New works at Under the Basho: early darkness, winter dusk, on the verge, pale sunset, word storm,
early darkness —
the dough yields its breast
to my hands
cattails, January 2015
Under the Basho my personal best 2015
winter dusk—
we scoot over
for shadows
Under the Basho Stand-Alone hokku 2015
on the verge
of rocketing–
scent of silence
pale sunset
the blue heron’s
midlife
word storm
turning shadows
into a burden
Under the Basho modern haiku 2015
haiku on the beach, tides, the sea (at NaHaiWriMo)
the sea in Ilocos Norte, the northermost province of the 7,100 islands of the Philippine archipelago, a scene I so miss. Photo by Raymond Ramos, a cousin in the 3rd degree,
a.
when shifting tides
shift the codes–
sunset
b.
secrets
digging into sand dunes–
a pale sunlight
c.
squalling seagulls–
scanning empty shorelines
for chances we’ve lost
d.
Cape Bojeador*–
we measure heights of billows
against our skies
*built by the Spaniards a lighthouse in Cape Bojeador in the northernmost tip of the Philippine archipelago juts out with a promontory as if into the sea where one may view giant waves crashing against each other and not only on high cliffs but mid-sea. On closer look at the waters, you may see a difference of hue—this is the point where the Pacific Ocean meets the China Sea, a truly stunning sight.
the wait (TCR issue 51 for One Shot Wednesday)
on the window
the bird seed beveled
a choppy morning
where the soughing wind
mimics whispers
snagged among caricature
of trees
ruined by the rain
shredded under steps
leaves trapped in gutters—
thoughts flung on
rain puddles where the rain
drops as rings blurring
the sky
in the lilac bush
the ruckus of the sparrows
sinks into the sunset
in the brambles a spider web sags—
we wait for the darkness
to open up for the moon
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Published at The Cortland Review Issue 51 May 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry. Check out this site wher poets share their love for their art and nurture each other.
zenith at noon (for One Shoot Sunday)
Photo prompt by Fee Easton
rain combs the strands
of our adagios:
expanse of thoughts
farther than the ends of flights
wings aching for home
a sight among stars
we tread the waves
sink in whirlpools deeper
than the heart of the flower
a hummingbird chooses
lighter
than marrow-less limbs
skimming skies
bending the spheres
constellations pirouette
on mid-strains cresting to slope
to skid onto silken lilies
our bed of seasons
in our clasped hands
the sea regurgitates the sun
froth fizzes a tickle
on our kissing toes
the sea breeze binds horizons
our eyes delude a sunset
our dawns begin
the night
the zenith at noon
the depth of our dreaming
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
From a photo prompt by Fee Easton this poem is posted for One Shoot Sunday yet another challenge at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place of poets and artists, winner of the 2011 Shorty Awards for the Arts. Come join us. Share your love for your art. Be thrilled over what others say and what you discover of others’ works.
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (and his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
(his possible answers)
heron equals being still
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
not a stir in the pond–
turtle
***
cherry blossoms–
what’s wrong with fruits?
***
plum tree
only when it blooms
***
the jade Buddha laughs
long after sunset
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
romance in haiku (with prompted items from NaHaiWriMo wall)
#16
packing for one
except
our toothbrushes
#16b
morning waves
lapping on our toes—
in a wink sunset
#16c
the lake
ahhh—
a hand clasp
#16d
arrival gate
blur of a hundred faces
except yours
end of winter clouds–
their heartbeats the only sound
between them
spring–
between patches of night sky
a pregnant moon
Numbered items from NaHaiWriMo wall. Romance in haiku because of its compact, disciplined form reads more intense for me, more compelling from what’s unsaid. What do you think?
Spangled Seasons (for One Shot Wednesday)
Under hazed New York
spheres, spring sousing Riverside, earlier
cocooned in the Moor shedding off
mover’s trip, bundled molehills against
walls –once sparks we strung
onto a nebulae over
nights on Federal Hill—you and
I trudge on.
Trails we looped
between Chesapeake,
Susquehanna and
the Hudson, Venus sputtering
on Pennsylvania woods these,
too, we tucked abreast in
memory, if Manhattan
spares us.
Our cherry
noon-s have leaped into infinity
from finiteness; as well warbled
peace from cypress groves at
Inner Harbor, dandelions mirroring
our masquerade, a yucca spurting
by the window squirrels flying
a trapeze on pines mocked,
ends of days orioles
griped about—we plucked to
spangle our seasons. Soon mere
revenant: Baltimore winters we
skidded, wincing but
un-bruised. I posed for you
that summer cicadas plunged
into passion deaths, smearing
wind shields Fells Point’s
mists we eluded fogged.
Tall suns now spear
mornings at the Moor, we flex
our years on West Broadway: summers
on a mountain lake maybe, a bowery at
Brooklyn Gardens in the fall, sunset
behind Grant’s tomb perhaps, or by
Shakespeare’s lagoon, divining
on its surface the play
of wind on our
dreams
I posted here the first two stanzas of this memoir in verse on Nov. 3 to announce its first publication on Poetry Super Highway, Poet of the Week, Nov. 1-7, 2010. It’s been recently posted on Jendi Reiter’s Reiter’s Block, Great Poems Online, Jan. 19, 2011.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, where poets and artists who love their art share their work and sustain each other. Join us! Click OSP on my blogroll and find out how.
harbor walk (with rewrite or turning a ‘hanging’ haiku into a tanka)
harbor walk–
webbed-steps tailing us
into the sunset
This haiku, which I’m not sure whether it’s a half- or non-haiku, brings me back to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. I walked for an hour everyday at sunset way back when I lived there half of the year until four years ago when I started to wait out here in Vancouver for my Canadian citizenship. Most of my early haiku, when I was still groping through it as well as my other poetry, are images of the harbor, Federal Hill Park and the neighborhood.
Rewrite from haiku that hang to a not-sure tanka
harbor walk–
webbed steps tailing us
into the sunset
in blind paths that waver like words
we mislead even the winds
This haiku I posted three days ago seemed to hang, no not seemed, it hang! But I just couldn’t clinch it and so, again, it wrote itself as a tanka. I’m unsure though if indeed it is a good tanka but I like the poem it has turned into.
In tatters
She sprints away
as if to leap onto a curdled sky.
Wind-strands race her up,
flick-ends her arms as if
in tender knowing. But she gives no
cheek-turns no lip-end-lifts
to faces blooming essences
nothing but a vacant sweep of
airless breathing, weightless
arm swings. She trudges on.
Above, a sky grovels—
red cheeks billowy like hers, ridged
on edges too, a likeness clouded
over. She turns up eyes mirroring
silence loneliness gifts the sunset.
Plump faces veil her sky,
hiss endearments that splatter
on her steps. She waves whispers off,
the broken lover, heart only
on the face lies inflamed.
She trudges on,
racing to bend the light, fold away
the blue hurls disguised as kisses,
three roses popping off a fist, a love
misled he cloaked her with. On her steps,
sun and sky conspire into a fire
roaring into her regrets,
freeing her in tatters like wings.
She trudges on.
Posted for One Shoot Sunday from a photo of KJ Halliday. Join other poets at One Stop Poetry blog who write verses for love, read those of others, leave a word of encouragement and/or insight with the same love and respect. Post your piece on your blog and sign up in the Mr. Linky list.
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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