STREET NEWS an experiment on mixing haibun and haiga (haibunga)
Street news (a haibun)
A school of clams caused a shoreline village to gather whispers. A fisherman proposed that the shaman must talk to the chief clam. What about? A boy asked. The chief clam passed the word around…
hum by hum
moonlight floods
the secret code
Betrayed, the villagers turned to the clams and pried them open. In the streets, a furor rages…
about time
the chill turns
a white page
‘duayya’ (lullaby): taking a break from haiku to free verse
the birds will soon forget
how much the sun cradled the flowers
to bear the seeds
so easily borne
in the wind
so swift
to scatter to land
and bed and root
and be transformed
but for now the singing
heightens
each day as the sun begins
a lullaby
so unlike us
so unaware of our songs
we bloom and bed
and scour around
so we may seed
you and i
but fail to find a lullaby
so swift to turn away to forget
why we held hands in the moonlight
Also posted at my other blog, inner spaces, at http://gimperial.wordpress.com
*duayya (lullaby in Iluko of the northernmost region of the Philippine archipelago, my native tongue)
butterfly/and hummingbird–/after the same flower (and my other flower haiku at Sketchbook)
monarch butterfly courtesy of wikicommons
butterfly
and hummingbird—
after the same flower
snowdrop–
will I ever see
your face?
magnolias–
the longing begins
at moonrise
cherry blossoms
shedding in the moonlight—
the Milky Way
tulips—
recalling
my first kiss
salmon berry blossom:
how deep is your heart
for a hummingbird?
Published in haiku thread,Sketchbook April-May 2011 (kigo: flower)
red (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Walter Parada
the truth about red:
my heart is like a man’s
although it flickers not throbs
as the Sun I am absent at the zenith
but in living things i lend my flare
my color is red not gold
as Red i seep in or withdraw
i blossom vermillion in camellias, azaleas,
or metamorphose into the rose
when blossoms shed petals,
leaving a litter of brown scraps
i desert the flowers
or blaze in berries, persimmons—
when juiced i spurt red
after coupling with Earth
i, as the Sun, leave it with
fire for smoldering births
find me, Red,
on chipped off terra cotta bricks
a mitt of rust on stray feet
a red organdy dress
to lift the shroud off grieving
i drip red on tubs of basi
shared after evening prayers
flaring on a monsignor’s cheeks
chanting a Te Deum
i pull Red out of my chest
to cloak archbishops
in carmine the color of fresh blood
the blaze of martyrs
who bleed for others
drain their heart out
but locked in self
i dry out a heart turn it black
blood when it dries up
that’s me, a two-faced Diablo
the apparition sneaking in at night
death masquerading as love
a bouquet of red carnations on Fridays
seething trees through bumpy rides
a stone in the moonlight rooting on a mango tree
a branch for a splint on broken bones
a face bruised by kisses
scarlet spears in childhood dreams
your name on my breath
a deep breeze
i, Red, am also the Sun swirling down
on a violent hand
but soften on pink tulle over the fields
coaxing you to reach up to me
scooping you to turn in my arms
switch off your fears
to smoother you with my most tender tinge
i, the Diablo slung in your heart:
you‘re freed
*basi, fermented sugar cane, native wine in the northernmost edge of the Philippine archipelago.
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry where I can’t resist the challenge as the other poets and artists who congregate to share their love of art and poetry in this site. Check us out!
absolved (for One Shot Wednesday)
swallows burst into our crude mornings
their flight staggering on false winds
we gaze aghast
this fractured air birthed on false moonlight
unpredicted
our beggar voice fades into whimpers
fluttering splintered among fallen blossoms
the unabashed camellias bared
a scandal unmasked by a rude sunlight
our bleeding unabated
we slip into the brambles our sobs drowning
in the chatter of winds the river grumbles
about our tears
a sorrow tarnished by ageing stars
sputtering at dawn
a mourning heron ceases lending its grief
we recover our lips on pin drops of sky
the brambles open up for the wind
a chorus of ripples washes our bleeding
steps curl on our tears we rise
white among rhodoras
absolved
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place of poets and artists where they share their love for their art while nurturing each other. Come join us!
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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