la luna blanca (not-quite haiku) for Margaret
Re-post from July 20, 2009 for Margaret as I mentioned in a conversation on Lorca, his “la luna blanca” poems, my own Spanish-entrenched culture, and my own caged, wounded but singing heart! I realize now that these are not quite haiku. I hope you enjoy it.
1.
la luna blanca
llores en mi corazon
el silencio en la aula
(white moon
weeps in my heart–
the muted cage)
2.
los ruisenores
mosca en la noche blanca
deje heridas
(nightingales
fly into the white night
leaving wounds behind)
Listening to Julio Iglesias, I was suddenly composing these haiku in Spanish! I feel like winning the lotto! But I can’t reward myself with a million dollar “jornal”–that would not match the value of joy (alegria!!!), which, of course, is priceless. I’ll say for these haiku, I pay myself $1000.
Count 1234 (One Shoot Sunday)
*inspired by a photo taken during the Great Depression
1234 the counting beats
on soles the pavements
suffer through
–sorrows smudge hunger
pouting on granite
fissured by want.
Does counting
drill away the hunger?
As if to dig up
completes the burying,
hunger in bags
as crap.
What is the anatomy
of want? Under lenses
combine 1234 in thickness–
in sum, does hunger
make sense? Raking up
senselessness bares bones,
innocence the marrow.
In 1234 nothing shows but
the waiting as if
it were a birthright–
the anatomy for hunger.
Combine 1234 in lean-ness
in sum what rings up? Only
the stark stare, the rage
of hunger—the true sum.
I posted this poem for One Shoot Sunday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
sign board says:
sign board says:
“here love grows” pointing
nowhere
quoting from Red Dragonfly: “…wondering what you think of haiku”, if you think this is haiku…
not two but hundreds … (to thank you)
not two but hundreds
of upraised pine branches—
thanks still wanting
To the One to whom our “thank yous” for blessings both those we recognize and those we can’t, and to you, generous readers, kindred souls, friends, THANK YOU.
First snow (one shot Wednesday)
Hush,
heaven stealthily drops to earth in clouds that cease
breathing, wings folded on trees, prayers
poised for flight.
We walk tipped on toe-points
to taste to feel this heaven dropping,
melting, sizzling, burning through black grounds—
our iced-beings.
Hush,
heaven drops from ir-recognizable skies
on whorled grounds our rages disowned
muting prayers of those who sigh.
Hush,
though the heart has no ears.
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
blizzard
blizzard–
the slanting lines, piercing lines
our locked hands
canyon evening sequence (one shoot Sunday)
*inspired by a photograph of Trent Chau
rattling the air
the cawing of crows—
our flight hours more
sunset
breaches rain-swept horizon
where embers sizzle
clouds wash
the canyon fissures,
draining our fears
from dreams
shadows rise fracturing
evening fall
canyon evening—
wind tracks to follow
the shimmering light
I posted this poem for One Shoot Sunday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
pregnant moon
pregnant moon
out of dark clouds into the light
on to my turns
paper moon
paper moon—
too high
for the autumn wind
by Alegria Imperial 9th place haiku kukai Sketchbook 5-5 SepOct 2010
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
ember/beggang (iluko/english haiku )
morning ember
fanned
by broken word
beggang ti agsapa
naparubruban
ti puted a sarita
I wrote the original in Iluko, the language I was born with but hardly spoke and never written with as an adult, trading it with English, a borrowed language I thought was really mine. Iluko of the northernmost edge of the Philippine archipelago traces its roots in Austronesian language. Rediscovering it has been exhalarating! The truth is, I am writing in both languages now with a deeper sense of where both seem to spring from–my being.
About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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