fire on fire (for One Shot Wednesday)

the whelp carouses
under el arbol de fuego blazing
rubbing a hind leg in rhythmic
push at the fevered trunk
dust gathers a small storm

a haze in the roots
of the birds-of-paradise

she prowls the hive
of a mid-equinox sun a tremor
in her steps touches the stones balking
at the rumour: Venus
has sipped from Pluto’s venom

she conceives black tongues
the women read on leaves

the sun descending stalls
midway on her whipping the whelp
for felling el arbor de fuego
as if fire on fire does not
consume the elements

in the wind the yelping
shreds the buds of trees

her screams draw
the night in moaning as if
torture is ecstasy
when body and soul those
tautened strings

lure hands to hammer
chords whimpering
she arcs her breasts

to suckling tongues of fire

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, a gathering place for some of the most talented poets and artists ever. Share yours with their love for their art.

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soft rain/spring wind/white dust (spring memories haiku)

soft rain–
she spins a ball
from memories

spring wind
on nodding daffodils–
my ‘No’ again

white dust
on boxes of three years–
still wind

fee bay feebaaayy…for me, chickadee (love call haiku)

fee bay feee baaayy–
filling the air with love calls
for me, chickadee

in ecstasy (for One Shoot Sunday)

the constellations cast a spell
on the roiling depths
gurgling in its altered state the sea
bubbles rolling a thousand eyes
as if dying

but in ecstasy enraptured
its frozen depths splintered
as million bits of bliss
an ocean of grief shedding
sheets of unwanted lead

sheen on silver
blinds receding stars those recalcitrant
asteroids mere reflections
on the translucence of illumination
a sea of enlightenment

the body once
a heaving mass of regrets
roaring now soars

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry composed on this space from an image by Roger Allen. Come join us in this inimitable space for poets and artists who share their work and their passion for it. Feel how it is to be nurtured like we do.

my ‘yikes!’ haiku (from a suite of the first-ever haiku I submitted to THN)

1.
moon rise
on church window,
mom and I holding hands

2.
magnolia petals
in the wind—
the rush at my wedding

3.
shredded blooms
on my hair—
writing on my journal

4.
spring rain—
the taste of salt spray
the first time

5.
first spring walk—
a clump of drooping snowdrops
black patch smaller

6.
against the haze
a hedge of briar roses—
my unfinished poem

These and the rest in the suite of ten haiku, of course, came back declined. You might want to let me know why, first, and then, I’ll write a self-critique.

spring panic

spring panic–
ruckus of the sparrows
over petals shedding

spring–
his promise in a box
i open too late

I better stop here or I start writing ‘yikes-haiku’! Panic over the ticking clock is what’s wrong with me. Nothing comes to mind. I need to wind down now for an early start to be at the Buddhist temple in Richmond tomorrow for a ginko walk with members of the Vancouver Haiku Group–us!

my ‘heart haiku’ (published in Sketchbook’s haiku thread Jan-Feb Vol 6 issue)

My choices

hearts of romaine—
between them candles flit
in the silence

she finds the embryo
of the seed–
not his heart

monitor—
his heart’s dips and coasts
but where is love?

losing a heartbeat–
on the hollow of her neck
and on her wrist

Editor’s choice included under ‘maternal love’

heartbeat—
her hand on her belly
searching for it

my East Wind haiku (voted on Sketchbook’s kukai–Jan-Feb Vol 6 issue)

east wind—
his words bristling
on grain stalks

6th place

tremor
in the stones—
the east wind

7th place

storm clouds
flying on an east wind—
absent dawn

9th place
(This actually got none or zero votes though it is placed 9th among others as the editor liked it. I think the last line is abstract and doesn’t tie-in with the the first two lines. Perhaps ‘waiting for a hawk’ or ‘a hawk swoops down’ would have made it more concrete.)

I wrote these haiku with my being transported to the Philippines. Vancouver light on my window that morning I composed them washed the colors of trees, leaves and stones with the blankness of snow. The freeze bristled frosted twigs but in my heart, the East Wind blew a bristling steam of foreboding quite palpable at the onset of the dry and hot season (the other season of the two we have is wet) about the time of Easter, or Spring in the western hemisphere. From that memory, I wrote the haiku.

What is the East Wind?

The east wind from Wikipedia:

“An east wind is a wind that originates in the east and blows west. In Greek mythology, Eurus, the east wind, was the only wind not associated with any of the three Greek seasons, and is the only one of these four Anemoi not mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony or in the Orphic Hymns.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Garden of Paradise, it is the East Wind who takes the hero to visit the eponymous garden. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the East Wind, like most other things dealing with the east, is viewed as a thing of evil. In Book III (which appears in The Two Towers), after Aragorn and Legolas have sung a lament for Boromir involving invocations of the other three winds, the following dialogue takes place:

“‘You left the East Wind to me,’ said Gimli, ‘but I will say naught of it.’

‘That is as it should be,” said Aragorn. ‘In Minas Tirith they endure the East Wind, but they do not ask it for tidings. …’ ”
In George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind, on the other hand, the East Wind is described as more mischievous than strictly evil; the North Wind comments, “…[O]ne does not exactly know how much to believe of what she says, for she is very naughty sometimes…”

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story “His Last Bow”, published in 1917 but set in 1914, ends with Holmes addressing his assistant Doctor Watson on the eve of the First World War… The same speech was used at the end of the 1942 Basil Rathbone Holmes film Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, this time in reference to the Second World War…”

Go ahead, despair in the tropics (for One Shot Wednesday)

Go ahead, pine away among the palms
throw up your sobs: the leaves will heave up
build you a dome to trap your regrets.

Turn away from the sun. Step on your shadow.
Summer has died on the sand at your feet.
Go ahead, let your humid sorrow seethe.

Thrash the frangipanis screaming red. Go ahead
smash the brashness: your heart will not stand
bleeding itself crimson it has you steeped.

Go ahead, gather the remnants of the soul you bared
the blossom you loved was a strange flower
the morning dew bred into a sleuth.

Let go the dreams stolen then tossed,
rivers will swell on banks spewing scraps.
Go ahead, rake in the shreds if you can.

Go ahead, scrape the hurt, wring it dry
no weeping lasts until noon. Tears cannot
stand the sun; it singes wet wounds.

The sun soon descends to a breeze waiting,
your shadow slips behind you when
you rise again. Look back then: the sun

you loved is only copper melting.

A song that plays on internal rhyme posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering of poets and artists who love their art and love sharing them, nurturing both theirs and of others. Check us out.

the calm/rereading cards/round and round (3 tanka on the calm from the earthquake elsewhere)

Mie and me on her last visit to Vancouver

1.
the calm–
from Kyoto Mie writes
far from earthquake
the wedding garden today
light snow on cherry buds

2.
rereading cards–
from Michio in Saitama
her New year’s wishes
of Rabbit hopes and dreams
today mine for her in pray’r

3.
round and round
moon and earth mirror each other
chaos of winds
ruined faces blemished cheeks
to be cleansed over and over