a throwback post…3 tanka at GUSTS Winter 2013
should I
consider my missteps
to understand…
how the Milky Way ended
with me in this pond?
like layers
of sunlight among weeds
our words
thrive on silence…until gushing
we burst into flowers
the twisted twig
of an old cedar leans
Westward
as if the wind senses
my every longing
GUSTS Fall/Winter 2013 (Tanka Canada)
rejection notes (sharing a personal essay with Sanjukta)
I’d like to share this personal essay I once wrote after receiving yet another rejection note; more had come and I expect nine out of ten submissions will keep coming. You would understand why it’s melodramatic. But that feeling has not swept me over since. When I do receive one these days, I simply put away the poem, haiku or tanka, rewrite and submit to another editor. A few of these have been accepted and published. Here’s the essay:
Why must rejection wring the mind so?
These words marching onto this blank screen leaked off a bottle of emotions I had dammed. It’s been a week ago since a rejection note sneaked into my inbox—a single line in bold letters; it’s not the first, but the latest of ten I have received so far. Reading the note then, I felt sand in my eyes, pain that brings on tears. First, they stung and then creeping down my cheeks, they felt cold as a blade. I could be bleeding, I thought, but not from an invisible cut on my cheeks–it must be in my shattered heart.
Why must words of rejection wring the mind so? I had long struggled to understand. No matter how cavalier I talk of my writing, rejection feels like death for me at times. It must be during those times when I wrote too hard and too long so much so that an illusion of perfection shrouded me and darkened that fragile cave—my heart—from which I always imagine I write.
From what do words get birthed anyway? This has always been a mystery to me akin to my search for God. But this I believe in, the universe came to be out of nothing because God so decreed it with words.
I am a being out of nothing. Hence, my words leap onto a screen from the void. Why then must rejection affect me so? I and what words I string together as soon as they slip into some kind of form should turn into objects like asteroids, for one, flinging through the universe. I, who worked on it and that which they have birthed into, should no longer bear any of me.
And yet, complex as is my tiny mind, it also bloats with greed and feels as if words it has put into shape become the universe. How dare then, does anyone reject them?
But in the end, I am grateful for each rejection; it shoves me back into place. The eye does not see the self in whole, only in parts; rejection really hurts only in part. As in every object in the universe, other parts of me that have been spared soon take over and begin to birth again.
‘words’, First place, July 2011 Shiki kukai (what a break!)
words
we’ve left unsaid–
Indian summer
First Place, July 2011 Shiki kukai (Kigo prompt: weather)
Luna moths–
some things
we can’t see
8 pts., July 2011 Shiki kukai (free format: moths)
I can say a lot about what in these haiku I wrote from a blank space (or not trying to write a perfect one) garnered votes–first place or the most votes for kigo even! Let me know what you think about it.
meanings on walls (for One Shoot Sunday)
graffiti in the Lansing area, Michigan, photo by Chris Galford
1. squiggles
your words mere
squiggles on walls
if but smiles
on dry leaves–
when clouds take over the sun
the butterfly dies
2. waves
on the wall
waves splatter a froth
the sky sheds–
is it rain?
our hand carvings on sea air
but the mindless moon
3. sky
we sip dreams
no one knows of what–
were it earth
it would roll
drums beating down on our sky
to give up the stars
4. ripple
heat seeps off
tips of lanceolate
promises
disguised flames–
in the waters a ripple
once a breath twice life
5. blue fish
ocean lure–
we dig for stone fists
to ripple
the silence
a blue fish whispers to me
a broken flower
Copyright © by Alegria Imperial 2011
Five ‘haiku-induced’ shadorma, a Spanish sestet or 6-line poetic form in 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllables per line–my first attempt at it–in response to the Picture Photo Prompt Sunday (One Shoot Sunday) from photos of Chris Galford of graffit’d walls around the Lansing area in Michigan and posted at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Check us out!
i dare you (for One Shoot Sunday)
1.
i ground my being
in search of truth
and found
a scoop of silt
superficialities
i basked in surfaces
the sun swarmed
beguiling
choked my truths
in flashes
glories in seconds
fallen as ash
my pretenses
morphing into
this mush slipping
between my lips
entrapped
in your weakness
i dare you
unclad who i am
2.
who am this
being a pallid skein
of desire tangled
in despair
words dangle
on tips of bones
their flesh i picked off
in my darkness
suns melt
on my breath
gods cower in fear
over my stink
stones corrode
from my tears falling
as flint on my trail
dead embers
rain pools
sizzle on my passing
burn secrets
my footprints bred
3.
taunt me
if you have grit
the songs i spew
rattle angels
wangle crests
of waves my stare
long petrified on seas
turned cesspools
dare to cleanse
the air i poison
my soul departed
litter ivy beds
comb my hair
your fingers hanker
for my silken scales
to root in spirit
grind your being
with mine scrape off
your bareness toss out
your soul i dare you
Photo prompt by Fee Easton
Posted for One Shoot Sunday from a photo prompt by Fee Easton at One Stop Poetry where poets and artists share their art and their passion for it, a nurturing gathering place. Check us out.
To write a poem (wordplay on an old typewriter for One Shoot Sunday)
image prompt by Jack AZ part2
is not to catch
the words unlatched:
it is to meet
a current against the sweep
against the words
the patterns on the board
the words imprint
that later fade so like river silt.
To catch a poem
you can’t, unless eyes firm
eyes glued to the vaulted
deep from where had bolted
these words you unleash
on lines that leap
your fingers balancing
thought on words that slink.
To catch the thought
that storms into desert draught
you choose the speed
or letters scrambling in the deep
delude the eyes
escape the mind on ice
old keys do creak when cranked
to catch the lines unlatched.
To catch a storm wreaking
havoc on a heart sinking
in a slew of silted dreams
rusting on dredged streams
where winds howl threats
of maddened sand and dust like breaths
the finger tips must kiss
the letters naming muses hissing.
To catch the muses
soothe their caricatured faces
bare your soul salvaged
from old thoughts once baggage
tear out the paper
spewing lies of hereafter
catch the words that spell
the truth about their names true to their spell
on you to write a poem.
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry where a community of poets and artists share their love for their art and continue to sustain each other. Check us out!
in the mist/frosted dawn (#24b & #25 for NaHaiWriMo with brief self-critique)
#24b for NaHaiWriMo (#24 posted at facebook site)
in the mist
waiting to meet you–
budding crocus
A double kigo for spring. I don’t know if it works. But I also see in it two meanings: ‘mist’ for uncertainty, ‘budding crocus’ for hope, reassurance.
#25
frosted dawn–
his words hang
over coffee
I’m not sure about the juxtapostion of image, kigo and meaning here. But I like it.
plea for a poem (for One Shot Wednesday)
write me a poem
words to breathe in
even if only whispers
as shouts have turned
the air into a
hail storm
write me some rain–
my heart crackles
in the draught longing
for words drenched in
thought to sip
in the dark
i yearn for verses
snipped from flame tips
words that dance
the fire of fallen angels
saved from their march
on dying coals
write me a song
cadenced in sunsets
tympanis of words
rising off the hum
of meanings
drums have flattened
give me back poems
shredded spirits birth
in caves midnights cleanse–
poems howling wolves
hankering for stars
divine
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry as my share in a lively exchange of art and poetry among a loving community of poets and artists who nurture each other. Follow us at the site. Click on OSP on my blogroll.
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.
first kiss (playing with images on haiku-like lines for One Shoot Sunday )
over head–
a robin trills, i race
the uptown train
to meet you
on elm street
my feet on clouds–
wind swept petals
i skid on my soles
under a lavender bush
such fragrance–
so like yours
still running
now through rain drops
i slip but land on begonia quilt–
i pick three dandelions
i race on
a pair of crows–
from juniper tops cawing a duet
swoops in on a picnic spread
i turn away
afternoon rain
coming harder i skid under a shade
of cherry blossoms
my heart thrums faster
singling on a wall
under weeping crab apple blooms–
the rain their tears and mine
am i crying?
my watch
eats up minutes–
you will be gone
i am sobbing
the rain stops–
sunlight ripples through the sky
falls on a lilac hedge i race on
to meet you
against a wall
the sun bursts on your smile
you sprint to meet me
under a rain-washed sky
eyes dripping
sweetened rain, petals on our lips
wet, soft, warm
we kiss our first
on the heart-shaped sky
we sign our names,
say our vows
on three dandelions
Phot by Katherine Forbes
Posted for One Shoot Sunday from a photo by Katherine Forbes. 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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jornales 