haiku truths/crocus and frogs after rain/…secrets…non-stop/oh, poet for you, no rest (where did it come from? or how a NaHaiWriMo idea became this tanka)
haiku truths–
crocus and frogs after rain
ketrels and hyacinths
telling you secrets non-stop
oh, poet for you, no rest
Where did that come from?
If you read the comments between Wrick Daddario (19 Planets Art blog) and me on my #24 & #25 NaHaiWriMo post here, you would have read that tanka. He started with what he liked about the haiku and as always when the interaction takes over, he wrote his own haiku on the comment thread. He later mentioned that perhaps he did write enough to pass off as a-haiku-a-day for the month, adding he didn’t want to make a commit ment but did fulfill it anyway. That’s when this thought that has overtaken me was unleashed…and I wrote on:
“Commitment? That’s always a big scare, isn’t it? It is, in matters of personal and true-to-life matters, especially, but even more so in ART. Because it asks or demands of one’s whole being, the thrill with which we throw ourselves into it soon falters and we slouch off along the way. But something else could also happen like what’s happening to me. (These last two sentences added just now.)
I have had brief bouts of it–this ‘being on a roll’, but not like now that I feel totally consumed by it–though still unaware of commitment to giving in or have given in to–the POWER OF HAIKU and TANKA. I feel I’m changing especially with my personality; I think I’m turning into a monk who prowls the city looking hollow or with burning eyes on details that turn into or churn haiku in my mind.
I used to be mindful of my interactions; I used to be prompt with my replies to ideas–I used to be present in most if not all meetings about social issues and plain social events and stay and follow-up on ideas I throw in. But now? Haiku/tanka flowing into my other poetic forms have gripped me like a vise and all else float or flit about like wings of nymphs. (I’ve added the last phrase just now, again.)
I seem to carry a head that’s brewing a stew of images restlessly swirling as words non-stop! Never mind if none or all that comes out of it is bad or good haiku or poetic lines–the ‘power’ wields its whip anyway and I must let it ride, put down on the screen what I’m not even aware whether or not it’s my composition or simply of this power most of the time.
If this hasn’t happened to you yet, totally, I’m sure you’ve felt it some time–beware! Commitment (to haiku)? I don’t know if you can choose to thwart it or shoo it away!”
And the tanka flowed in.
To write a poem (wordplay on an old typewriter for One Shoot Sunday)
image prompt by Jack AZ part2
is not to catch
the words unlatched:
it is to meet
a current against the sweep
against the words
the patterns on the board
the words imprint
that later fade so like river silt.
To catch a poem
you can’t, unless eyes firm
eyes glued to the vaulted
deep from where had bolted
these words you unleash
on lines that leap
your fingers balancing
thought on words that slink.
To catch the thought
that storms into desert draught
you choose the speed
or letters scrambling in the deep
delude the eyes
escape the mind on ice
old keys do creak when cranked
to catch the lines unlatched.
To catch a storm wreaking
havoc on a heart sinking
in a slew of silted dreams
rusting on dredged streams
where winds howl threats
of maddened sand and dust like breaths
the finger tips must kiss
the letters naming muses hissing.
To catch the muses
soothe their caricatured faces
bare your soul salvaged
from old thoughts once baggage
tear out the paper
spewing lies of hereafter
catch the words that spell
the truth about their names true to their spell
on you to write a poem.
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry where a community of poets and artists share their love for their art and continue to sustain each other. Check us out!
squabbling crows/sunny day at Zoo/the drum beat of rain NaHaiWriMo prompts turned tanka!
1. Prompt #24 flower
squabbling crows
scream into my thoughts–
at dawn how you left
hollow imprints of sleep
scented dreams of jasmine blooms
2. prompt #25–zoo
sunny day at Zoo
lioness searches for my eyes
behind my black shades–
the way we hold our hearts
as we speak of fears and wants
3. prompt #26–drum
the drum beat of rain
on window pane imprints tears
a flood breaking hearts
in loneliness gray rain sneaks
into wells to fill the dryness
Tanka drafts I should call these because I’m certain that when I read them tomorrow, they will sound bad. These came as spontaneously as the haiku I’ve been posting on the NaHaiWriMo wall. There’s an energy that takes over at the site like a hand that holds my wrist as I pause or pose to let the first word dance on the screen. It’s the presence of so many other haiku writers– whose names I recognize from the Shiki kukai and haiku journals even some haijin–that I think itself serves as the prompt and the word, a prop. The experience, though I hopped in only on Day 19, has been exhilarating.
in the mist/frosted dawn (#24b & #25 for NaHaiWriMo with brief self-critique)
#24b for NaHaiWriMo (#24 posted at facebook site)
in the mist
waiting to meet you–
budding crocus
A double kigo for spring. I don’t know if it works. But I also see in it two meanings: ‘mist’ for uncertainty, ‘budding crocus’ for hope, reassurance.
#25
frosted dawn–
his words hang
over coffee
I’m not sure about the juxtapostion of image, kigo and meaning here. But I like it.
sunshine in the snow #23b NaHaiWriMo
sunshine in the snow–
your shaded eyes does not say
what you mean
My #23 haiku from NaHaiWriMo is posted on the facebook site.
About this haiku–doesn’t it bother you, too? As soon as the sun bursts stark white, all eyes disappear under dark shades and goggles. And shades these days come opaque in what looks like midnight blue, muddy brown, deep ocean black-green. We face each other like we’re blind when we’re talking to each other. And that bothers me, that’s where this haiku came from.
plea for a poem (for One Shot Wednesday)
write me a poem
words to breathe in
even if only whispers
as shouts have turned
the air into a
hail storm
write me some rain–
my heart crackles
in the draught longing
for words drenched in
thought to sip
in the dark
i yearn for verses
snipped from flame tips
words that dance
the fire of fallen angels
saved from their march
on dying coals
write me a song
cadenced in sunsets
tympanis of words
rising off the hum
of meanings
drums have flattened
give me back poems
shredded spirits birth
in caves midnights cleanse–
poems howling wolves
hankering for stars
divine
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry as my share in a lively exchange of art and poetry among a loving community of poets and artists who nurture each other. Follow us at the site. Click on OSP on my blogroll.
left out in the rain #22b NaHaiWriMo (haibun?)
left out in the rain
her old haiku
on cherry blossoms
I know the emotion of this haiku is sad but honestly, the transition days from winter to spring bring this on in me. Days rise white as freshly ironed sheets, the smell of dawn, with tiny marble-tweets from spring birds invisible in the conifer hedges. And then, as if a green-eyed nymph has waved her wand, clouds would shroud the sun and only the snowdrops tell it’s still day. I walk on Osler St. trodding on damp fragile weeds, barely breathing it seems toward spring, unmindful of the crisp stubble around roots of gnarled oaks. Overhead, twigs of nude cherry trees retain a pose too painful to glance at. Once, it seems so long ago, these caricatured branches had burst into layers of textured pink, inscribing ‘glory in the moment’, that I have written as haiku, which haunt me like old spirits now. And the soft rain, as if taking on my thoughts, turns into an outpouring of tears.
late winter walk–
soft rain on bare cherry trees
harder on my thoughts
Oooops, edit from an hour ago, should be–My haiku #22a is posted in the NaHaiWriMo facebook site. Check it out and join in!
secrets #2 for day 21 of NaHaiWriMo
secrets—
burrowing in sand dunes
a pale sunlight
My haiku for days 19,20 and #1 for 21 are posted in the NaHaiWriMo facebook site.
enraged (for One Shoot Sunday)
Darth Vader by Jack AZ
we go on, wagging
forefingers at skies,
resenting seasons
that fall on us in clumps
of such rhythmic
regularity we just can’t
play our black violins
raging against or else
against the grind
we feel a heartless hand
its fingers like iron
claws so tight in grip we find
our waggling a senseless
attempt at being freed—if
but one beat one note
one breath that does not
fall in rhythmic rhyme
skids from fingers that slide
from point to point to
point, interminable
points, infinitesimal bits,
that had so imprisoned us
raging—
one breath that stops and
we can’t, we won’t find out
we haven’t moved away
from seasons we resented,
music we played, beats
we raged against
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry from a photo prompt titled, “Darth Vader” by Jack AZ. Join us, a community of poets and artists who share the art they so love and nurture reach other.
Song (my first lyric poem for OSP Saturday)
In dreams as in wakefulness,
bands of air swirl between us–
thoughts spinning in flight,
words but dust in the eye.
In dreams as in waking
I trail the wind, your thoughts
lost in longing, your moaning
a storm tearing at my heart.
I float hidden in dreams
as when awake like a wisp
I hover but a shadow
light sweeps with but a wave.
Once, awake as in a dream,
I painted my eyes like Circe–
the wind my voice for your eyes
knowing the magic lies there.
But in the dream as in waking,
the wind but died, failing–
the song I played my heart the lyre
for you, but a hiss among shadows.
first published in 2007 at PoetsHaven.com
For One Stop Poetry Saturday “Share a Past”, the community of poets and artists I belong to. We share and nurture each other. Check us out, pr better yet, join us. How? Easy steps are in the website. Click on it on my blogroll (Sorry, I have yet to learn how to make a link work.)
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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