Rules for Travel Kasen

We've already established that our new Kasen will focus on Travel. Here are other possible ideas:

1) No mention of actual modes of transportation (no cars, buses, planes, rollerblades, etc.)
2) Every 3rd verse should reference/allude to/name some point of origin or destination (whether physical, geographical, psychological, imaginary, emotional, or other)

Any other rules that we should consider?

Completed Kasen: Idolatrous Art

A sketch from your window
six syllables, page to screen--
let's be each other's guest

Strands of that elegiac grace
we never possessed

A whole rain of signs
falls and by morning--sunshine
avoid such places

The man had been hanging
friends thought he was doing an art piece
and other poems

Reimagined, the world expands
language is not something static

Just waiting for
my power to be recognized--
lighten our darkness

One word, whose word, could be said
perhaps blend of "fray" and "fazzle"

One comes to language
from afar, the ear ponders,
swishes into town

Try it, or better, try a ladder--
rise in the present

Those rungs are unsafe
that tongue that was used
altered at an end

You will have no companion
but the heap of your words

Warm hands at never
extinguished fires of scholar-
ship, blazing

Feast on the leaves
of trampled sentences

Finally I have succeeded
in telling the truth. Whatever...
better than the past

What good does it do to bombard
chaos? The loss of certainty!

The orphan limb, a felt
recovery--its tenuous kinship
making the music social as well

As she gave birth, she screamed out
that all who heard that scream would suffer...

These were all the crimes --
even citing the poetry
it sounds absurd

A tedious argument,
an overwhelming question


Like a green girl
in a nutshell
count myself a king

:painted upon the walls: a man,
a dog was a dog, and a circle was sun

The rust freckled barbed
wire, keeping out no one,
thick as thirst

To grow famous, and his family rich...
all the world turns when he spins

Try to account to know
express to know
to account to try

The self as given is in-
adequate and will not do

Look: he has not turned,
has tears in his eyes; no more
let them be well used

Asia on the one side
Africa on the other

This specular structure
this is my letter
a form of contact

A large bird who was trying
to regain some sense of beauty

He begins with the chase of--
the deer or the wild goat?
Out of whose horns was the bow made?

Realize every minute--
no, saints and poets maybe

Havana in hurricane
iron, bongoseros
green dream in rhythm

The names of flowers
pot-holed streets, sluggish gutters--
they cleared a space and

Give it new names: breasts of God
left out to catch the dew

Then the self is lost
in Nebraska
flashflood storms

She walks in beauty, like night,
at peace with all below


(Completed Aug. 2008 by JS, HT, SZ)

36

She walks in beauty, like night,
at peace with all below

35

Then the self is lost
in Nebraska
flashflood storms