run back to mother orange blossom DP(SpBl hoist the Blue Peter the carnival is over PM (ns) * Wolof: a language of Senegal & The Gambia TRACKLESS SHADOWS Andre Surridge *Owen Bullock* catching his bald head silver light a full moon shines through the tops of trees the clouds a deep grey tonight but they don’t perturb my new found ordinariness homeward through the park listening for the owl he saw last week learning to be silent with no opinion it’s like being in a cage with no walls tiptoeing along the hallway the dog gives me away with a loud bark sadness comes in many guises this was the night one that creeps up unawares sitting on the stairs a little girl with big eyes like her mother clutches a teddy “waiting for a story, grandpa” there are so many that clamber at the edge of your mind this is how I see it this is how I see it taking her hand slowly we ascend hushed voices in the half-light these trackless shadows and tomorrow is the day I grow less anxious about my children before the story ends she falls asleep I pull up the duvet kiss her golden head something in her step that speaks purpose it doesn’t matter what her hair or clothes are doing this dream with no boundaries the cast and outcome uncertain even when it’s over we go on to other lists of things to do the ones we must tick off to die peacefully a new day brings fresh prospects despite grey skies . . . a heart warming smile the touch of your hand incalculable the possibilities one side of the world or the phone rings my mother's voice twelve thousand miles away the line so clear she could be here in the garden something that connects this growth with that growth this green with that green such a fleeting thing this life is it any wonder we’re so fascinated with butterflies there’s a kind of music when I drop the pebbles into the stream and they make their way to the bottom swimming slowly against the current a small fish thinks I’m throwing food I wish I knew its name drowning like a particle slipping out of shape the moments I yet survive taking a deeper breath and thinking is this at the other end of the spectrum from a sigh cold days are the best tucked up inside I do the little work I can do hands wrapped around my coffee cup I study today’s emails for something uplifting a question came asking what kind of wind it is that blows – a day later I still haven’t answered I put on my coat and scarf go for a walk by the waterfront to clear out the cobwebs last night you said the cool air cleansed us we talked about the family you, my youngest, now an adult winter sunshine how lucky we are to be here right now living on an island without the weight of war stronger thoughts than passive aggressive: “I want to do this” the colonel stops arguing the friend backs off has the world every really been at peace someone fighting somewhere since that distant Fall I pick up old letters and try to sort them but in my heart they all need to go you have to do what you feel is right . . . when the power fails someone has to brave the dark to find a candle how little it takes to be happy, as Nietzsche said – I see dark clouds, bright sun the tips of leaves lit up even in winter buds are thickening on the cherry tree thoughts of hope of little blessings that grow time for goodbye there will be tears and later there’ll be laughter as life begins again Haiga by Jerry Dreessen and Mark Smith LOVERS Mariusz Ogryzko Jacek Margolak an evening cocktail frozen strawberry wet in her fingers moonlit garden only a scent of his perfume touching her breast uncovered full moon the flock of crows darker than the dusk between two hills pair in love Buddha on the table... smiles cherry blossoms - the empty mat of a mendicant monk November 2008 CREATING OUR WORLD Mariusz Ogryzko Jacek Margolak end of November Santa Claus in my mail box promotes TV sets the gust of wind – cartoon Spiderman moves fight in Bombay my son removes the dust from 'Superman' comics home again my garden gnome among the newspapers looking for Christmas lights an old plastic Jack O' Lantern after the 'Clone Wars' my brother counts the stars December 2008 ROAR Werner Reichhold as LEATHER Jane Reichhold as BANDANA Act I Scene: Oakland, when it still had its oak trees. Even then there were roads carving paths where cows once ambled. LEATHER: my 1.6 liter two-cycle engine gas baby-feeding its mileage then the burst of a tire and the interior angle hit Look, the seat behind me isn’t vacant, it’s yours, in case. You may share the danger. What other cycles would you like to part with? BANDANA: The noise of heat. Even in the shade noise and heat snuggle up together. It is too hot to think or to want to feel. LEATHER: What does the tree experiences when we suck up its juice giving the tires of our trip a more gluey profile passing through tight curves? BANDANA: Did you realize that trees are actually nourished by C02? As you drive your bike by they see your exhaust puffing out great clouds of warm, salty broth. No wonder their roots spread out, reach out, and crawl toward the pavement. LEATHER: What’s the speed of darkness when we roar away from those marks the brakes left on asphalt? BANDANA: Exactly in a ratio of 1:1 in the reverse of light. However it always feels as if darkness is fatter, larger, and more dense than light. Therefore it is the miracle of the universe that in spite of its size and weight, darkness can move at the same speed of light – so they say. LEATHER: I can hear my comrade’s “Dude” when at a sudden start I push the gas and the front wheel of my Dukati rises up. Why just then a pick-up lady-driver’s mouth next to me switches from a soft smile to an open-mouth gesture? BANDANA: Hmmm. Shall I let the metaphor tempt me to kiss the tire – the rubber one? LEATHER: Leather, a second skin? How tough, why mostly black and why brown leather doesn’t do the job, implies the wrong connotations? Black: that’s the color of true light wants for desert – chocolate ice cream, ice scream? BANDANA: Interesting that your two favorite things come from cows. Mother milk and all of those implications. while driving the gods and powerful do not need you ill luck gathers and crosses its toes into New Mexico as the heavenly first light breaths me I wake to the mother-of-pearl buttons jailing the last of the sun this emptiness you now hold to your ear as a shout saying, "Hello, ah, Hello there Honey" no place to flee when it appears nothing is happening languages undress a relic of St. Rita's thorn as chickens scratch in the dust outlines of time and space against the Holy Spirit sees one in a giant wheelchair, diapered, dreaming and funny did you know how the living fight over the dearly departed? from a distance my mother watches us - everyone hated her as a three-legged toad hiking the woods of California a scene to be acted - shielded the bronze glint of a knife clothes disappearing in the faith incense of veiny stream in calico as if going to a dance so moth-like they never found a homeland LEATHER: Seems we watch a chrome-glossy-chronology of relations when my dream meets the release of others sparkling. The ignition of an engine – the noise of a genetic lottery at work, in progress? BANDANA: Freud is rolling over in his grave and for that reason, refusing to reinCARnate. LEATHER: The ‘slow-speed-contest winners’ laughter – then the ‘operational calm’ before the high-impact-season’s salty air at ebb tide on a September shore line at Point Arena, California. Well, it is fall, we may not undress. Anyway, the ‘aurora antenna’ to the Far North is set - see the skin-like interchanges between the reds and violets where there is only one sky possible, the one you build behind your eyes? BANDANA: An English major on a bike? And you are inviting me to go with you to the “Beat the Heat” rally? LEATHER: What part of ‘no dear’ you prefer not to understand when we enter the deaf-made-pleasure zone at the end of a tunnel where the smell of C02 needs your hand-knitted oxygen-mask, the kind you like interwoven with African beads, pearls and shell-splinters? BANDANA: Ah the joy of a double negative lets me get out of this heat. I love how you love me with your words. LEATHER: Dependency: The word you would like to ignore when the price of gas rises. “Green fuel from kelp,” you whisper, “is a Harley without a howl like a lioness’ captivity in a zoo?" Act II Scene: The wharf in Point Arena. Behind the pier jutting into the rocky bay is a long building with restaurants and gifts shops. Balancing this is the emptiness of the huge parking lot – big enough for boats and trailers and a party. BANDANA: Wow! Look at those hogs! When does a toy stop being a luxury and becomes a necessity? LEATHER: Well, just try to run away from a too holy held house-hold-position. Real amazons wipe out their heavenly bank accounts shop shop Mercury the girl's best friend BANDANA: We look so old-fashioned in leather! When can I get one of those nylon motor-cross outfits with pink puffs and star-bursts? LEATHER: It's common sense to play with five or more credit cards, joggle three kinds of dope and consult smiling doctors twice a week I phone you nurse the stem cell twins BANDANA: (sitting on a rock and staring into the distance) That’s why they call her the Great Mother. She pulls women’s souls out of their bodies and takes them home with her. And swimmers? Do they come back out of the water as slightly different people? LEATHER: There is a salty low tide smell in the air. GM (Great Mother) shows up remodeled. Boy, do we like it! Swimmers may get neptunized. Watch the motor bikers: they fray out with fringed shawls, it looks like seaweed blowing with the wind. BANDANA: It is so deliciously cool here in the fog. Why are all those people wrapped in sweaters and coats? LEATHER: I am stuttering - may I confess what I just learned? Those guys you see are back from a boat trip, diving and harpooning for swordfish some five miles out from the California coastline. They met a 120 yard long submarine. Right, they came home as slightly different persons, chilled. BANDANA: And gloves. The hand of the leather giant? LEATHER: glove-love as Virginia Woolf wrote "I the nymph of the fountain always wet" BANDANA: When you give me your hand I will follow you. But as a modern woman, when I swing my leg over the seat of your cycle, I become something absolutely new. Have you noticed? LEATHER: Yes dear. Listening through head phones to a follower behind us who is working for 'DOLCE & GABANA', he said "get dressed anew you'll be feeling anew. It's the extra fold leather creates between the legs." BANDANA: If riding motorcycles is like dancing, then who is leading? LEATHER: Right after the start mostly I with my sense of molten asphalt and indefinable ambitions. Then you click in contemplating the ride, calculating the dance as a gift for the two of us. Out after sunset you are making the most illuminating swings. BANDANA: If I could sing this song to you in the night, where would it take you? A little like the metaphor that mashes potatoes really a stream, really a trickle, slice of kindling or fat start of a load of cedar whose door-stopping growth I could hear over the hill there are dancing lights of it, (They have not even pickled it, yet.) which is why we're a little embarrassed ashamed even when my face stares back down a birch lane yellowing to autumn death that strips October bare of the trees in which it was born and relies entirely on absence. LEATHER: The minnows swarm drawn South in love a seat to the North Act III Scene: The cycle rally is over and everyone mounts a bike to go on their way. LEATHER: Entirely the provenience and the privilege of an automatic cooling system occurring as an overheated rapture of benignity the experienced logger stops the chain saw’s well oiled cut on the weekend his bike and he himself leans at a pub now fish and now chips phrasing their own satisfaction the bubbling beer remembers a yellow corn field News lingering over New York’s fluctuating stock market the win-win senses widening the loose-loose knowledge deregulated the foot still on the break touch and go gassed BANDANA: I am always amazed, when I go back home, that the rest of the world has continued on its own way even when I am gone. Somehow I have the feeling that when I leave a place, the electricity should be unplugged and everything remain as still as a photograph until my life comes back into it to give it energy again. I suppose some could accuse me of being ego-centric or maybe I am too touched by being accused? LEATHER: here is the lonely tree bark and a cycle’s wreck attached by accident traveler is there much left in the pipes amusing the nurse a real lover a stethoscope plus butterfly her necklace Sunday left helpless my doctor is out fishing for the hungry eel in his lungs the six-geared song of the exhaust fumes’ particles Monday why is the quarter moon’s yellow coming down appealing? BANANA: Probably for the same reason we feel that having a doctor available means a physical problem is being taken care of. While alone with an injury, we cannot help but feel that if we just got a doctor to look at it, improvement would be on its way. In the same way that the yellowing of the setting moon in no way changes the moon, also having a doctor taking notice of a wound or physical condition does not change the actual trauma area but does make the injured and the caretaker feel vastly different. This makes me wonder what I want the last thought to be before I cross the threshold of death. . . Your thought? LEATHER: The thought too great so a harp’s Lied takes over vibrations captivity what a delight holding the iPhone lower honey the condition in a dormitory sweetly guided noses firmest wave-mechanics select one dream not to end in bed ritual the cry of a loon moving my hat’s feather a laughter clean drinking water and your dew-wet shell-like mouth to lick DINC – double income no child – the engagement ring to shove taken afar than barely let go the ocean’s kelp proliferation mid day by a butterfly’s wing-wind her hair begins to curl our engine rattling along with olive oil we used to cock with by bits & starts is chain-mail trendy or a web-search stickier ritual the jogger breathless cramps helped against a tree so home-loaned so hit by a 2:4 recession into depression attended by a drunken party a nuclear submarine diving up why do my jaws move too when a camel kisses Buddha’s finger a straw shadow parts the white mane on top of my ice coffee ritual the wet land’s brown alligator turns its belly to the sun BANDANA: Ah, the perfect way to beat the heat! without a stick. . . LEATHER: lifted Libra lilting level-headed liaison
	YEAR OF THE OX Linda Papanicolaou, US (Linda) Kathy Earsman, AU (Kathy) Moira Richards , ZA (Moi) Lynne Reese, UK (Lynne) Denis Holmes, US (Chibi) Haiga by Maya Lyubenova and Colin Stewart Jones SHE TREADS LIGHTLY Frank Williams Vanessa Proctor Dick Pettit DEEP-BLACK FRAMED Silva Ley Jacques Verhoeven HAIKU IN TRANSLATION Volker Friebel – German Jane Reichhold – English TRAVELLERS' TALES Dick Pettit – Denmark Paul Merken – Holland Francis Attard – Malta TRACKLESS SHADOWS Andre Surridge *Owen Bullock* Haiga by Jerry Dreessen and Mark Smith LOVERS Mariusz Ogryzko Jacek Margolak CREATING OUR WORLD Mariusz Ogryzko Jacek Margolak ROAR Werner Reichhold as LEATHER Jane Reichhold as BANDANA



	Back issues of Lynx: XV:2 June, 2000 XV:3 October, 2000 XVI:1 Feb. 2001 XVI:2 June, 2001 XVI:3 October, 2001 XVII:1 February, 2002 XVII:2 June, 2002 XVII:3 October, 2002 XVIII:1 February, 2003 XVIII:2 June, 2003 XVIII:3, October, 2003 XIX:1 February, 2004 XIX:2 June, 2004 XIX:3 October, 2004 XX:1,February, 2005 XX:2 June, 2005 XX:3 October, 2005 XXI:1February, 2006 XXI:2, June, 2006 XXI:3,October, 2006 XXII:1 January, 2007 XXII:2 June, 2007 XXII:3 October, 2007 XXIII:1 January, 2008 XXIII:2 June, 2008 XXIII:3, October, 2008 Submit your works to Lynx Who We Are	*Next Lynx* is scheduled for June, 2009 .** Deadline for submission of work is May 1, 2009.