In celebration of the art of collaboration, I engaged members of the OWC community website to participate in a Haikai no renga. You might ask, “What is this?”
Haikai no renga became most familiar in the Edo period when more citizens and lay people began recognizing renga as an assessible art form. The 36 verse Kasen was popular with most and the use of humor and wit found its way under the new relaxed rules of Haikai. Haikai no renga means “comical linked poem”, though not all of them focused on that. The master of this style was the great Basho.
The best part of this whole idea is that the Haikai no renga is best done in a group that need not have be made up of only writers, but people of all ilks. The essense of renga is building a linked poem based on change and expanding the verses of others.
For fun, one of the members suggested that we dedicate the Haikai no renga to Jack Kerouac. I know good ol’ Jack gets overused sometimes, but it was something that spans our geographic existences. Beto Palaio, Lisa Winett, Scot Young, Jason Michel, and myself collaborated on this project. We would like to present to you:
Haikai No Renga (Kerouac)
Rode the F line down
Market with Micheline’s ghost
dreams of Mingus jazz
Chinatown alleys
city filled with strange faces
words and fried duck mix
Inside nursing my
last beer outside hookers wait
for the light to change
Too stiff to resist
falling unrestricted in
I forget your name
I laugh at the old
woman in the moist doorway
crying in madness
Quietly stable
tile floors hold my footsteps
I dodge a man’s fist
Shoes scuff on pavement
beats lingering in fallen
steps, hands in pockets
Lost in a haiku
night with out a syllable
of light to my name
I’m already gone
corner behind a corner
inside yellow cab
Night moves, arm outside
window catching stars in mind,
backseat full of dreams
The house felt colder
she bit down and squeezed his hand
he took a deep breath
Delight in taboo
a short walk to peyote
cactus clairvoyance
Distant oasis
bluer than lapis rings on
his lover’s white hand
Meditate on words
astral projections awake
at the sound of birds
Under the Milk Way
waves of mosquitoes swarm low
just near Lake Tahoe
Hushed on the dark road
coveting a Ford Pinto
waiting as deer cross
Dream sequence of past
lovers crack in the desert
sun, buzzards wait
Mexico City
car roof top, sun warmed flesh, two
worlds peel in darkness
Quetzalcoatl sings
mother-of-pearl amulets
a woven Mojo
A nearly empty
table, some thin rows of books
fifty cents on ground
A tree’s silhouette
naked against the winter’s sky
A brutal negative
I believe loons mate
for life as the eerie night
yodel calls your name
A trout breaks stillness
starts the ripple pattern to
end on polished rocks
Behind the pace I
cradle the tornado wind
rippling the lake
Mudra hands rest easy
knees burn in the bending, an
emptiness complete
It looks like Japan
pilgrimage long to Great Rocks
heirloom pinks around
Roar of waterfall
a floating trunk passes by
under sunny day
Pressed pages of sun
one collection, songs in beat
fading in distance
The perfect sunrise
is hard to hold like tail lights
over the last hill
Passing through Duluth
I see Bobby fishing from
Desolation Row
Wait for fading light
to kiss the soft of angel
wings warmed by the day
Asphalt trembling
under a terrible sun
walking Route 66
He speaks in meter
sun lifts from vibrating chords
breaks night with few words
Said come to the light
Hollywood bullshit no light
tunnel ends darkness
Light underground blinked
on and off onaoff on
off un the derground
Eyes open to flash
es of white, mind adjusts to
visions once again
Wonderful! I loved them!
Thanks for posting this, Aleathia.
Great stuff! True, you say that Kerouac is often over-involked, but he’s got a mystique that leds itself so well to so much. He’s like the silly putty of writing.
Well done, guys. And thanks for posting this to share Aleathia.
Hank’s gone to the track
placin a bet and gettin
stoned, laid n’ fan mail
Thanks for the post, good un.