Tag Archives: haiku

The Road to New Year

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Just Before Christmas……

an Arctic cold front
Amazon trucks stuck
down snow-packed side roads.

Christmas

Between Christmas and New Year

You review your blog stats, as one does, and you wonder why you you are using phrases like “as one does”, have you been watching too much Britbox?

Back to the blog stats, number of views is down from last year which was down from the year before. Your viewing numbers appear to have peaked in 2019. Why? In 2019 you had the pandemic of course and a perfect storm of subject matter – the pandemic, the Trump presidency, and climate change. Now you have said pretty much all you have to say about these subjects for the moment. But isn’t that the way of some blogs, they fade because they need a fresh angle. Also, you have gone back to letting poems marinate for a while to see where they are going, giving them some quiet time.

In the meantime you have been reading, and your top read for 2022 was “Our Country Friends” by Gary Shteyngart. You read the novel one chapter at a time, each chapter accompanied by a can of Yellow Dog Play Dead IPA. Why, because Gary’s prose is too good to rush. You also enjoyed “The Nineties” by Chuck Closterman and “April in Spain” by John Banville.

You listened to “Stolen Car” by Beth Orton, because of the lyric and the guitar figure that slithers through the song like a poisonous snake. You listened to El Camino by Elizabeth Cook because who else would rhyme “annull it” with “mullet”. You listened to “Under The Milky Way” by Church because of the expanse it conjures. You listened to “Jesus etc” by Puss N’Boots because it’s Norah Jones doing a Jeff Tweedy song.

You thought “Licorice Pizza” was the best movie of the year because of Bradley Cooper and everyone else in the movie.

And now as 2022 draws to a close, you are wondering why the hell you are writing in the second person singular.

Happy New Year everyone!

JIM

Why I have difficulty writing haiku (again)

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Why I have difficulty writing haiku

problem with haiku
definite article is
first casualty

next casualty
indefinite article
makes me sound little

like Japanese guard
in prison camp in movie
world war two movie

who for some reason
is speaking English (how? why?)
with staccato voice

or perhaps I am
po-faced guru on mountain
dispensing bromides:

crow flies at midnight
in front of luminous moon
affair ends badly

all because I am
in service to, at mercy
of, syllable count.

Fragments From a Long Weekend

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1 (conversation overheard in a downtown bar)

he wants to retire
back where all the spires conspire
to show him the way.

2 (too much of a good thing)

summer evening
the red sunset bleeds regret
maturity lost.

3 (Why can’t I write like Rupi Kaur?) 

my quinoa* quota
was far from quotidian
thanks! sunflower seeds!
*’keen-wah

4 (Climate Change is Opening Windows)

rumours dropping from the eaves
neighbours thick as thieves
singing off key at three

o’clock in the morning.

The challenge from Laura over at dverse is to write a poem consisting of fragments:

“Either:
a poem of several numbered stanzas. Each being complete in itself and having only a passing relationship to each other, if at all
OR
a poem of disjointed images (like listening to conversation in passing, repetitively switching between radio/tv station, random images across a screen, or paintings/photos seen in a gallery)

Rules:
Your poem should NOT conform to any rhyme scheme
Your poem MUST include Fragment(s) somewhere in the title”

Mother’s Day in Ollantaytambo/ Station Road (2 haiku’s) Redux

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A post from the time before the time.

We got off the train from Machu Picchu at the Ollantaytambo station, walked up the station road to the town square and came upon this: Mother’s Day in Ollantaytambo. It went on all day – entertainment, raffles, prizes, politicians’ speeches. The ladies seemed to enjoy themselves, although they never clapped once.

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Later that evening, we had dinner in the restaurant down at the station and walking home we witnessed this haiku-worthy scene.

Station Road

                I

Two black dogs humping

a puzzled white terrier

on the station road.

              II

Puzzled about what?

about the expectations

of the dog in front.

photo by Marie Feeney

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.

Spiders, Vacuums and Mike Pence’s Head.

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Domestic Terror

allergens loiter

on the vacuum’s humid breath

spiders abandon

web based solutions

seek cover in crevices

domestic terror.

Sarah over at dverse asks us to write about things that creep and crawl, so I thought I would resurrect these two poems. (The one below was inspired by a fly that appeared on Mike Pence’s head during a vice presidential debate back in the glory days of demagoguery.)

The Fly on Top of Mike Pence’s Head Speaks

It’s so white up here.
What’s that fragrance?
Is it Rogaine?
Is it piety?
Is it Rogaine and piety?
You seem a little nervous
around the women folk, Mike.
Can I recommend a good conditioner?

Ironic Distancing (with bonus haiku)…redux.

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Ironic Distancing

The mind wanders
I think of a word that rhymes with ‘banker’
and marvel at how
in the middle of a global crisis
my brain still tilts
towards the trivial, the juvenile.
I try a sound poem
panic, pandemic, pandemonium
but it’s missing something,
panache, perhaps.
I make up a joke involving Peter Pan
but decide now is not the time to share it.
I detect the late onset of maturity
and feel depressed.
I text some friends,
we try to out-snide each other
but after a while
we are all chewing on the same bone.
I’m besieged by an idiocy of idioms –
the whole nine yards
the whole kit and caboodle
and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I re-assess my relationship with surfaces
I can no longer count on
that counter to lean on,
and as someone inclined
to whistle past the graveyard
walk past the writing on the wall
I have to admit
that the object in the mirror
was a lot closer
than it first appeared.

I write a haiku

four in the morning
moon shining on toilet bowl
porcelain pathway.

Eat your heart out! Basho!

Victoria over at dverse asks us to write a soliloquy incorporating one or more poetic devices, this one is heavy on alliteration with a bit of internal rhyme. It was previously published here, mid- pandemic last year.

Party Animal (Slimverse* – The Journey, Episode 2)

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Party Animal

in he walks
like a bull
checking out
a paddock

the air shifts
nervously
eyes lower
bells jangle

(Episode 1 is here)
The following is a memory and like all memories it’s under constant revision. What’s significant I think is that it was the first time I realized that Slim was taking this whole slimverse thing a bit more seriously than I was. As I remember it……..


I invited Slim and the rest of The Poet’s Circle over for a few drinks to celebrate something, I can’t quite remember what it was and to be honest, it doesn’t matter.
The evening began relatively smoothly with an intense discussion about accessibility (no surprises there) and I made an emotional speech about the end rhymes in Leonard Cohen’s song, “Suzanne”. The conversation moved on to verse forms – cinquains, tankas, sestinas, halibuns, what happens if one turns a haiku upside down -fascinating stuff. Then Slim chimed in and asked where our own invention, the slimverse, fitted in to this pantheon. There was an awkward silence. Eventually, The Accomplished Poet spoke up. I should add that he is indeed accomplished and his compact vivid poems, mostly about his garden, have been widely published. He politely suggested that perhaps a 3 syllable line was too limiting, that making poetic music with such a restriction is quite difficult.
Now there was another kind of silence, the kind that ensues when a lion tamer drops his whip. Slim said quietly “fuck you and your fucking garden” and aimed a punch at The Accomplished Poet’s head, who, perhaps because of all that work in the garden, is quite agile. He ducked Slim’s punch and kicked him adroitly in the crotch. When the applause died down and Slim could speak again, he uncharacteristically apologized and gave The Accomplished Poet a hug, a doubtful pleasure given Slim’s personal hygiene issues. The evening ended on a happy note with a raucous rendition of “Suzanne”, everyone hitting the end rhymes hard.
Later that night Slim and I wrote the above poem which stretched the slimverse form to two verses. History in the making.

(*Slimverse – four 3 syllable lines)

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse