Saturday, July 19, 2014

A Room of My Own: Dirty Word Tanka

equal for all
drops from the mayor's lips
I remember
fuck is a dirty word
that comes out clean

Note: This tanka is written in the style of Onihishigitei (demon-quelling force), a style that is characterized by its “strong or even vulgar diction.” (Robert H. Brower, "Fujiwara Teika's Maigetsusho," Monumenta Nipponica, 40:4, Winter, 1985, p.406). Here are tanka examples:

I cut off
my goddamn finger
to numb
my goddamn pain
snow falling on snow ...

NeverEnding Story, May 8, 2013

using few words
I carve the long face
of my critic
with bleeding eyes...
this Good Friday night

Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013

For more info., see my "To the Lighthouse" post, titled "Onihishigitei, Style of Demon-Quelling Force ."

1 comment:

  1. Ls 4&4 allude to the following passage from from The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

    "Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running--that's the way to live."

    "Wa? Where am I, what is the basketballly game of eternity the girls are playing here by me in the old house of my life, the house isn't on fire is it?"

    "Ah poor mind of man, and lonely man alone on the beach, and God watching with intent smile I'd say...."

    "it was so pure, fuck being a dirty word that comes out clean."

    "'now morning I face my lone shadow, I can't study with both eyes full of tears.'"

    "...my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death and I had really no lie come to a point where I regarded lust as offensive and even cruel. 'Pretty girls make graves,'..."

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