my voted haiku on ‘rainbow’ (Sketchbook June 2011 haiku kukai)
under trellises
their blooming vegan romance
harvests snap peas
Sketchbook June 2011 among haiku thread editor’s choice
rainbow–
of her childhood wishes
she rephrases one
5th place Sketchbook June 2011 haiku kukai (kigo: rainbow)
wanting more
of the rainbow she takes
her kaleidoscope
9th place
so close
at her every step–
rainbow’s end
10th place (or zero vote)
Please bear with me for posting published haiku for now. Nothing fresh has worked out for me these past days. I hope some will come soon as easily as these rainbow haiku.
By the way, I can tell you why the last haiku received no vote: first, it’s author-driven or my idea imposed on it, in stead of an observation; second, it has no anchor, hence, no pivot; third, it does not leap into any thought; fourth, it’s a cliche or a rephrasing of ‘finding a dream or pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
morning tide/seashore/high tide (my last post at NaHaiWriMo for now)
a.*
morning tide—
still
the heaving waves
b.
seashore–
washed off burdens
lapping at our feet
c.
billows and clouds
fading as dreams—
high tide
NaHaiWriMo prompt: seaside, seashore 07/16/2011
*the only one I posted on the site
I’m taking a breather from writing haiku on the NaHaiWriMo FB site to rethink on where I am and where I’m going with this genre. My writing a haiku has been taking me longer and longer, more tedious because the more I’m learning about what makes a good one, the more conscious I am of each word I put down. I feel that this process is taking a toll on the intuitive way I write poetry as most of the lines I write do seemingly write themselves out in one breath. Not so, with haiku that I want to work; yes, it comes easy when I’m ‘haiku-ing’ for myself or in this blog but when I begin to be conscious of ‘judging eyes’, I falter and fail and I write what for me and often I’m not wrong, a ‘lame’ or ‘yikes’ haiku.
I guess I should try to learn more, read more from Basho who lured me into the art in 2005 when I found a collection of his haiku, honestly the first I ever read having been schooled in continental literature, at the Enoch Pratt Library main library in Baltimore. Perhaps, I should reflect more on how his haiku often turn out as a meditation like in the famous ‘old pond’ where the frog’s splash fractures the silence to remind him that in the stillness of a pond, there is sound, there is life that brings him back from the ether to the frog.
But not wanting to lose my haiku-writing cells, I’m still writing with the prompts privately and continuing with my haibun memoir, some of which or excerpts of which I’ll post here once in a while.
into fog (my first tanka in print)
into fog
we lose who we are
under oaks
first a weight in the eyes
then our hands no longer ours
copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
First published in Eucalypt: a tanka journal 10 2011 Edited by Beverley George
One of five tanka from which Elizabeth Howard, past winner, had picked her best choice or a winner in the issue.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry. A sad note comes with this post as I lose friends on this site who are leaving for other clear meadows, Adam, Brian, Chris G, Claudia and Pete. I’ve gained a steady ground from which my poetry had soared from their constant nourishment in generous words. I’ll really miss you! But come check us out for this last One Shot with the team.
nightmare (for One Shoot Sunday)
Picture prompt by Rosie Hardy
the last drop of turpentine
stains the moon on the landscape
she conjured
out of yarn that wobbled
like disembodied Adam’s apple
talking to her of a man
she pulled a meadow
where cows wear earrings
and metal buckled boots
they stomp on blue irises
eat white poppies and sneezing
blow balloons from their noses
she draws a woman in a shed
whittling an arrow for a son, but
where’s the boy
a blond head and arms like sticks
legs broken in angles appears
astride on a cow
the moon comes rising
mid spring among the grumbling oaks
their skin brittle as glass crack
the wind is cruel in the meadow
it sweeps in gales and shifts corners
unexpected
she runs out of turpentine
as the white mice appear in between
the boy and a grinning calf
the spaces she overlooked
now scurrying as swift as the wind
she wallops a blob of blue
as if the sky does not cause
clouds that mutate into white mice
the last of the turpentine drips
to the woman’s lap
where is the man and son ask
the elder berries
the woman leaps to dance
the dance of the moon when crazed
by the giggling stars
not stars but tickling
white mice has the woman stoned
after the dance to shake
her nightmare off
she doesn’t waken even as the man wills
to turn himself into a bearded mouse
the painting clears out
in the dream the woman in the shed
becomes a petulant woman wearing
white breasts and the man-mouse
has multiplied on her
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry from a prompt by Rosie Hardy. This inimitable site for poets and artists starts the first Sunday of its second year, winning a Shorty Award for the Arts in its first year. Check out what made it win!
I wish to thank Adam, Chris G, Brian, Pete and Claudia again for having done a wonderful job. NO word is ever enough for what I feel I’ve gained from OSP.
this change of name (to celebrate Vancouver’s 125th year and my soon-to-have Canadian citizenship for One Shot Wednesday)
it is
a matter of spelling
only
this change of name
or am i fooling
the skies i look up to
the clouds
none i can name
the mountains
that shimmer
stealing in in stead
the names
of mountain ranges
facing East
among its jungles
my spirit roosts
alien snow
now smoothers
my laughter
i drift aground
is earth
unlike the sun
untouched
by sorrow?
i hear
from mourning doves
the language
of dawns
i mismatch
evening clouds
in my dreams
the chill stays
yet the sparrow
shares its songs
that seep into my sleep
lull my world
i regain my name
on Hollyburn
where a lotus by itself
on the lake
such poignancy
mirorring my loneliness
soaks the sun
as if enough
i trail the buds
lined along the Fraser’s North Arm
winding down and up
the river bed
the tide cuts a line
between my dreams and the sky
ripples catch my breathing
in rhythmic sighs
i’m scaling the breast
of Burnaby Mounains
my soul resists
its longings
i’m close to home
close to sinking
in the foam
skirting Horseshoe Bay
an eagle skims
my rhyming
my longings weave
in and out of the air
on a skein
of cherry blossoms
once only paintings on scrolls
i learn to haiku
thinking of moths
in my childhood those slivers of light
that die on the light
and fade in the morning
on my waking
i am who has always been
the city aground on my steps
whose name i can now say
even in sleep–
Vancouver
copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Written for Vancouver’s 125th anniversary (supposedly for a poetry collection but whose deadline I missed, and also in celebration of my soon-to-be Canaadian citizenship–I’m taking my oath in a few days, after four years of my arrival as immigrant). Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Come share your art and check out a great number of terrific lines from other poets.
baseball haiku or senryu? (from NaHaiWriMo site)
a.
all eyes up
not on the moon but the ball—
a Yankee scores*
(*I’m a Yankees fan)
b.
ninth inning—
she chews on the last bite
of her Babe Ruth
c.
flock of birds–
the Blue Jays bat the Orioles
out of Camden Yards
posted on 06/23 under the prompt ball games at the FB NaHaiWriMo site
unfinished tales (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Neil Alexander
at nightfall
a herded flock of sheep bearing
flasks of prayers
bleat on their steps
toward the temple
in the distance
crows scream for mercy
the broken tower
unleashes bats sniggering
at the sheep
in the darkness
the owl hoots at a pregnant moon
who smiles at shrinking Mars
the stars in his court simpering
conspire with the moon
in the thorny bushes
men braid their way into the night
on their heads their gifts
wobble like heads of wearied gods
once revered
seething fireflies their pin eyes
darting among snoring bees
beguile the men
who mesmerized by the light
melt on their knees
spirits splatter
on yesterday’s thorns turned
night embers burning the temple
far off where prayers thicken
barnacled walls
Dawn fans the dying
souls of the moaning sheep
and the whimpering men
the bats coat the temple tower
with their leavings
on the altar awaiting gifts
the gods disentangle
their limbs but leave their hearts
to morning worshippers
hankering for unfinished tales
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, the gathering place that has been the most fertile ground for my poetry where among the most talented poets and artists whose invaluable nurturing caused me to wildly bloom. I thank Adam, Chris G, Claudia, Pete and Brian’s endless unfailing smiles who are leaving OSP and especially Joy and Jenne, goddesses of the lyrical realm for me, for my growth. Thanks especially for the Sunday page, Chris and Adam, these have driven me to work on original pieces I could never have written. It has been for me a blast of 28 weeks and as you had promised Adam, Chris, Claudia and Brian, I hope to meet you again or please seek me out when you are orbiting in the spheres again! I really can’t thank your enough for your support and uplifting words about each poem I’ve written for OSP.
Night Scents: the truth about roses (for One Shot Wednesday)
Evening has fallen, tarnishing all translucence. Daffodils, for one, sprayed like comet behind a picket fence, are now turned-down copper bells. Magnolias, that crowd of plump cheeks on Warren Avenue, now doze on bruised faces.
Only dogwoods on front lawns seem to take evening fall with grace. Their crown, a dull mantle in daylight, has turned into iridescent lace while on the ground ivy has thickened, breathing like a ghost.
Not colors but scents have taken over life in the dying day. But nothing like vapors that seem solid like steam or fog or mist, just weightless molecules spinning in the air.
‘Fragrant’ seems paltry if it were to mean the scent of violets blindly met along a cypress hedge on Montgomery St.—a bouquet part spicy part sweet like a potion for a faint spirit. ‘Perfumed’ weighs gaudily on jasmine for its scent from a terrace on Battery St. descends as faint as a memory—fleeting like all moments that come back to haunt.
.
The nose, is it? Or perhaps the heart leads the nose to track down the scent of roses. Some flourish in unlikely spots; they trap the heart in a patch back of a kitchen on Riverside, for instance. Here, rose bushes wear open faces. No secret chambers there.
Even in the evening, rose blooms thrust up as if to sing—but not to sing, perhaps more to sigh. Listen then and breathe for in opening their lips, their scent also escapes. Note that only in the evening this truth about roses is revealed: their scent hints at sour drops and salt sprays, tears and regrets and the million contradictions lodged in the heart.
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2009
Published in Eleventh Flash in the Pan at Tiny Lights magazine
Posted for One Shot Wednesday 53rd week at One Stop Poetry, that inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Check out what we share and do hop in!
random haiku (from my posts at the NaHaiWriMo wall)
a.
reggae–
the sun dripping
on his basin
b.
she hurtles
notes into the rapids—
the jazz pianist
c.
homecoming–
he smiles
into her fingers
d.
chrysalis—
the other life
begins
e.
his purring
on cellos from my CD player—
evening thrum
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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