three tankas

1.
mouthfuls of honey
and salty buttered peanuts
dripping from slices
onto stains of grape jelly
from lunches of yesterday

2.
slipping her soft arms
around my neck wistfully
a lingering touch
as lips brush the cheek of fate
leaving savory traces

3.
slipping from the board
into the crashing wave wall
i’m pulled flailingly
behind in agony of
burning breath that will not come

- scott m. stringham

秋 [Autumn]

Here's my tanka -

(In Japanese:)
小さいな
日初年和ときに
する葉っぱで
秋の暮れで
看護友達の。

(Pronunciation:)
Chiisai na
Bishonen wa toki ni
Suru happa de
Aki no kure de
Kango tomodachi no.

(Translation:)
As a small,
Beautiful boy
Plays games in the leaves
During the autumn dusk,
I care for my friends.

Notes: The phrase "beautiful boy" (bishonen) is used in this instance for "baby-ish" boys with aesthetically pretty faces. Also, the phrase "care for" (kango) is the same usage for medics tending to the sick. Disclaimer: I'm not sure I'm 100% accurate. But hey, I tried.

- Matthew A. Jonassaint

Christmas Tankas . . .

While Scott was diligent in writing his villanelle, I think the rest of us might have been intimidated by the complicated form. Over this Christmas break, I'd like to introduce a different, simpler form of poetry: the tanka.

Like haiku, tanka originated in Japan. Tanka have five lines, with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables in the respective lines. Tanka usually convey emotion through a focus on concrete images. A tanka usually breaks into two units, the first three lines forming one unit and the last two lines forming another. (Sometimes the first two are one unit and the last three the other). The middle line can be a "pivot" (kind of like the last two lines of a sonnet). Traditional tanka focus on images in nature and often express love, but your tanka can say be of anything--sleeping by the Christmas tree, a scene of vicious shoppers at the mall, or something completely unrelated to Christmas.

Feel free to post as many tanka as you'd like over this Christmas break!

~Cassie

Below is an example of a tanka:

like clouds
vanishing from a puddle
that morning
my father
silently disappeared

~Mariko Kitakubo

Untitled

Contempt, thou vile, pernicious, blighted foe,
Whose might the weak usurp for reasons vain,
Accurséd shall thy passage ever go.

Beneath transcendent stars and lights below,
We linger on the brink of death and feign
Contempt, tough vile, pernicious, blighted foe.

But death comes not to me in 'suit of hateful roe,
For ever longer stands the scant refrain:
Accurséd shall thy passage ever go.

And spite -- that poisoned tongue that deals the fatal blow --
Would bear again the vicious mark of my
Contempt, thou vile, pernicious, blighted foe.

Yet nearer fly temptations's wings of woe
Before my pallid face; yet I maintain:
Accursésd shall thy passage ever go.

At death's dead door I drum the drone and know
Of time's toiled ticks 'til torment's loss is gain;
Contempt, thou vile, pernicious, blighted foe,
Accurséd shall thy passage ever go.


- Scott M. Stringham

In Which Matthew and Chandler Exchange Emails

Context: When Chandler saw that Matthew had over one hundred messages in his inbox, he complained: "Aw, nobody ever emails me!"

November 1st:
Hey,
This is Matthew A. Jonassaint, that one weird guy you work with. And I just wanted you to know that you have a message in your inbox, so now you can be almost as popular as me! Hahahahaha!

--Matthew

November 13th:
Dear Mr. Jonassaint,
We are pleased to inform you that you have rendered yourself important enough to the respondent individual that he (Chandler Walpole) has selected you for a reply e-mail message. We are currently unaware as to the circumstances in which Mr. Walpole was detained, therein preventing him from responding to your afore sent message more promptly; however, he has assured us that the said circumstances were important in nature. Moreover, he sends his apologies for any inconvenience that may have beset you while anxously awaiting his reply message. He made known to our representative that select terms such as "that one weird guy you work with" as well as "almost as popular as me" were intriguing to him, as he believes that you, Mr. Jonassaint, are not "weird" and "popular" but rather "eccentric" and "prominent" due to the professionalism that you exhibit. Therefore, he hopes that you are jubilant and satisfied in receiving a reply message from him care of our organization, which has no direct affiliation with Mr. Walpole, excepting that it originates from his anfractuous imagination. Thank you for your time and consideration of this bogus message :)
-Chandler

The Quotes

Brought to us from Matthew:

"Have you seen those new AT&T phones? The future is here, dude."
- Kellen

"This is a freakin' legit steak."
- (One of) Whitney's legendary blind date

"I was doing some self-loathing last night, so I was pretty occupied."
- Easton

"That money belongs to me - it's The Secret, Matt!"
- Shannon

"No, I've got the perfect plan. We sabotage the Writing Canter. We'll start turning people away, then our stats go down. Then we lose funding. So we sue UVSC for damages and claim that the College Times was responsible for our stats dropping. It's flawless."
- Shannon

"I'm going to go to Club Rush ... see what speaks to me."
- Whitney

"The most important thing to do is to make sure you can look at yourself in the mirror."
- Sam

"This is for all you ... closet Disco Lovers out there."
- Juliette Lewis

"Do I believe in karma?"
*throws head back "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ... no."
-Matthew and Julie, respectively

"Scott, don't joke about my grandma being cremated. Ever!"
- Whitney

"Happy Birthday my ass! You just asked me to speak at your funeral!"
- Whitney

"Eminem? Is he the white dude with street cred?"
- Easton

"When a young man was afriad he might be homosexual, he went and told his bishop, and he sent him to BYU, where they performed electro-shock therapy on him."
"...Worked for me!"
- Matthew and Brandon, respectively

"My heart is comitting suicide in my chest."
- Kellen

"How are you, Sylvia?"
"I'm doing well, Matthew."
"Haha, I'm so glad you said 'well' instead of 'good'."
"Oh, Matthew. I would not do that. I do not speak that common tongue."
- Matthew and Sylvia...respectively

"Did you guys know that Bryers owns Ben and Jerry's? Bryers? Like...the really not-so-good crappy ice cream?"
- Chandler

"Ah, so I see you're studying Japanese. You know, Matthew, the Japanese kept my grandfather as a prisoner of war. And they tortured him. Did you know that?"
- Easton

"I hate X-Men 3 for one reason. Halley Berry told everybody she didn't want to come back unless she got a leading role, since she won an Oscar for having sex with Billy Bob Thorton on screen."
- Andrew

"I'm just going to....shut up now. I'm gonna go home and cry. Wait. First I'll go to class, then I'll go home and cry. Wait, no. First, I'll go to class. Then I'll eat. Then I'll go home. And...forget about it."
- Chandler

"You will be late? Matthew, are you sick? Are you ill? Should we have the writing tutors fast and pray for you?"
- Ksenyia

"Why can't blondes breast-feed? Because it hurts too much to sanitize their nipples."
"...I don't get it."
- Heidi and Susan

"You get up, and you go take that tutorial!"
"I am! Why do you have to pick on me, Rose?"
"Why? Why? Because you're black, that's why!"
- Rose and Matthew

"Are you feeling okay, Laura?"
"Yeah, I'm just tired."
"Well, here - read this. [Matthew hands Laura "Don't Think, Obey" and walks away for a moment. Upon returning, Laura's mouth and eyes are popped wide open.] Uh...what's up?"
*gasp "Well, I'm awake now!"

"Well, I can understand people who love books and want to share them with others."
"Right. Unless it's Oprah."
- Matthew and Heidi

"You know, my sister isn't married, and she's getting old. That kinda frustrates me. I really want to be an aunt!"
- Susan

"I'm so tired. I don't even know if I can make it to bed. I'll just fall down the stairs like that girl in Notting Hill and be in a wheelchair, and find out that for the rest of my life I can't have children, cuz I didn't try before the accident. That's how tired I am."
- Julie

When I Was a Spy

It was a dark and stormy night. The coasts of Tunisia were covered by huge gusts of wind carrying bits of sand and broken glass. I stood on the cliff with my Sig in hand and a parachute compacted and strapped against my back. I had one shot to get this right: after I passed off this mission, I would be an official spy. Sweat trickled down my partner's face. "You okay, Red Baron?" a voice asked him through our earpieces. "The sooner this is over, the better," he answered as the wind whipped his stawberry-blond hair as if it were a professional in a Parisian salon. That was my partner: sweating in the 115% humidity, hair tousseled by particles of dirt and still looking like a model. I turned away and checked my watch: 15 minutes until the drop.

Red Baron took one look at me. "One last kiss, my dear. Before the plunge. In case...." He fell forbodingly silent. That pleading look in his tinted goggles was all it took for me to firmly grasp his head in my palms and let him kiss me once. Then twice. Then three times. Then, everywhere.

Our delicious moment of passion was disrupted by the sound of machine gun fire. "Duck!" he screamed. He fell on top of me in a protective stance, but I felt his body rock as bullets racked his body.

"I love y..."

His last word was cut off as a .50 caliber bullet ripped through his insides. He screamed and his blood created a miasma in the atmosphere around us. He gasped. I cried. I pressed my hands to his wound in an attempt to keep his life from slipping away. Small sounds escaped his lips, and his blood soaked hand came to rest upon my face. His body jerked and his hand fell away leaving a lingering pictograph of human viscera.

I picked up his body, and rushed his attackers. The look of absolute terror in their fiendish eyes spelled delight to me. There was nothing that could stop me from destroying them one by one.

"WHIPPPUHH-WHIPPUUHH-WHIPPPUUUH...."

I turned my head with a jerk. It was a chopper. And from the pulpit smiled....

"Madmoselle Juliette Hatch. We meet again!" cried Lumier Terriblle.

And then I knew: this would be harder than I thought.

I grabbed the Sig and fired twice at the small silver control box on the bottom of the helicopter. One shot was all it took - my two year training in the mountains of Western China enabled me to make any shot, dead-on, from 50 feet away, depending on the weapon - but the second shot blasted through the controls into the cockpit. A bullet blazed past my ear - I had to take control: the loss of Red Baron was taking its emotional toll on me. I ducked down and fired one more shot, this time into the open door of the helicopter, straight at Terriblle. Unfortunately, the damage to the control box caused the helicopter to shake and shut down as sparks flew from its underside. My shot missed Terriblle but hit another mark - it was Canyon Suite, the team's techie.

It seemed incredible that, moments before, Canyon Suite had been asking Red Baron if he was okay. His were the last words that Red Baron had ever heard, and now he was bound and gagged - and perhaps fatally wounded - in the enemy's helicopter that was starting to go down.

"No!" I screamed, frantically, trying to figure out how I was going to save Canyon Suite even as I jumped off the cliff and leaped for the helicopter. If I was shot, fine - Red Baron was dead, what point would there be to go on anyway? I missed the helicopter by inches, and as it fell away from me towards the Meditteranean below, I pulled on my parachute cord and was immediately thrashed away from the cliffs on the turbulence.

I allowed myself a moment to stare in disbelief at the ocean that was I was descending to meet. In a matter of minutes, I had lost two people I loved dearly ... Canyon Suite had been my technical support since I had joined OPS, a covert government operation funded by the department of defense. OPS, or the Operational Pursuit of Security, was the group that hunted down terrorists and assassins before they followed through with their plans. In the 72 years that OPS had been in existence, it had thwarted countless military and assassin attacks on American soil, and even more abroad before the killers had even made the final touches to their plans. Canyon Suite had been a part of OPS for seven years, and was one of the best in his business. He was so good, in fact, that the CIA, NSA, and numbers of other less reputable groups had offered him up to thirty times his current salaryto leave OPS. Only one thing had kept him there: our team.

Now there were only two of us left. I had to get to our makeshift headquarters before Terriblle sent someone after me. Red Baron and I had been on a reconnaisance mission to take pictures and gather evidence. Terriblle and his cohorts had supposedly been trading illegal arms with the D'yamunda, the Tunisian version of the Mafia, named for their diamond tattoos on their necks. Our recon team leader, Green Owl, had most likely heard the entire operation fall apart on his earpiece. The headquarters for this operation were in an abandoned warehouse five miles inland. As I drifted to the water, I cut my parachute lines and splashed into the water, swimming out from under the parachute. I had to get to the warehouse.