winter solstice (First Place, December 2012 Shiki kukai, kigo category)
My haiku for the kigo category in the December Shiki kukai won First Place, my 2nd in this kukai. Here it is:
winter solstice
the widow tightens
her braids
(0,10,9) = 29 pts
**Very picturesque and melancholy
Thanks to all who voted and to the kind poet who made a comment.
In the free format category where Cara’s (Cara Holman) haiku won 2nd place, my haiku
on the prompt ‘departing’ gained only 3 pts. Here it is:
a leaf
races in the wind
after him
Thanks, too, for the votes.
ice cream/day moon my voted haiku at the June 2012 Shiki Kukai
Kigo*: ice cream
ice cream
the prescription
she misplaced
(5 points)
Free format: day moon
day moon
hovering on her window
a Luna moth
(8 points}
*A kigo is a season word entered into a data base that if used expands a haiku with a wider sense shared worldwide. Most kigo words are found in the World Kigo Database. While it lists predominantly Japanese season words, as is understandable, Gabi Greve who maintains WKD has been inviting haiku poets to contribute kigo in their locale, hence, further widening the data base. WKD is easy to access on the web.
A kukai is a prompted haiku exercise wherein participants (only) vote anonymously from an anonymous list of haiku with votes limited only to a total of 6 votes. This kukai is named after another Japanese haiku master, Shiki.
grapefruit bite (kigo)/drum beating (free format) my haiku in Shiki Kukai Sept 2011
grapefruit bite
sweeter with each
cloud let go
2 votes (from peers)
Kigo: citrus Shiki Kukai Sept 2011
The original haiku which I edited at the last minute reads:
grapefruit bite
sweeter with each
dark cloud let go
I wonder if by taking out the adjective ‘dark’ I wrote a vague haiku. Or I think the shift or juxtaposition to a metaphor (dark cloud) failed.
drum beating
to clear skies
rain on the roses
0 votes
Free format: rain Shiki Kukai Sept 2011
I read this now and say, ‘Huh?’ What did I want to say when I wrote it? It looks like I meant to illustrate a thought about ‘dark clouds and dark skies’, reflecting our dark moods as in the ‘grapefruit’ haiku. I must have tried to say here that the same rain, which sometimes falls furiously as if ‘drum beating’ on us and on the roses is meant not only to ‘clear skies’ and our thoughts, but also to give life.
What about this rewrite:
rain on the roses
drum beating to clear skies
our shifting moods
the coming of summer (Shiki Kukai May 2011)
the coming of summer–
all the petals
i brushed off my hair
voted haiku, Shiki Kukai May 2011, kigo: coming of summer
also posted at NaHaiWriMo
My voted and zero haiku in the Feb Shiki kukai: a self-critique (Or what’s a mirror flashing as signal in the copse all about?)
February Shiki kukai
kigo (spring fever) – 5 pts.
spring fever—
shoots among the lilies
she can’t name
free format (mirror) 0 pts.
mirror
flashing in the copse—
signal she missed
What? A vague haiku, the kind no one should send for a kukai, but at least it wasn’t to a haiku journal, hence, it didn’t waste a minute of an editor. Yet when I wrote it, the image and the ‘moment’ seemed quite clear; it haunted me later though–what if the kukai pariticipants have no idea of the practice I recall in my teens? That’s so long ago, decades ago!
Decades ago when ‘secret loves’ ruled teenage lives and parents had eagle eyes and iron hands (sorry for the cliche); my growing up years in the Philippines, when the ‘mirror flashing in the copse’ served as a secret signal for assignations. Telephones would reach our town generations after I left–farther away into the future when cell phones and ohhh, facebook that has since taken away the thrill of getting caught halfway through the ‘verboten’ (an old HIgh German word for ‘forbidden’ that sounds so archival these days) love-pledges and assignations.
In my early teens, conservative upbringing by families who lingered on the fringes of a now-weakened colonial past treated girls as if we were all novices for a convent. For example, even on weekends, no prowling the streets for me because someone for sure–as my father, especially, drilled into my mind–waited to entrap my eyes, hiding in bamboo groves, in a copse of wild goat-berries or behind hefty trunks of aged acacia trees. Girls, like me and my friends, invented cunning ways to give in to the hunter’s trap. So that’s what the mirror/ flashing in the copse is all about–we used it to send signals though the more inventive among us, could frame words and phrases. Of course, because when and who does the signalling and for whom could hardly be confirmed, part of the thrill would lie in the surprise–but then, it could be missed as whoever awaited could have dozed off, hence signal she missed.
Conclusion? My free format entry wasn’t a haiku but a ‘micro story’ perhaps. Here’s the rest of my mirror haiku from which I chose what I sent that could have fared better.
mirror—
she stares
at her stare
mirror-
she sees her flaws
in his eyes
mirror
her mother’s lips
pursing like hers
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?
Recent Comments
alee9 on … madhuri on … alee9 on My latest at Bones journa… alee9 on My haiku awards alee9 on a beggar’s prayer
jornales 
first cold splash (my voted haiku in the May Shiki kukai)
first cold splash
a stranger stares back
at the mirror
May 2012 Shiki kukai
free format: morning habit
votes (0,2,5) = 9 pts
comment **I can relate to this. Well done!
June 12, 2012 Posted by alee9 | haiku, poetry | alegria imperial, cold, comment, jornales, mirror, morning habit, Shiki kukai, splash, stranger | Leave a comment