random haiku (and by the way, check out haikuverse)
it’s over
the singing in the twigs–
leafing maples
***
as if not enough
to bloom skin to skin–
Rhodoras
***
from such a tangle
such primness in pink–
clematis
***
Queen Anne’s lace
on dog run’s collar
endangered
***
crow on cawing:
why grate
on each phrase?
This season just keeps bursting at me at each turn though I hardly stray from runnels of my days–same route to the bus stop, same side of the sidewalk, same crescent turn to the skytrain escalator. I even peek at the same display window, pass under the same now budding maples–the gingko flails its wavy twigs in the breeze already knobbed. I’ve counted tens of the dandelions from open-faced mini suns to those fearsome globes of hairy seeds, aha more threats to ruin seeded grass lawns. And yet and yet, without me looking up for stars, divining paths I may one day skid on, I do leap and be lifted often unaware by random gifts that turn into haiku.
This art certainly turns anyone who gives in to it into an “addict”, that is, if as defined by Webster not “one dependent on drugs” but one who “devotes or gives in” or in a ‘pejorative’ but to me, more truthful sense, one who “practices sedulously”. Once I woke up literally one day on lines burning into haiku that could work, some kind of a template engraved itself in my brain. The amazing nature of haiku is that once written, the template clears and the poet hardly recalls it. I used to wonder about this when meeting a poet I’ve read whose haiku I memorized and when I’d cite it to him would hang his head to scour what where when he wrote it, unless it won a grand prize. Not that I’ve attained any of that stature but perhaps because of my “sedulous-ness”–I must have written a couple of hundreds mostly “yikes haiku” by now–I’m beginning to forget what got published where or what has been written about this on this or that flower, bee, bird, star, moon.
It’s so easy to conclude that the universe is infinite because in the vastness, we turn into less than grit. In haiku, this truth is its essence. No wonder the ‘template’ self-erases like a magic slate because another truth soon has to imprint itself on it. What’s even more magical is how such truth reveals itself–no, not precisely at that moment when my feet, for instance, brush by the transmogrified dandelions but when in the dark I sink into space. Or like right now as I “sedulously” write into this void of a screen.
And voila some truths that ring in a greater haiku poet’s mind who picks it up multiply. Take my haiku “it has to end…” Friend Melissa Allen, truly turning out to be a haiku master who also diligently shares endless knowledge about the art and its many forms, has included that haiku in her latest edition of haikuverse! I’m thrilled no end. Check out Red Dragonly in my blogroll now!
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)
believing/faces i miss (haiku on NaHaiWriMo facebook wall)
believing
we’re walled in–
my goldfish and i
faces i miss–
some rain-washed stones
on neighbor’s wall
(re-worked haiku I posted on the still-on NaHaiWriMo facebook wall from a prompt by my friend, Melissa Allen: walls)
Silence (perhaps a haibun inspired by Red Dragonfly)
Silence is not the absence of sound. A sheer wall in the mind perhaps. A blockade for the heart. One cannot hear a heartbeat. The whoozing of blood in and out of ventricles. Blubbering air in the lungs. A grumbling emptiness in guts. Random complaints from muscles trapped in passions.
Silence is a gaping space. Traps what fills air waves. Winds fissures of earth slurp. Secrets blossoms share. Coughing of uncouth machines. Grating wheels those dumpsters edging out magpies. The cawing of crows to be understood. Marble chirps colliding with fresh acorns among the pines. Sonatas on toes around the rim of dreams.
Births are seeded in silence. In secret. The first cry is a child of silence. Wakefulness its gender. Words its ears. And eyes.
morning glow
she watches tea leaves swirl
in the cup a bird
a quiver on an oak branch
a flight in the silence
(c) Alegria Imperial 2011
A morning exercise inspired by Melissa Allen’s sharing of her haiku and haibun in the current issue of Chrysanthemum. (Click on my blogroll for Red Dragonfly’s post today.) But for me, this is only an attempt at haibun. I think it’s more poetry outside of the genre and needs more work. I’m sharing it though as an example of how an inspiration springs and just flows or billows in.
‘deception’ prompt by Melissa Allen at NaHaiWriMo (yes, it’s still on!)
chameleon–
wondering who you are
now
eclipse–she changes her alias
in the morning
her puppet voice
in person his voice thinner
The National Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo) continues on the facebook site. Causing such frenzy among haiku writers of all stages–the masters and beginners encouraging and liking each other–its admin decided to keep it going. Michael Dylan Welch created the magnificant site in February. Alan Summers took over last month (March) to give the daily prompts, perks with great uplifiting words on the haiku and the poet, and some instant workshop with lessons. Melissa Allen (note my badge: ‘She, Red Dragonly, is my friend’) tackles this month’s prompts, as well as the rest, and I’m sure more of what often made the postings rather ‘wild’. Go get a facebook account and join in!
pine tips (a haiku rewritten from a non-haiku)
pine tips holding up
to the winter sky–
how low can stars fall?
the non-haiku
Pine strands
flailing: how low can stars fall?
Why I think it’s not haiku:
1. it doesn’t have the two parts of a haiku
2. the first part is an incomplete thought, also, wrong word usage–strands don’t quite describe pine branches and flailing suggests something like strips or threads or strands like hair which could describe willow branches–hence,
3. the second part is meaningless or
4. the juxtaposition does not work
5. therefore, it’s not a haiku moment
Perhaps the rewritten version works better though I’m still uncertain about it. The second part might be, as Patrick G would describe, ‘author-driven’. But I’m quite content that I’m seeing batches of non-haiku I’ve written more clearly, and writing haiku that work sometimes.
What had helped? Reading a lot, interacting with haiku lovers-writers who have turned friends-who-care like Patrick Gillespie at poemshape and Margaret Dornaus at haikudoodle, but reading especially Melissa Allen’s haikuverse at red dragonfly. And there’s the monthly meeting with my Haiku Vancouver Group!
five rabbits from Snow Country chasing a red dragonfly
Or my title should be
five rabbits from Snow Country got lost in Madison chasing a red dragonfly and flew and flew to Vancouver
My friend, Melissa Allen’s prize of a book finally arrived yesterday, the bubble envelop dented, its edges wavy–signs of that long flight from the opposite side of North America! I fought to disentagle the two-inch tape that secured a package which when I pulled out glowed as the sheer treasures that they are.
Melissa did not only give away her second copy of the more exquisite UNESCO edition of Yasunari Kawabata’s “Snow Country”, she also enclosed two hand-crafted rabbit new year greeting cards, one of them a rabbit origami, the other a cut-out rabbit coated with tiny blossoms and butterflies on hand-made paper; and three creatively picked cards–one of them a cut-out from something like a children’s book, and another a 1909 cottontail rabbit postcard hazed by the sepia of years ( I now have in my possession a 102 year-old postcard!). I regressed, as childlike I held them close, peering into the rabbits’ eyes.
And oh, she lovingly wrapped the book in blue pastel petal prints and tied it with a matching blue string. Her dedication wasn’t written plainly on the title page but on a cutout of yes, an unusual breed of brown rabbit.
Here they are in the order Melissa arranged them so I could unfold the haiku messages on friendship she had handwritten :
card no. 1
greeting and haiku
new year
a new friend becomes
an old friend
–MLA
rabbit #2 folding away/the year/paper rabbit
rabbit caught among my winter roses
haiku and quote of a dialogue between two rabbits
new year
opening the door
for a friend
–MLA
“Can I come in?”
said the bunny.
“Yes,” said the bunny.
And so he did.
rabbit #4
rabbit #5
postmark and clipping on the cottontail rabbits-
Year of the rabbit
I give away
the litter
–MLA
The Cottontail Rabbits (Sylvilagus floridaus and relatives)
Several kinds of cottontail rabbits, and their allies the brush and swamp rabbits which lack the conspicuous “cotton tail” range collectively from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. These denizens of the briar and brush patch afford pleasure to those who love to watch them when at rest, or their headlong dash for cover at the least alarm.
"Snow Country" unwrapped
title page
New Year–
last year’s mistakes mended
with snow patches
–Melissa Allen (“red dragonfly”)
If this is not a shower of all the blossoms I can’t name that rabbits brush in their search for carrot patches, tell me how less lucky I am–more so with “red dragonfly” friends
winning the race
rabbit number six switches tag
with number one
For me from hereon on every…
first snow–
the rabbits’ fur
whiter
After Melissa (Red Dragonfly)
After Melissa’s latest post: explaining why a haiku is written or what’s the story behind your haiku?
This haiku came out of the fragments of some days. Like coming in and out of the courtyard from the back door for me to go up the third floor to our condo apartment, I hardly ever miss to glance at the garden. Frostbitten now, ruined by the rains and so far, one snowfall, the day lilies have liquified into mush like some neglected salad greens in the fridge; the roses but a memory of silk petals, now all cracked petrified limbs. The bald red maple strung with rainbow bulbs hardly hints at the red dragonflies–its pod sacks–swinging on its twigs. Muddied mounds by a corner used to be azaleas burning in fuschia. The rest have shed their names with their flowers except for the hydrangeas as if preserved in stained sepia though utterly disheveled. Alana from penthouse #7, in whose hands these bloomed, passes by the garden unstopping unlike me. But I imagine her indifference as merely a masquerade for a broken heart. I imagined in a gesture of finality for her heart to let heal and begin again…
she uproots
her disheveled hydrangeas–
first day of the year
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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