‘on pointed toes’, ‘haze’ (my two tanka in LYNX Oct 2012)
1
on pointed toes
like ripples, why not?
if floating
the way we do in void
we find what matters
2
haze
like the opaqueness we dread
a crust
the guise soft hearts
take on to survive
LYNX October 2012
unfinished poems (for One Shot Wednesday)
red rose in a fluted vase sitting on its petals
for no one pretending prettiness passes
for love…
the gift in its box but a heart
unwrapped its beating unfelt like the ease
a lover leaves at dawn…
notes left unwritten cloud the heart
wilt on tight buds in a garden
awaiting a storm…
in the soil roots fight over names
like delphiniums like fuschia like hostas where
have heather dug stiffness out of hairs or simply rise
as rose at dawn…
the hand drenched in the haze sags under the moon
the night has so much to say so few
understand…
for us and the stars among sparrows spits turn
talisman in the dark as a dream finds a nymph
on a moss a croak becomes you…
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry. Come on in. Join me and other poets in this gathering place.
spring breeze/haze/blind alley (random haiku for the day)
spring breeze–
nothing but a touch
from a wisteria tip
haze–
when out of the bushes
a squirrel leaps
blind alley–
between your word and mine
a wrong turn
fire on fire (for One Shot Wednesday)
the whelp carouses
under el arbol de fuego blazing
rubbing a hind leg in rhythmic
push at the fevered trunk
dust gathers a small storm
a haze in the roots
of the birds-of-paradise
she prowls the hive
of a mid-equinox sun a tremor
in her steps touches the stones balking
at the rumour: Venus
has sipped from Pluto’s venom
she conceives black tongues
the women read on leaves
the sun descending stalls
midway on her whipping the whelp
for felling el arbor de fuego
as if fire on fire does not
consume the elements
in the wind the yelping
shreds the buds of trees
her screams draw
the night in moaning as if
torture is ecstasy
when body and soul those
tautened strings
lure hands to hammer
chords whimpering
she arcs her breasts
to suckling tongues of fire
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, a gathering place for some of the most talented poets and artists ever. Share yours with their love for their art.
my ‘yikes!’ haiku (from a suite of the first-ever haiku I submitted to THN)
1.
moon rise
on church window,
mom and I holding hands
2.
magnolia petals
in the wind—
the rush at my wedding
3.
shredded blooms
on my hair—
writing on my journal
4.
spring rain—
the taste of salt spray
the first time
5.
first spring walk—
a clump of drooping snowdrops
black patch smaller
6.
against the haze
a hedge of briar roses—
my unfinished poem
These and the rest in the suite of ten haiku, of course, came back declined. You might want to let me know why, first, and then, I’ll write a self-critique.
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.
who can believe (one Shoot Sunday)
the glitz, but a masquerade
a sheer veil behind the haze
for all I hear
slush scrunched underfoot–
what pain in my heart a thousand
baubles thrown on ground
dripping rain slowing down
to creep on eaves so agonizingly glassy–
the dirt shows
heaving trains on stops rumbling as herds
stomping into dreams of slumbering
seeds, mine
how to halt
some hundred puffs of violins ascending
infinity cannot but be an illusion of hearing
a whimper skittering on air, mine
crinkling the silence no one hears–
beneath the blinders
the blinding lights–
who can save me disbelieving
I in masquerade
am searching for a prayer
Photo by Mike Roemer
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry blog from a photograph of Mike Roemer. Join other poets and artists who love what they do.
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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