zentipede

August 9, 2006

the centipede sits
crossing fifty sets of legs –
tao under a rock

Posted in Haiku and Senryu, Poetry | 21 Comments »

21 Responses to “zentipede”

twitches Says:

August 9, 2006 at 7:31 am
“zentipede” – very clever. The Praying Mantis, however, being a good Christian, would probably kick his ass.

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qazse Says:

August 9, 2006 at 11:10 am
your’e on

meet us by the rotting tree trunk at noon

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liquidquick Says:

August 9, 2006 at 12:18 pm
with a hundred feet
it would take Zen a long time
to dole out his blows

praying mantis might
look like a good christian but…
he’s thinking ‘chicks’, ‘rum’

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qazse Says:

August 9, 2006 at 1:09 pm
quickly, before fight
a stiff cuba libre with
marilyn mantis

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liquidquick Says:

August 10, 2006 at 1:06 pm
mantis and the zen
sing drinking songs at the stump
booze – the friend maker

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twitches Says:

August 11, 2006 at 6:27 am
I have nothing more to add.

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qazse Says:

August 11, 2006 at 10:52 pm
twitches, it cannot be for lack of well rendered words – must be exasperation. I am sorry I will stop this silliness immediately.

liquidquick – I am having you replace Condoleezza Rice. Pack your bags, no liquid, just quick. You can purchase plenty of booze when you land.

Perhaps the peace pipe is supposed to blow bubbles instead of smoke. Here we were thinking all along it was supposed to smoke. No wonder there is no peace.

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bloglily Says:

August 12, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Bubbles indeed. Maybe champagne?

I feel like I’m evesdropping on a poetry cell, something I didn’t know existed.

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qazse Says:

August 12, 2006 at 10:24 pm
ahh yes champagne, perhaps a reasonably priced French champagne… we will call it freedom fizz…

yes BL you have shone the light of discovery on a subterranean haiku cell. You must swear to secrecy or else we will fill your inbox with lousy haiku written by parents the night before their disinterested children must hand them in. You would need a magnum of the bubbly to tolerate such an insult to your literary acumen. I know I can trust you.

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twitches Says:

August 13, 2006 at 12:11 pm
I’ve almost got the haiku martyrdom video ready. Just need to add the muscial accompaniment. Has anyone seen my castanets?

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qazse Says:

August 13, 2006 at 1:26 pm
I heard they are lovely.

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Jules Says:

August 13, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Thanks for the entertainment of this post and its comments for the last few days. I’ve had nothing smart or snarky to add, but am laughing out loud at the double entendre above.

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qazse Says:

August 13, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Hey Jules. Thank you for checking it out. I thought Twitches was appearing on the next Poets Gone Wild video. That is the video series where perverts ride around literary conventions asking the women to “show me your couplets”. But it was all a big misunderstanding. She actually lost her couplets, I mean castanets, and has asked everyone to help her find them. It will be a challenge because I don’t even know where she lives. Oh well, I have to go now. I am tearing the garage apart looking for the castanets.

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liquidquick Says:

August 13, 2006 at 9:00 pm
bite your tongue, qazse, there’s nothing ‘subterranean’ about it. as a registered haiku-snob i prefer my cells to be well-lit and upscale.

for the soundtrack, twitches, i hear kazoos are making a musical comeback, which, of course inspired a haiku…

kazoos and haiku
like peanut butter and cheese,
oddly well-suited

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qazse Says:

August 14, 2006 at 11:19 am
another drive-by haiku by the Speed Racer of Haikudom, the amazing mercurial Liquidquick!

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Towanda, Amazonian Jungle Temptress Says:

August 14, 2006 at 2:37 pm
haven’t been here in so long, and i don’t know why. god, i love this site! and hey, where’s my t-shirt? i was told if i flashed my couplets i’d get a t-shirt!

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qazse Says:

August 15, 2006 at 1:01 am
Towanda…the Amazon Jungle Temptress! Thanks for stoping by.

The t-shirt will soon be on its way. It has a likeness of your couplets printed on the front. There is a small handling fee. Send a $28.99 money order made out to QAZSE c/o wordpress.com.

I always wondered where the name AJT( Amazon Jungle Temptress ) came from. Care to share? Latte?

HEY EVERYONE: Check out Towanda’s blog. She is on the Qazse blogroll because she is very passionate and very funny. She reminds me somewhat of Brilliant At Breakfast who is also on the Qazse blogroll.

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qazse Says:

August 24, 2006 at 12:42 am
centipede sits
with fifty sets of legs
crossed

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liquidquick Says:

August 28, 2006 at 1:52 am
after thinking about this a few days, i still kinda dig the original version best, even if it is 575 format. the deletion of ‘tao’ takes something away from the whole ‘zentipede’ theme. and, at first reading, ‘crossed’ makes me think ‘lounging on a sofa’ not ‘lotus-position meditation’.

just my $0.02…

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qazse Says:

August 28, 2006 at 2:28 am
thank you!

I see what you mean. One might say the actual body of the poem has been sanitized away from what the title hints at. Zentipede implies zen but nothing follows. Although that is a somewhat zen-like notion or process: a rational expectation (A->B) is asserted yet followed by nothing.

I erased the original. Do you know how it went?

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liquidquick Says:

August 28, 2006 at 1:11 pm
not the whole thing unfortunately, if i recall correctly it went

centipede sits here
his fifty sets of legs crossed
tao under a rock

although, it could do without the ‘here’.

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