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
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.
i have no name (for One shoot Sunday)
Heather Nelson, photo by India Hobson
the owl
sees through me he digs
my heart
the truth about names
i am muneca
a filament of being
you drew
from rambling waterfalls
on my cheeks
you shaped a winter sky
my eyes and the temple tower
vie for light
you punctured
my lips so deep i gurgle
my defiance
of your desire
restless
your fingers knead
my neck to smoothen
veins you embedded
i leap in spasms
my death as brief
as your breath in my
clogged vena cava
you think
i am perfect in your hands
i grow molds
in the day
my skin liquifies
as you dream i am life
the owl reveals
i have no name
muneca a doll
of your melting eyes
has no heart
Posted from a photo image by India Hobson for One Shoot Sunday at One Shot Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for Art given last week in New York. Come join us at this gathering place and meet talented poets and artists who share their love for their art.
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.
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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