flaring petals (haiga link)
I can’t figure out how to add the visual (media) here, and so, please click on the link to view the haiga. Sorry!
flaring petals
breath within breath
their dawn
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
Surrender (at “Many Windows” Magnapoets 2011 anthology series 4)
On her lens a pair of wild weeds
swayed from a rock by the edge of the lake
blooming tips brushing as if in light kisses
a moving oneness that flashed at me.
On the scrabble board back home
I set the letter “s” for “surrender”.
“Tell me how,” she had asked. My answer,
like waves folding onto each other these:
The way flowers let the wind play
on weakness touching but not breaking
a kind of touch that instructs bees on
gentleness—a kiss that leaves
no mark—that glues the heart, the way
the mind pulls threads off words
let gather from winds bowers of leaves
a nest for globules of light,
name the globules love the way wind
blows out the light the way
darkness kneads itself to make love real,
the way night lets the wind sough
a kind of song that shreds the light,
clouds the heart the way the wind
tempts the dawn.
Grit not tears fractures sight
the way the wind lets dust ride, whispering
words the way some words run into verses
to crack the bolts that quarantine
lovers, unleashing them to surrender
to flee to bloom, the way
the weed pair let the wind swing,
lash at them, the way they flex together
how like love could stay possible
where it isn’t, musn’t.
First published in “Many Windows”, 2011 Magnapoets Anthology Series 4, Edited by Aurora Antonovic
Thank you, Elle, for the inspiration.
(photo: esangeles 2010, Harrison Springs, BC, Canada)
some of my spring haiku with French translation by Serge Tome@tempslibres.org
gray spring dawn-
the shiver of daffodils
in my bones
aube grise de printemps –
le frisson des jonquilles
dans mes os
this cold-
Sakura cherry blossoms
on my window
ce froid –
fleurs de cerisiers Sakura
à ma fenêtre
this sunless spring day
chickadees chatter on-
my indecisions
ce jour de printemps sans soleil
les mésanges discutent –
mes indécisions
watching rain
drum beat on window pane–
the deaf cat
il regarde la pluie
tambouriner sur la vitre —
le chat sourd
spring fever–
shoots among the lilies
she can’t name
fièvre de printemps —
des pousses parmi les lys
qu’elle ne peux nommer
tempslibres.org
the sun’s footfalls (random lines not quite haiku)
…this is really me, writing, unshackled by poetic (all forms, genres) discipline. Call me untamed, even feral. I’ll agree. But this is my true spirit that I must let roam once in a while like today.
*
burnt orange the sun’s footfalls
moon flitting
from staccato dawn
an owl hoots
a scrabbling in the pine copse raccoon eyes
is the fox a man in his dream?
snow melt
zebra
snorts
at jet stream
moonset
ivy wall
in its shadowed side
sunlit sighs
five haiku, my offering for National Haiku Poetry Day
moon flitting
from staccato dawn
an owl hoots
swigging in the pine copse raccoon eyes
is the fox a man in his dream?
snow melt
a zebra
snorts
at jet stream
moonset
ivy wall
its shadowed side
sunlit sighs
my bilingual haiku, tanka and free verse for National Poetry of the Month guest post at haikudoodle
Excerpts from Margaret Dornaus’ blog today
http://haikudoodle.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/national-poetry-month-guest-post-6-alegria-imperial/
(or click on haikudoodle on my blogroll)
haiku
(Iluko with English translations by the author)
batbato iti
kapanagan
sabsabong ti sardam
stones
on the riverbank
dawn flowers…
LYNX XXIV: February 2009
tanka (Iluko with English translations by the author)
ayuyang-limdo
diay aripit ballasiw
ditoy a sumken
sinit a nalidliduan
nagtinnag nga anem-em
a haunt for sadness
the dried creek at the crossroad
here they recur
those untended flushes
turned chronic fevers…
LYNX XXV (June): 2, 2010
agsapa (in Iluko with translations by the author)
by Alegria Imperial
naimayeng
dagiti bituen idi mangngegda
ti as-asug
dagiti bulong iti sipnget
narba
dagiti pinatanor ti lawag
iti danarudor
dagiti agam-ammangaw
Bannawag, the Ilocano vernacular magazine of the Ilocos region in northern Philippines, May 16, 2009
dawn
(a loose translation with some nuances substituted as in some verbs, which in Iluko already imply a subject, and nouns that need no adjectives)
startled,
stars fell in the dark
among leaves
pining over lost suns–
loves
that light birthed
drowned in the roar of the
faithless….
http://haikudoodle.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/national-poetry-month-guest-post-6-alegria-imperial/
night hatching dawn (Merry Christmas)
sitting it out
with night hatching dawn
Merry Christmas
***
of the hundreds
in the forest, crow trims
a pine tip
***
twelfth day
my true love bakes for Christmas
a partridge in pear
Love, joy and peace to all of you dear jornales and wordpress friends. We’re on to almost a whole year of sharing such message of the season with poetry. Blessed is how I consider myself having touched you all. This season as I’ve repeatedly said so, I’d like to thank you again. May the New Year find us even more deeply engaged in poetry, hence, in love, joy, and peace.
(Haiku are also posted at NaHaiWriMo under the prompt ‘Christmas’. Image from my camera, one of my many shots–in the dark, literally–of the million lights spangled at Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver every Christmas.)
doves/winter dawn/eyes (haiku on relationships at NaHaiWriMo)
1.
cooing
we slip past
the brambles
3.
winter dawn
grayer than her tresses
on his chest
3.
eyes
locked in adoration
my cat and i
Nov 25th prompt by Carlos Colon at the still ongoing National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaWriMo facebook site) with slight editing of #1.