My haiku at haikudoodle’s ‘Dia de los Muertos’ (Day of the Dead) page, a theme for the month
My haiku beautifully interwoven with excellent and masterfully crafted haiku, tanka and haiga by mostly great poet friends at Margaret Dornaus’ Dia de lost Muertos (Day of the Dead) page at her blog haiku doodle shared as link on my blogroll. It’s a month-long theme with prayers offered for our beloved dead in most Christian Catholic churches. Check it out!
pine sprigs—
discarded memories
on an old grave
candle drippings
on the epitaph—
a broken word
disarmed
the cypress grove
bares my grief
autumn rain
on the stone virgin’s shoulders—
my tears
day of his death
a paddle of wings
forever
Because there were no pictures during the burials and the graves of my beloved dead, I’m posting here my shot in a vist last summer at Robert Frost’s grave at First Church, Bennington, Vermont, his eptiaph: ‘I had a lover’s quarrel with the world’. Buried with him in this grave are his wife and children
riddle (for One Shot Wednesday featured and critiqued by Jendi Reiter at winningwriters.com)
from flints flung off
cliffs where crags snag
fledglings came my seed,
buried, until as sapling
i spiraled off ground. air
feeds me but it turns
poison when i exhale, cracks
when as blossom i break,
feigning petulance. i am crowned
when i abscond words.
i bear fruit when my
flesh oozes. my dreams
drip when birds hang where i gaze
on a promise; moons that sprout on my limbs i count
as wings resisting winds.
my yearnings
wear out the sun, singe my heart
a thousand times. but always
at dawn i bud.
Copyright 2008 by Alegria Imperial
Critique by Jendi Reiter at http://www.winningwriters.com October 2008
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, THE gathering place for poets and artists of inimitable works who also nurture each other. Check us out. Better yet, hop in!
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.
your lullaby evening star my heart for broken wings (sequence for Mama for One Stop Poetry Sunday)
To Mama, a bamboo orchid her favorite flower, courtesy of wikipedia
your lullaby
all i can remember–
roosting sparrow
evening star–
your fingers the comb
for my tangled mind
your eyes my sister’s
my heart for broken wings
from you
i say Mama
and the wind entwines me
to the moon
i call you
and the night hums
in three lines:
your lullaby evening star my heart for broken wings
and the wind entwines me to the moon
and the night hums
Mama
Coyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for Mother’s Day at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Awards for the Arts, an inimitbale gathering of poets and artists who share their love for their art and nurture each other. Check us out.
the bride (for One Shoot Sunday)
dawn
settles on her barefeet
a starling craving to
flex wings
the ground quivers
from her tender steps unease
spreads
among wet stones
she wiggles
off her restless sighs
to undo her veil of wind
her hair loosens
strands of singing
rise over the heartbeat
of sparrows
she becomes a pair of wings
shirred skirt
the feathers she preens
to a sheen that stuns
a hesitant sun
the day flexes
on her limbs a thrumming
wakens the tender
lilies she stalked in her dreams
she steps into
her gaping red shoes
the brooding crows
scatter
a ruckus spreads
among the dandelions
the seagulls catch in fevered
pitch
she walks
parting the congregation
in blindness deaf
to the grumbling
over the rise
among the pines she raises
her arms an arc
to the sky
a swallow
skimming the meadow
where heads limp in the breeze
but balloons from her wedding
the gulls shriek
it pierces her flight
she careens
down the hill snags
a thread of her dream
first a thump
of the wearied balloon
that pumped her wings
next her toes
like a bird poised to fly
in a fall
(c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Photo prompt by Lauren Randolph
For One Shoot Sunday at One Shot Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts. Come check us out and share your art and poetry–it’s what we do her, share and nurture each other.
What do you see? (for One Shoot Sunday)
Photo prmpt by James Rainsford
1.
What do you see?
Not the span of my wings I ask not
Or the pin-lock of my beak
My eyes made of gems
Creation shielded you may not covet
If you could a universe
A glimpse of my wings
Such envy it has spawned in hearts like yours
The rufous I bank on in flight
If I perch on a shoulder
You could die in sheer awe of mine–ample
And reddish like the flare of the sun
Unsteady your life as your feet
Had rocked you solid blind to what I see
On my tarsus firm on a twig
2.
Stone from stone
That heart of yours locked in cold
I feel no pity
A head you preened
No sign of polish and spark
In coagulated cells
I squeal I do
Keee-r-r nothing to your hollow ears then
Mortar-filled now as your brain
A soul you wrapped
In manners as translucent as words un-rooted unlike
Mine seed-like but forward in my breast
I winter in forests you burrow
Lifeless in dark cavities imitating iridescent skies
Making it like home but you are wingless
3.
What do you see?
Battlefields you scoured between your agonies
And waning moons?
Or spires that sway under a mid-heaven
You strived to pierce to let spurt secrets
The constellations conceive?
Filigreed walls behind you
Await for storms to cease heaving
Whispering luring the darkness
Columns prop up the dome
You unfurled over the stare of an accusing sky
Do you see their spine corroding?
What do you see?
4.
As stone you see
Not twigs that soon arc to meet
A pink horizon
Or a black patch
Where drooping snowdrops
Bloom tufts on your path
You had trudged
On paths crushing crocuses and dandelions
Shredding silken azalea sighs
Eyes on grit you missed
Evergreens flailing in the wind to snag
the first low star
As you stepped into a
carrion’s day like a crow squawking at sky
hopping on a dumpster grinding by
I’m posting this poem for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry from a picture prompt by James Rainsford. Come join us in this gathering place where a most amazing selection of talented artists and poets share their work while nurturing each other.
route (sequence with a lesson on how to breathe life to a ‘lifeless haiku’)
on a bench—
granny arching
to a waltz
on the ground
black-eyed posies,
but not for me
over head
a robin trills, i race
the train
pine strand
flailing in night sky—
the first low star
pasta bowl
and cranberry juice
with no one
Published in LYNX XXIII:3, October 2008
These were separate haiku I labored to make ‘perfect’ but hardly ever tried to submit, having at that time received one rejection after another. And so, I put them together as a titled sequence and got an acceptance from Werner Reichold, my first publication after my one and only haiku award from VCBF haiku invitational.
But as I’m won’t to do, two of the haiku have since danced on into a full poem in free verse: #3 became “first kiss” posted here for One Shoot Sunday, #4 out of the image ‘flailing in the night sky’, I wrote “revenant” published in The Cortland Review.
Lesson: on how to save one’s own self from ‘grief’ of a ‘lifeless haiku’ or how to breathe life on a ‘lifeless haiku’
Do not delete/discard/bury it. Instead, keep it wrapped in angels’ wings.
Let it sleep the sleep of bulbs of daffodils and star lilies.
Wait for spring in your spirit.
And then, unwrap them, buff them and watch the wings stir, flapping weakly at first.
And then, with your touch, watch the lines soar!
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.
First snow (one shot Wednesday)
Hush,
heaven stealthily drops to earth in clouds that cease
breathing, wings folded on trees, prayers
poised for flight.
We walk tipped on toe-points
to taste to feel this heaven dropping,
melting, sizzling, burning through black grounds—
our iced-beings.
Hush,
heaven drops from ir-recognizable skies
on whorled grounds our rages disowned
muting prayers of those who sigh.
Hush,
though the heart has no ears.
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
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 