a simple test (a non-haikai play of verses)
what cranks the wheel
why we need to care
which way to hold an infant
how to wipe dry the tears
when to turn away an eye
whose hand to hold on a cliff
whatever happens in dreams
whichever flower to lay on a tomb
however a name sounds
whenever a manacle breaks
whosoever belongs to whom
where to bury endings
because wounds bleed
laughter crackles
smiles break walls
sobs thicken nights
giggles bring in the dawn
sighs stir cankered clouds
words breathe life to bones
wings shade a peregrine
ponds feed moonlight
I will brave the deep
vow on a mountain
promise with the galaxies
pledge on steel
believe moons stay
Meanwhile, I’m writing non-haikai* poetry–here’s my 14th
No. 14 (non-haikai) curlicues
who would imagine
a laced peace banquet of soldier ants
bowling over a strange lobster
as war winds whoosh in
tumbling half filled cups
meanwhile, hidden in bushes
a truce between magpies stalls
over recyclable ladles
beyond the gates
arthritic oak limbs crackle
as a diagnosis befalls
dusky walls about an orphan’s
spelling of melan chocolic
somewhere, a homecoming sergeant
with wounds missing skin eats a map
as devastation news
swarm on beaches where algae
turns toxic red dye
a moss hill rises on a hero’s nose
and on the street renamed Desire…erasures
in a battle manifesto
*nod to Johannes S.H. Berg, editor of bones, a journal for new haiku, who coined non-haikai rising as they do from a swarm of haiku. Tell me, what you think, will you please?
My 2012-13 published haiku…I hope you like them!
selected published haiku (international haiku journals)
her stiff lip
breaks into a smile
clown for hire
***
swinging
on hooped earrings
bag lady’s air
***
weaving in and out
of whole conversations
his Pinocchio nose
LYNX June 2013
xxx
insomnia—
a restless dream
stalks the moon
moongarlic ezine 1:1, May 2013
xxx
moss bed
a moonbeam sits
on my lap
A Hundred Gourds May 2013
xxx
bilingual haiku
(Iluko)
panagawid–
nakabaklay kaniak ti napilay
nga Apo Init
(English)
homebound–
perched on my shoulder
a lame sun
(Iluko)
panaglunag ti niebe–
agririn dagiti billit
gapu ken Apo init
(English)
thaw–
sun sparks a row
among the wrens
(Iluko)
sabsabong ti sardam
agararudoken kas mabain
ti duduogan a bulan
(English)
dawn flowers—
creeping away as if shy
the old moon
(Iluko)
ranitrit dagiti kawayn
iti baet ti danarudor didaya–
arko ti kanta dagiti bulilising
(English)
bamboo creaks
between a roaring in the east–
an arc of bird song
kernels 1:1 April 2013
xxx
between us
a pie cut
of infinities
Notes from the Gean, April 2013
xxx
still pond—
not a hole in the sky
I swallowed
Notes from the Gean, March 2013
xxx
turtle pond
a girl shares unshelled
peanuts
One of seven in a four-week run of 28 as contributing poet at DailyHaiku’s Cycle 14
October to March, 2013
xxx
tomorrow still a house of knives
Bones 1:1 December 2012
xxx
overcast
an orange scarf flails
on the clothesline
Multiverses 1:1 June 2012
xxx
figuring out
wintry patterns
fretwork sky
Daily Haiku Selection Mainichi, Japan
Feb. 20, 2012
evening wall (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by James Rainsford
the evening wall
leaks morning in silence
a tremor
in the breeze alters the vines
leaves dance disgraced
for river stones
but my cave resists
the shame
i dig into my bones
for secrets
complicities the dark sharpens
the stench of fear
light alludes to ageing roses
in truth
rotting roots falsehoods
smoother
in the night
i listen to winds lash
at recalcitrant stars
then limping in the heights fall
a thin flight through the bars
a moth
hissing on its wings
my cage
burdens reckoning
crude mornings lie to me
disguised as Venus rising
i cannot tell
in my fallow depths
who awaits for me to relent
cawing
(c) Copyright by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shoot Sunday with picture prompt by James Rainsford for One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the one place to gather for poets and artists to share their love for their art. Check us out. Click on my blogroll for OSP.
sunless spring day haiku
1.
gray spring dawn–
the shiver of daffodils
in my bones
2.
this cold–
Sakura cherry blossoms
on my window
3.
this sunless spring day
chickadees chatter on–
my indecisions
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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