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COLLABORATIVE POETRY
SUMMER HEAT
Mike Montreuil
Micheline Beaudry
summer heat
children run
under the sprinkler
driving along the river
to the cormorants’ nest
birthday card –
I am near
my parents’ age
an echo from a far away train
he remembers those nights
leaves fall slowly
one by one
under an October moon
first snow on bare trees
the laughter of two lovers
marriage counselor –
two cold coffees
on the table
we talk in hushed tones
on the telephone
the house door
opens with the wind –
her voice from the past
on a varnished desk
he arranges his accounts
May day –
the iris that wasn’t there
yesterday
the cry of a tit bird
in the warmth of Spring
Haiga by Billie Dee & Terry O'Connor
TAN RENGA MIT ANGELIKA WIENERT UND INA MÜLLER-VELTEN
Gerd Börner
1.
Salzernte - salt harvest
der Bauer zeigt auf the farmer points
dunkle Wolken to dark clouds
Angelika Wienert
nichts als Leere only emptiness
auf dem Tuscheblatt on the drawing paper
Gerd Börner
2.
Prolog - prologue -
den Duft des Sommers the fragrance of summer
aus der Haut lesen read on the skin
Gerd Börner
der Vorhang schließt sich the curtain closes
vor dem letzten Ton with the last note
Ina Müller-Velten
ALTE KERBEN OLD NOTCHES
Claudia Brefeld
Martina Heinisch
Hünengräber – Megalithic tombs –
dem Raunen der Baumkronen listen to
lauschen whispering of the trees
schwarzer See black lake
der Mond späht ins Riet the moon peeks into the reeds
Hände verweilen hands pausing
auf dem Priesterstein – on the priest stone -
alte Kerben old notches
Flüsterböker – conjuring books –
unter Buchen under beeches
Kriemhilds Helm Kriemhilds Helmet blossoms
Im Loch des Hühnergottes in the hole of a hagstone
blauer Himmel blue sky
Pfarrscheune – parish barn –
Wizlaws Spuren following
folgen Wizlaw’s tracks
Wolfgang Beutke (haiku) and Anne-Dore Beutke (image).
UNBEMALTE HIMMEL UNPAINTED SKIES
Claudia Brefeld
Martina Heinisch
Weiße Stadt – White city –
Segel tasten sich sails feel the way
zum Horizont to the horizon
Eine Möwe steigt a seagull soaring
im unbemalten Himmel in the unpainted sky
Fährmann, hol über ferryman, set over
Die Kamera zeigt the camera shows
noch drei Bilder only three photos
Warten … waiting for…
Kraniche cranes
versammeln sich gather
Strelasund – Brückenseile Strelasund – bridge ropes
überspannen die Weite span the width
Mast- und Schotbruch! Always Smooth Winds from behind!
ein Zeesenboot berührt A Zeesen boat touches
die Morgensonne. the morning sun.
THE UNSPOKEN
Ramona Linke
Gabriele Reinhard
La Malagueña ...
the vibrations of his fingers
on the chords
standing ovations:
“The Third Man”
Marcel Proust –
Le temps retrouvé
loaned out
a heart of glass
between torn letters
her word
the dragon’s tattoo
in front of the inner eye
the unspoken
at the edge
of parting
IN BEWEGUNG ON THE MOVE
Gabriele Reinhard
Claudia Brefeld
wilder Mohn wild poppy
zum Klassentreffen for the class reunion
die 68-er Jeans the jeans of 68
ihre Joplin-Mähne her Joplin-hair
blond und gebändigt blond and tamed
Japan Japan
the Beautiful and Myself the Beautiful and Myself
als Originalausgabe as an original edition
Entrümpelung … clearing out …
der Lampion aus der WG the lampion of the living community
bleibt stays here
auf einer Harley mit Billy on the Harley with Billy
entlang Route 1 along Route 1
eng umschlungen tightly embraced
Räucherstäbchen hüllen incense sticks wrapping
den Mond ein the moon
NIGHT SKY
Jane Reichhold
Giselle Maya
10 o’clock
the night sky’s rosy glow
starting a new poem
words are feather dreams
they wing out of thin air
more magic
unripe tomatoes suddenly
reddening
a swim in a green river
warm and cold currents
over the hill
a friendly face is
the moon
gallivanting
with tai chi friends
a glass of champagne
Gershwin songs
bubble from the center
renewing their vows
fifty years disappear
goldfish
touch tails and fins
close to their friends
a feeling of loss
chest pains continue
letting go
can I learn to see her
just another being
everything in the clay studio
given to an artist-pal with hope
winter moon
cat and i snug
under the down puff
in the smoothness of snow
my mind empty of thought
a light rain
out of the compost
a salamander
the poet laureate calls
searching for an archaic word
on the salad
a sprinkle of basil
and nasturtiums
a new redhead wife
the spice of his life
in a photograph
the day the blossoms
fell to earth
voices in the dark street
lit by an old lantern
shoeless
wading down a river
water moccasin
digging up potatoes
we find a Roman shard
flower rimmed
and blossom-bright
path to the beach
the spring runs downhill
softly in the seventh month
on her hand
caressing her stomach
no wedding band
she greets him with a smile
everyone is watching
home again
the soldier-son blinks
back the tears
remember the sound
of rain on clay tiles
moonlight
a twinkle in the pond’s
dark waters
long pine road
uphill winding home
right foot sprained
resting and healing long
before asters unfold
with ten holes
my body the flute
sound races
to third eye
poised to open
nodes on bare branches
counting the days ‘til spring
return to Myoren-ji
the scent of pale winter
yamazakura
dawn brings a rosy glow
to the faces of the hikers
Started: June 22, 2009 Finished: July 13, 2009
BIRD WALK
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair
forgetting to lock the door she hurries back
riverside, all this glass on the stone seat
at a picnic table the backpacker types on her laptop
rusting to feather colour, steel moa sculpture
between spread toes of the moa, river gravel
created from a ploughshare a pied shag dries its wings
formation flying - oystercatchers on an arched pole
poking above rushes the ears of a sleeping Hereford
in the muddy stop bank horse's hoof prints
along the bird walk flax pods curved like beaks
across the river a tricolour flies from a flag pole
'Oyster Bay' - lapping against its hull wind driven waves
Haiga by Shanna Baldwin and Gillena Cox
A SPLASH OF GREEN
Paul Mercken
Alison Williams
Fokkina McDonnell
Paul (& Karen) Smith
young folk on the beach
their skin still plaster white
soaking up the sun
pm
a splash of green
overhanging cobblestones
ps
her smile
at an unexpected gift
snapdragon seeds
aw
two for one offer:
half strength coffee
fm
puddles full
of moonlight
all the way home
ps
visitors cheer
at the Orange Bowl
pm
* * * * *
venison
at La Giostra in Florence
by Hapsburg princes
pm
a new name embroidered
on the family tree
aw
through the park
on a tandem -
just friends
fm
thirty years on
they make the same vows
ps
church bells
drifting in and out
of sleep
aw
Chester amphitheatre
tourists at a fresh dig
fm
in the moonshine
searching
for the last peg
ps
midsummer night
the birds don't stop singing
pm
at Stonehenge
a druids' protest:
handcuffs are out
fm
news headlines
caught in a chain-link fence
aw
flags and flowers
veterans and dignitaries
liberation day
pm
murmurs of life
in the lambing shed
ps
* * * * *
out of nowhere
a butterfly
shapes the wind
ps
around the candle flame
a shimmering
aw
museum garden
mossy grass
the rotting coracle
fm
seized in the spotlight
the pirates surrender
pm
an angel
flies up inside
the snow globe
aw
charades
the film of the novel
fm
of all the gin joints
in all the towns in the world
she walks into mine
pm
flirting with the waiter
after he leaves
ps
the divorcee
browses through a book
of wallpaper samples
aw
that ticket machine
keeps rejecting his coins
fm
cool moon rays
reflected
in the mirror
pm
equinox
an extra apple tips the scale
aw
* * * * *
sudden gust
the flailing arms
of a headless scarecrow
aw
holding their bellies
the laughter therapy class
fw
attending a lecture
on Freud
without really knowing why
ps
surprised at seeing
someone he thought was dead
pm
in their hundreds:
daffodils and tulips
at the crematorium
fm
the chimney sweep comes early
wearing clean overalls
ps
GREENER STILL
Jane Reichhold
Giselle Maya
recycling
only after dinner
is the salad
garbage to be a meal
tossed to the ravens
snails take
bites out of the strawberries
there is
enough for all of us
if only we can share
paying more
for the organic veggies
the worm
certifies the label’s claim
that it is food fit to eat
to plant
one’s own food
a statement
no ingredients to question
you are what you eat
by the sea
a desert of fogs
survival
allows no romantic garden
water only for drinking
the spring
irrigates the garden
sometimes
I loose my way
among rows of snowpeas
the competition
at the local art show
who is greener
soy inks and recycled paper
or the plan of the concept artist
anemones
and bright-winged birds
over high meadows
more luminous by far
than lights of the city
damned
rivers slowed by concrete
falling
into high tension wires
toasters and computers
above the river
icicles drift in space
he rides the kayak
into silver-beaded letters
of mist and disappears
on tip-toes
trying to erase reality
a carbon footprint
follows me out back
to the recycle bin
watching
an old Kurosawa film
‘after the rain’
he enters the forest
she shows him his own face
I love you
sounds on his old lips
recycled
from a wedding ceremony
forty years ago
high and low
whenever I look for
a word
snow white like the peony
within a cradle greener still
cutting it out
of organic fabric scraps
the designer
makes a bag to replace
plastic sacks that never die
rising silently
white jade moon
over the crest
footprints on the earth
yours and mine
climate change
each life moves resources
in a compost pile
the biggest watermelon
with its will to live anywhere
sacerdotal green
loved by Renaissance painters
they revered
sky blue the deep color
of the Madonna’s robe
SPITS OF RAIN
Patricia Prime
Catherine Mair
on the tips of water reeds, spider's webs
thick as bees swallows swarm above wetlands
reflected in the lagoon a disused cow trough
in the distance the houseboat's balcony waits for summer
skimming the surface of the water, the stilt's mating ritual
a few spits of rain remind us we've a long walk home
on the rickety footbridge young cyclists make way for us
this last stretch a deceptive incline and a head wind
leading their owner a pair of rust-coloured dogs
I'm glad I went back to lock the house - he's home when we return
at the base of the gate post, a handful of pansies
stepping inside, the warmth of the woodburner
SOMEWHERE IN THIS VAST SEA
Ken Wanamaker
Kathy Earsman
Norman Darlington
a rope swing
dangles over a stream —
butterflies on board /kw
larksong cascades
around the stepping stones /ke
one more and yet
another for the tipsy
road ahead /nd
an obelisk in a clearing
gathers tribal nations /kw
winter Earth
turns silently above
the moon /ke
zeroing the length
of your longsword thrust /nd
a cuirass
next to the bed stand
Guinevere's slip /kw
merely the remnants
of a dream this shortest night /nd
sometimes hope
can be a mouthful
of candyfloss /ke
a child beholds the universe
in its clustered center /kw
from within without
our dahlia pouring
autumn sunset /nd
somewhere in this vast sea
one dugong finds a mate /ke
Notes:
cuirass : a breastplate worn by medieval knights candyfloss : cotton
candy dugong : an old world sea mammal, similar to a manatee
A Junicho renga composed online from May 5 to 31, 2009
NOTABLE UNLEASHED
October 2008
Werner Reichhold
Jane Reichhold
Act I
Scenery: Two artists leaving town and settling close to the Pacific Ocean. By now, both recognize they are residing on an island, viewing some ten thousand square miles of salty waters. October: A white heron takes off the kelp bed, geese fly south. Moles come out after the first winter rains drenched the soil. A season interviewing itself.
W:
Do we call this “an interview-based drama?” In which way would we see the work distinguished from other theatrical attempts?
J:
Though plays are always collaborations, not many are originally written by two people. Screen plays are often rewrites of others’ works, but in the beginning they are usually written by one person. Here, from day to day each of us has no idea where this work will go. We walk around with the completed play as separate parts inside the two of us.
W:
I would like to extract material surrounding the night of a fetus. The writing, the silent interview should appear as a celebration, resembling the reactions of a thermostat bonded to climatically caused changes. Here, in this case we are exploring the changes in the life of a woman during a 9 months period. We then try to disengage from the actual occurring “events in time and womb,” putting together a certain word-play.
J:
This fits into my life! Having just celebrated the Day of the Dead, I am ready for new life. My only fear is that one of our several sexually active twenty-something grandchildren will attempt to make my dream come true. So, how can I help you?
W:
During in interview I am verifying a special effect when indeed one of the partners obviously looks temporary absent
watching a ball
arriving close to the goal
she feels netted
Do the questions of an interviewer determine how to proceed talking to one another? Is a surprisingly appearing question a true engine and does this kind of a motor pulls a suspected audience into “a clock of words ticking?”
J:
As election day, the day when the people of the United States will be picking a president, and a vice president, and then all too soon new judges for the Supreme Court which will then reevaluate the present laws regarding abortion and the question of when does a person begin? With the desire of two persons to have sex? Or the act of collaboration? Or the second act already?
W:
a tongue moves
the sickle side of the moon
is aware of a bunny
J:
Imagine that in the Temple of Manifestation, there is a large crowd of the recent dead milling around under circles of huge TV screens. On each screen is another story being portrayed of a male and a female. The films are well-made, showing not only the complete outfit each is wearing but swirling around the characters, in visible images, are their family and its history. If you were here, which couple would you chose for your next parents?
W:
one powdered memo
in a letter signed and mailed
uninsured
by her perfumer’s laugh
and freckles
the arching toenail’s pink
a shaded air by bending over
his left eye guessing
the other not quite sure
and then the coupling ignorance
J:
a mild January
after a lifetime of storms
on this day
I await my birth
so many years ago
W:
radiance
the person that’ll turn the head
a silhouette
J:
at my birth
the face of my grandmother
mirrored
now in my old age
she has returned
W:
sleep-walking
reciprocal to a comet
around the dog house
J:
I came to earth
naked and unwanted
in the coldest month
I’ve learned the lessons
yet there have been fires
W:
snow-fragrance
quietly falling
into my empty pages
J:
wind still
as the breath
of my parents
eaten by their graves
the pulse of the planet
W:
the flags are the same
but the message depending
on both sailors
ACT II
Scenery: As in the planning of a good soup, various products are gathered into one specific place with a cutting board and a large kettle.
W:
My daughter reports that when she was on her way home planning dinner and driving on Black River Ave. in downtown Detroit, when her iPhone started ringing in the pocket of her pants. She read the number – left the connection sing and vibrating. She knew who was calling, and with slanted eyes her mind was composing a possible answer when suddenly
passing a red light
a cop stopped her “Lady?”
she rolled the window down
slightly in trance she whispered
“oh double you see”
(iPhone abbreviation “owc” = only with condom)
The cop, his lips sloped over grinding teeth, in doubt about the mental condition of the young woman and he himself a day before retirement, couldn’t help but give in and let her get away without a ticket.
Personally seen: did he act reliably according to a bigger concept?
J:
Ah, you are reminding me of a day in Ann Arbor, also in Michigan – which brings up the concept that you are accessing past information in the ether! – when I ran a red light (how right you are!) and crashed into a taxi cab. The front of the car was so damaged it had to be towed away, so the young (in this case) cop offered me a ride home. As we passed the parking lot of the stadium at the end of our street, he slowed, looked it over in the gathering gloom and turned to me and said, “Shall I tear up the ticket?”
W:
One book not written yet; a paper back, lots of graphs, $ 4, title: For Children Up To Fourteen Years (a must.)
J:
The Ugly Swan swims in the shallow end of the gene pool. And then one day. . .?
W:
a geisha paid
by the number of scent sticks
consumed
her every whim a star
in dark-eyed pillows squelched
J:
a madrigal
chanted by monks
yet I know
my life was made holy
by each of my mistakes
W:
she fingers a knot
behind the back
in her apron
J:
it is all I have
the humming wheel
clay-caked hands
the cups that will break
on my dying day
W:
a praying mantis
its green-legged step
on my garden gloves
J:
lazy
as if recovering
from an illness
the happiness of days
after my birthday
W:
silver-wrapped “kiss”-
on a one-way road we lick
chocolate & liquor to death
ACT III
Scenery: At twilight coming home to a suburban condominium – where everything in it is alive and somehow gives one the feeling as if unseen muscles are able to stretch the legs of a chair or curtains seem to move like dresses worn in a breeze. The unpolished wooden floor forces one to imagine walking on the epidermis of someone in love and ever present. The paintings on the wall carry with them the question of whose brush’s color made their occurrence so lastingly in disorder balanced.
W:
The North American woman in question carries with her a lineation back to Kenya. Grassland – the 5895 m high, always snow covered Kilimanjaro can barely be envisioned. Everything coming close to responding receptors appears as a climate related acuteness and all beings, amorphous or organic are in a learning process to take the situation as it is. Between dawn and dust, a naked rope hanging from a tree curls and uncurls rhythmically
half knot half wanted the fly in amber a humming down the neck
J:
That could explain why when computer-made glass beads flow through my fingers I am touching something very old in myself. The desire to other things with holes in them. . . Hm. . . This connects to the idea of stringing or combining the ‘holy things’ – to make a statement greater than any just one of them. Even the concept of networking. How a net becomes powerful in spite of its many holes?
W:
Noon: The single woman – now we realize her as for thirty years part of her foreign environment, models. Both, she and the Japanese artist seem to ignore if not to enjoy becoming prisoners held together only by pencil lines on a sheet of drawing paper. What we see is commonly called a study. But getting closer, let’s say to a touchable distance, the word study had disappeared. What’s left at hand can but not necessarily will be sold as art and therefore permits possible ownership.
J:
But is not ownership what we desire for each of our works? The ownership of others? To have someone else admire and desire something we have drawn out of ourselves – maybe even literally drawn about our selves – to take into their lives.
W:
Ownership of what? What kind of vibrations came into play so that those two people relating to each other materialized a drawing and helped it into its now new singular existence?
J:
Maybe you are right. What do buyers of art own? The emotions that led and directed the shaping of the art work have died within the artist, even if he or she is still living. That could account for the feeling one gets upon seeing one’s own artwork in someone else’s house – “what is that of me doing here?”
W:
The "me", the one I truly am, is trying to collaborate with someone else's desires. In the mirror of an artwork the artists are constantly studying their collisions. Over time, They are becoming both winners. Content, form, or colors seem to be sacrificed – so what is left?
J:
The highly personalized image as carried around the world in the mind of the viewer. Just think that of every single thing you have created as an artist, when it is seen by someone else, is copied or captured – taken as real – in that person’s mind. No matter where they go, or for how long they live, your artwork remains in their brain. Your artwork may disincarnate, be destroyed, or abandoned, but as long as person lives and breathes who has seen your art-piece, it lives in their brain. Think, if you can, of tracking the lives of your artwork in all these minds moving at all the different places on the globe. The one connection they all have is the fact that the image originated with you – out of your dream for a piece of art.
W:
For what kind of an undertaking is the audience asked regenerating a former process with someone's own way of getting jazzed by art?
J:
It is part of our miracle of life that we cannot look at anything without collaborating with it. The mere process of remembering a thing or an event is colored, changed, arranged by the viewer and his or her perspective, mood, inclination and a thousand other differences of feeling or judgment. Nothing is saved on a clean slate. We, no matter how inartistic we think of ourselves, are constantly recreating the artwork of others; even rewriting their poems in our memories. How can we determine which version of an idea persists beyond the memory of the living?
W:
Not often, there appears this scary but promising feeling of falling back into something not experienced before. It has the capacity to single out an area of risks if not disaster. One already imagines certain alarming shadows before visualizing a caravan loaded with uncertainties on a way to a well. You may become the well's visitor invited to stay for a night. Once arriving at this state of mind, what are the erotic and other stimuli you need to enter the hidden messages?
J:
black ink
surrounds the white
flowing from the wet point
held up by thick jointed fingers
the brush
moving in a march of heartbeats
skitters and skips into
a rock solid
moment
wind blows
a line of sheets
across the living room
attempts and failures together
brushing
idea against reality’s mask
curtains to hide behind
pictures to draw
madness
lacking
visitors or
friends stopping by for tea
the kettle brings the water for
a brush
to touch the solitude of soot
ground against a dark stone
day upon day
sketches
Graphic credits:
Act 1:
In this picture, Lucas Cranach and Hieronymus Bosch are collaborating with Nano-structures.
Act 2:
This collage is seen as collaboration between Salvador Dali, Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo Davinci’s fall of the folds.
Act 3:
This is a collaboration between Albrecht Dürer, Marc Chagall and Jim Dine, a liquid gas tanker
and an architectural perspective.
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