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