“Human teeth contain a kind of poison, for they dim the brightness of a mirror when bared in front of it and also kill the fledglings of pigeons.” – Pliny The Elder, “Natural History” 79 CE
So feckless to smile at birds along the river,
Of course we knew that we were wanton
Splitting innocence with inured jaws,
Hawking the feathers caught in our teeth.
Unable to face our hunger, plunder,
Our eyes dim our necessity,
Denying our faces, averting our senses,
We leap into the decadent watercourse
White and fanged, the rapids of history
Tears us to ruins
Rise, we sink to rise again;
Birds chatter at our decay.
The currents of time wash out our bones
The sun pristine over the primal estuary
Stripped of all but naked truth
Ancient words take flight
Magnificat, the mother song of creatures,
St. Francis delirious with canticle
Counterpoint, drifting up and downstream,
Reflecting sinners, spawning saints
Conspirators: qbit, Jilly
qbit’s Renga Challenge – We Were Wanton
For Jilly’s November Casting Bricks
qbit 
‘Splitting the veil of innocence with inured jaws,
Hawking the feathers caught in our teeth’
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Direct hit!! Need some time though to keep this moving well.
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Thinking a lot about how to pace this…
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Do you think I should change my couplet?
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No! No! It is perfect! I think this could be really good, I don’t want to wreck it by whipping things around willy nilly. (Jilly?). LOL. Here’s what I came up with, let me know if it has enough room.
“Unable to face our hunger, plunder,
Our eyes dim the truth, unmirror our visage”
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I’ll look at the couplet as soon as my laughter subsides!
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I’m not married to this couplet – editing or complete trashing is in the full realm of possibilty, but I wanted to bring the river back into play:
‘Denying our faces, averting our senses,
We leapt into the decadent watercourse’
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Let me sit with that. Possibilities…
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Unsure of your direction and water is water, of course. The river felt like the butcher knife on the counter – had to be used.
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Yes, I was thinking that too. Almost made it the dimmed mirror.
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Need to expand my view of water in lit. It’s either baptism or the River Styx for me. What changes would you like to see? I’m cool with whatever.
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No changes in mind. Thinking…
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So, uh, throwing this out there…
White and fanged, the rapids of history
Tear at the ruins of our craft
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Hmmm… ‘craft’ – dual meaning. Pondering…
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‘Rise, we sink to rise again,
birds unmocked chatter at our decay’
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Cool!
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Yeah? Pondered all morning – wrote for 2 minutes. Fickle muse
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Cap the 2nd line – sorry
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Stumpted-ish. I want the decadent water too, but then what? We’ve got this great setup – wanton loss of innocence, dead birds, aversion to truth. We’ve got the entire Pliny vector.
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But what do we care about here?
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Missed these last 2 comments – sorry. My WP not working.
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Apologies, I might not get lines out tonight. But partly that was due to getting your lines while actually crossing the Hudson on a ferry! The river needs its due. It must not be shortchanged, lol! I spend a lot of time thinking about that river, so went into a thoughtful place.
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No worries! Pay the ferryman. (Just frustrated with WP.)
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Hahaha! Yep. That ferryman gets paid.
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So that river needs to be written about…
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I was writing about the river this morning, separate from our Renga, lol! The river always gives me much to think about.
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Something you’d care to drop in the folder?
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That is the plan!
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There’s a pen trembling somewhere …
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Ahaha!
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The issues with WP continue. Several of your comments have not appeared in my notifications (there are other glitches on my end, as well.) Contacted WP. I’ll keep your post open.
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The currents of time wash out our bones
The sun pristine over the primal estuary
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Oh, Nice!!
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Thought you’d like that!
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Massively! Couple hours to response. Long day
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The currents of time wash out our bones
The sun pristine over the primal estuary
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Left school with your last (amazing) couplet in my head. Went screaming down the highway with an old SmashMouth song on the radio – Walking on the Sun. By the time Prince – Dove’s Cry came on, I had this. The right soundtrack is everything! (Sun, birds – yeah, I got this) LOL!
“Stripped of all but our naked truth
Ancient words—cleansed– take flight”
Now we must close this baby in style. (Yikes!)
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Ahahaha! Yes! Yes!
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Are you willing to drop “our” and “cleansed”? E.g.
“Stripped of all but naked truth
Ancient words take flight”
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Whatever you want
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OK, pondering…
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Ongoing WP issues persist – drop your last couplet in email.
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Will do. Going to be tomorrow most likely.
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“Magnificat, the mother song of creatures,
St. Francis delirious with canticle, drifting”
Not sure about the sudden appearance of St. Francis, but like, well, St. Francis!!! Can go another direction if too jarring.
Posting this on the blog in parallel.
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Listening to Bach & pondering…
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Ditch “drifting” or anything else if that helps.
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I have not forgotten… all the words are on the paper; they just need to fall into the right order. Still working on it through my fog of exhaustion 🙂
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I love how at the end, the original Wantonness becomes the delirious counterpoint, the spawning, the reflecting, sinners and saints.
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Panning back with the camera, I’m quite pleased with the outcome. The challenge is always to tie it up into completeness.
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A beautiful dance of harmonic wavelengths. The collaboration process is poetry enough. Wonderful.
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Thanks so much. We worked pretty hard on this. Was a trick to stay in balance.
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Only you native speakers can manage the linguistic agility to dance this like the river birds. I’m learning a lot.
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Oh what a great dance of words… love it, all the turns and the finished poem (and your dialogue creating it)… love collaboration and might throw a brick soon.
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Throw a brick at us!!!!
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It will come… it will. We used to do it as a pub game a few years ago. Maybe something when we close for the Holiday season. Some bricks with mulled wine.
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Would love that! I’ll mull the wine, Bjorn!
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I liked this phrase “the rapids of history
Tears us to ruins”.
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As I read your poem I thought you were writing about the Paranas baring there teeth on every broadcast of the evening news. All just waiting to devour each other as the next one falls. Sinners and Saints indeed!
Dwight
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Thanks!
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Such a beautiful dance of words you two ~ Love this part:
Rise, we sink to rise again;
Birds chatter at our decay.
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“Denying our faces, averting our senses,
We leap into the decadent watercourse
White and fanged, the rapids of history
Tears us to ruins”
The dance of two poets steeped in lore and chutzpah! I’ve sparred with both of you and came away laughing. This, however, is other-worldly… and wise. More bricks, more bricks, more bricks!
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Just want you to know I was here and read.
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Thanks! The other side of the world from Billy, lol!
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Yep, couldn’t make heads or tails of anything.
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Damn, you guys are good! What a renga! 🙂
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We’ve become rengulars!
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