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The Street Lit Blog

Since I've moved to Missoula, the Street Lit authors in Austin have moved to a new site at http://streetlitauthors.org/, run by the awesome Tony Nuñez and Phil Force. 

Below you'll find Street Lit news posts from my Austin years with the group, and a selection of the creative works of the
 Street Lit Authors Club. I'll be posting new works from the Missoula folks sooner than later, so keep an eye on us. We've got great things in the works.

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Haiku (and sort of haiku) day

6/16/2016

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Street Lit haiku day -- 
spontaneous outpourings.
​Even failing's fun
Picture
        I can't say quite why,
        but haiku became the thing
        We killed it, sometimes...

So, we all ganged up on syllable counts and the fingers flew
and gentle arguments were argued over things like:
"Is it baff-ul-ing? Or baff-ling?"
"It is what we want it to be. We decide!"
"This has an extra syllable, but I like it. I want to keep it."
"Close enough," we said, "until something better comes to mind."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know!"
"Maybe these are like /puzzles for the mind to solve / Rorschach tests with words?"
"Ready, set, syllablize!" 

We all wrote:

     A borrowed black hat
     may emphasize the background --
     Bad guys wear leather.

and...

     The wall psychotic --
     Wailing pierced the holy land.
     "Out there ... Can you help?"

and then...

        Leonardo, he
        declared the day a contest
        of off-the-cuff verse

Yep, Leonardo Da Vinci E. threw down a five spot for prize money, set himself as the sole judge, and the competition began.

               Concentration ruled.
               Scribbling happened. Head scratching.
               Erasures and sighs...

Niko's entry:

     I write this poem
     Where hopeless men try to sleep,
     Maybe even dream.

Charlie's entry:

     We don't need no education
     I think I'm losing my mind, Roger.
     The Judge is the job.

(Charlie makes his own damn rules!)

Thom's poem:

     Her eyes fixed on him
     Her world collapsed inside her
     His regret ice cold

Josh went cosmic, and where'd that extra syllable come from?:

     The cosmic phallus
     eloquently baffling
     supreme-minded beings

Me, too, on the cosmic page:

     The cosmic exists
     in the thoughts of the human
     shared among us all.

We all counted out...

                  Fives sevens and fives
                  until the word dust settled
                  And the winner is...........

Jenny! with this fine work:

      Living the brushstrokes
      Enhancing the gift of time
      Love breathes into light.

It didn't end there, though. Josh, never one to leave well enough alone, went full mashup on us. After a smoke break / he sputtered, coughed, and revealed / an untitled gem:

A borrowed black hat
May emphasize the background
Bad guys wear leather,
But I don’t know when
Or if, or how, or where to
That I should also,
It seems perhaps not
It always seems like henchmen
Trying to climb up
The wall psychotic --
Wailing pierces the holy land
Out there can you help?
Even a henchman may one day need his god
To climb the pink wall
I wish I were cool
But bad guys don’t listen
To pop-punk music.

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