cackling
the measured widths we shrink into
talking in the darkness like late crickets heaving up a molehill
a cackle of office meniscus
summer drizzle a wet stone growing an ear
in a sonogram frog song
lollipops in the basket some promises un-swapped
war of the fishes stilled in a pitted clam shell
otata November 2017
three works (they say/about the spheres/interpretentions)
1.
they say
mountain clouds
implode in a colic
a stare brings on
revolts
snow buntings invite
green eyes
fibrous bones
roll down a mulch hill
a rasp in his caws
one catches
wild weeds
pierce fresh wombs
in a clam shell
of not-thereness
2.
about the spheres
a wink enough to lift the moon’s hem
a slivered blue licks paradise
part grit part fluff the foaming universe
constellations stringing rocks into falsies
concoctions a boom of moon craters
3.
interpretentions
with my lips, I accept the many ways grass wears dew that Van Gogh kept secret
I agonize so much so that my stomach contracts regurgitating Dali’s white lies
a valley of lilies I hurtle into with eyes closed on Monet skinny dipping
the spastic leg throws of marionettes as Picasso dreamt I can
together shedding barnacles from cliffs chipped clean in cubes Mondrian says his own
thieves inhabit the hippocampus of dawn beetles scaling the spirals of Gaudi’s nights
my singed heart hurts so the onyx solitaire Klee entraps with dancing threads
otata April 2017
your lullaby evening star my heart for broken wings (sequence for Mama for One Stop Poetry Sunday)
To Mama, a bamboo orchid her favorite flower, courtesy of wikipedia
your lullaby
all i can remember–
roosting sparrow
evening star–
your fingers the comb
for my tangled mind
your eyes my sister’s
my heart for broken wings
from you
i say Mama
and the wind entwines me
to the moon
i call you
and the night hums
in three lines:
your lullaby evening star my heart for broken wings
and the wind entwines me to the moon
and the night hums
Mama
Coyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for Mother’s Day at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Awards for the Arts, an inimitbale gathering of poets and artists who share their love for their art and nurture each other. Check us out.
all i can see (sequence in black and white, take off from the NaHaiWriMo facebook site)
all i can see–
black and white
in your eyes
gray–
when the sun falls
on your lies
black–
dregs settling
our arguments
white–
our window blinds
turned down
ashes
on the burner your note
in black and white
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
(take off from Melissa Allen’s prompt, black and white, at the still-on NaHaiWriMo facebook site)
haibun (rewrite with deletions)
More and more news on Japan. More and more images of movie-like devastation in Sendai. Lives and homes and things dissolved like play things, bouncing on waves cardboard-like–as well as plums and cherry trees perhaps, how would Sendai spring be like now? Where these haven’t been uprooted, here’s how my friend, mi hermana, Margaret Dornaus (haikudoodle) sees it in a haiku:
weeping cherry . . .
so many blossoms downcast
by spring’s heartbreak
What do you see? You may wish to share it here or simply write it for yourself. Let’s offer them like incense for Japan.
melancholia (sequence) begins with my first ever haiku
in the haze,
crow circling bare trees
finally alights
while sun
tints bay, i dive skimming
crimson-bottomed boats
duck pairs braid
shadows on my back—
i slurp refuse
gulls overhead fight
over what’s left,
screaming mute—
the same scraps
i tossed in my daze
a moment earlier
before i plunged–
melancholia
First published in LYNX XXIII:3 October 2008
in the haze, I found among my notes is the first ever haiku I wrote. The ‘haiku moment’? A drive to Aberdeen from the Federal Hill in Baltimore. Autumn had greyed on desolate trees. Crows in such skies even then had seemed to me both sinister and comforting–the first because of their eyes, the second, their astuteness.
Soon after more of my haiku ‘doodling’ (to borrow mi hermana’s blog title), I strung them into this sequence with ‘haze and the crow’ as the theme and sent it to Werner Reichold. The day LYNX came out with it and two more sequences, three tanka and a haibun, I found a biographical sketch on Hart Crane’s death; it was as if I knew it when I put together this sequence.
winter moods (sequence that worked)
November sky
rains into stray runnels
into cesspools
drenched in the rain
city pavements let no step
leave a sign
on paved walls–
I trace the patchwork
by the moody rain
catching winter clouds
shielding for themselves alone
the marine blue sky
up frosty mountain peaks—
i wonder about the lily
in a summer pond
Published in LYNX XXVI:I, February 2011
A ‘sequence’ is another haiku-related form in English haiku where individual haiku along the same theme are put together. I seem to have better chances in getting accepted with it although most of my sequences have only been published in LYNX and The Cortland Review (Issue 39, ‘revenant’) not a haiku and its related forms but a poetry journal.
The form comes rather easily to me–I do it even here with my posts; when I start composing right here, one haiku often isn’t enough for an image/thought/moment that comes to mind. Sometimes I want to give up on writing haiku and perhaps just get on with my poetry, which seems to have given me a more distinctive voice but haiku whips me back to shape with its discipline and brevity. I look at it as a wisp of air, a mist, fog swarming over me so I may fade and be one with it.
And so, to add a haiku to this sequence
stepping into the fog
knowing
i, too, fade
route (sequence with a lesson on how to breathe life to a ‘lifeless haiku’)
on a bench—
granny arching
to a waltz
on the ground
black-eyed posies,
but not for me
over head
a robin trills, i race
the train
pine strand
flailing in night sky—
the first low star
pasta bowl
and cranberry juice
with no one
Published in LYNX XXIII:3, October 2008
These were separate haiku I labored to make ‘perfect’ but hardly ever tried to submit, having at that time received one rejection after another. And so, I put them together as a titled sequence and got an acceptance from Werner Reichold, my first publication after my one and only haiku award from VCBF haiku invitational.
But as I’m won’t to do, two of the haiku have since danced on into a full poem in free verse: #3 became “first kiss” posted here for One Shoot Sunday, #4 out of the image ‘flailing in the night sky’, I wrote “revenant” published in The Cortland Review.
Lesson: on how to save one’s own self from ‘grief’ of a ‘lifeless haiku’ or how to breathe life on a ‘lifeless haiku’
Do not delete/discard/bury it. Instead, keep it wrapped in angels’ wings.
Let it sleep the sleep of bulbs of daffodils and star lilies.
Wait for spring in your spirit.
And then, unwrap them, buff them and watch the wings stir, flapping weakly at first.
And then, with your touch, watch the lines soar!
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.
how love is not spelled (two sequences)
1.
on the wall—
scribbled notes
my bank of mementoes
—
on sand–
footmarks receding
let go of my shadow
—
seagulls
prance a quatrain screaming
my loneliness
—
i step on
angels and unicorns
trapped in the snow
—
pigeons whoosh up
spray the sky, laughing
at my mud-soaked feet
—
2.
my broken heart—
wilting like a cabbage rose
in a mulch bed
—
in the evening
dew on petals splatter
with my tears
—
under the moon
my fingers on keys–
a pulse
—
waiting
which letter comes first—
evening shower
—
on the window
a trickle
does not spell love
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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