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DJ Thomas May 2010
We each have a voice and life, it is how we use them not how we might!  

Stop glaciers melting
Huge population movements
Death of progeny


The small reductions in carbon emissions being targeted for 2020 or 2050 - are thought to little to late to slow global warming.  The melting polar ice and glaciers together with our changing weather patterns are now fact. The resulting loss of river systems and rising sea levels will mean the desertification or flooding of agricultural lands and famine, then the migration of populations - starting with the skilled and rich seeking safety, to escalate into the terror of armed bands
warring over water, food, women and land.

By 20 20
Lets hope for twenty twenty
A 20 20


There is now the thought that the huge physical change wrought by global warming can be charted by the escalation in earthquake and volcanic activity.  And that this may eventually trigger huge eruptions in the American and Asian continents,
destroying civilisations to create a planetary volcanic winter.

Again fire and cold
The cycle repeats itself
Destroying nature


Was there a civilisation in deep history before the flood, prior to and during the last ice-age?
This has been researched and written about in great detail during the last twenty years
and many now believe it already proven by scientific review of documents and
thousands of archaeological finds, also by scientists having used the exactness
in the astronomical alignments of ancient monuments
to recalculate there greater age.  

Dead sold souls herd us
Lost mindless finger puppets
Vapid witless words


Sadly, the majority put their reliance and faith in
the actions of lawyer-ed politicians, most of whom evidence
a fixation on their own welfare,  selfish self-glorification needs
and an unwillingness to rock-the-boat once in power*

Politicians thwart
Party politics deafen
Propaganda’s herd


Putting off all radical action required until after the next election.  
Many have gifted away the necessary legal control and power to take national radical action
to a political or trade grouping of nations - in effect retaining only national rights
to go to war, put up taxes, borrow and spend monies.

Please no rhetoric
Complete local transition
Forget politics


We each have a voice and life, it is how we use them not how we might!

Living we give voice
So one voice might yet be heard
All being, believe!


We are left holding our eco-inheritance and children’s future in the palm of our hand.
Please let our love and imagination drive us each forward to make change.


Biosphere a greenhouse 
Target the impossible
Please gift some life soon?


So, we each of us have hard personal choices to make, which will encompass both positive and negative
benefits in terms of our time, lifestyle, health and wealth.  I chose to base my choices solely on how it
might benefit the eco-system and the lives of our children.

My choices are grouped under five headings: transport, food, home, lifestyle and further action. They are:
-  

Transport: Rail; Bus; Coach; Bike;
(I pass woods in bud - a Red Kite hunting twisting, unhurried moments).  
To give up ownership of electric / motor vehicles
and to avoid air travel where possible.


Highly vaporous.
Emissions farting -
barrelling vipers
.

Food: To eat meat/fish only once a week at most;
(Slaughteramas greed - industrial carcase-ed meals. Sheep full of cancer)
To study fast methods of vegetarian cooking; buy local organic foodstuffs;
visit local farmers markets and farm shops; grow my own when possible
and help friends establish vegetable/herb gardens.
To not ever feed, cleave and eat!


Fat shopaholics,
a deadly consumerism.
Cancers meat to eat


Home:   A cottage sized for me, friends and neighbours,
overlooking a wooded valley and trout stream.
Like me a little untidy and basic
.

Crossing the shallows
trout fingerling feed at dawn
White dots steep hill path

Dusk - eight painted queue
river paired mare and foal
Foliage lined dark black


Well positioned to capture the morning sun, airy and light.  
Yet insulated to stay cool or warm. With easy access to mountain bike trails
and long distance bus routes, plus several end-of-line train stations
in energetic cycling distance over the mountains


A differing beat
Quickly fading doubled steps -
pulling separate


Life Style:* A thinking poet mountain biker, living organic
not part of the great noisious noxious ribbons of hurtling tired.

Pressured paced life -
impossible  commitments.
Organic living


Further Action: *I intend to give up meat not because of the terrible cruelty involved in ten billion or more animals
being slaughtered every year to feed the human race, but due to
: 1)  animal farming being a major factor in the burning of 50 million year old rainforests at a rate of one and half acres per second to generate huge volumes of greenhouse gases, destroying the richest habitats on Earth and a principal source of oxygen; and 2)  that these billions of farmed animals
are themselves a major source of greenhouse gases
.

Burning rainforests
Feeding to cleave open and eat
Subsistence farming


With ongoing intensive fishing, the world's fisheries already in crisis and climate change,
it could be that we will run out of wild-caught seafood much earlier than 2030!


Conserve energy -
and natural resources
Don’t waste foolishly


Each of us might have a different view of what globalisation is,
for some this word encapsulates the dangers of our global fast food culture, omnipresent brands,
popular culture, changing diets and the growing use of packaged processed foods
.

Freedom to act sought
Globalisation's curses
Octopus suckers!


For many it is the illegal international trade in endangered species of flora and fauna,  
second only in value to the $350 billion a year global drug trafficking trade that now services
perhaps more than 50 million regular users of ******, ******* and synthetic drugs
.

The label 'globalization' can cover the: spread and integration of different cultures;  
industry moving to low per capita income countries; sweatshops supplying this seasons branded goods
to retail outlets worldwide;  complex international interleaved financial trading instruments being developed
by banks and financial institutions to trade worldwide, create profits and pay huge bonuses, without risk to themselves
.

Globalisation -
orchestrated profiteers,
betting our losses


Many see globalisation as being the beneficial spread of free trade, liberty, democracy and capitalism,
involving the efficient allocation of resources and capital through the spread of technology.
Unelected international bodies and institutions such the World Bank actively promulgate globalisation,
a '‘world government’ promoting close economic ties between nations
.

Enculturation
Our sad indoctrination
Globalization
  

The anti-globalisation movements dislike the corporate and political nature of globalisation,
protesting the resultant harm done to the biosphere, a more rapid and extensive deterioration of the environment
and the unintended but very real consequences of globalisation: the erosion of traditional culture
resulting in social disintegration; a breakdown of democracy; the spread of new diseases;
changes in diet; increasing poverty.
.

I view globalisation and it's propagation as leading to the final destruction
of the world's cultures and civilisations by locked us into a
dogmatic world political doctrine secured through
trade and political alliances of states, institutions
and corporations that remain hell bent on
imposing this world governance. Such
that individual countries governments
cannot consider making substantive
radical change to avert the planet
being pushed into a natural cycle
that will end the human race
.

Caged in Fools World
The people hear heroic call  
Each one a hero
!

The peoples and cultures of the world need perhaps just one western country to
break the legal chains of globalisation and adopt a radical economic regeneration program
designed to make the total transition to a dynamic culture of localised
clean communities centred on the individual not competition*  

Only one tool
National taxation for -
economic change.


Here I begin discussing how global, regional and national economies might
be based on the growth of small organic local economies.
not the repeated foolishness involved in chasing lower cost base manufacture -
each time at great cost to the economy it has migrated from!
Then a further culture becoming totally reliant
on the transport of foodstuffs and goods -
I can here you saying
:

"Oh **** this guy is -
talking about change, changing -
the world we live in!"


Yes, I am and do we have a choice?  But such change will be organic and involve business
in the restructuring and regeneration of economies till we share green economies.  
In small part his is already happening slowly!


Unlock taxation,  
survivals powerful tool.  
Needed now for change!


This is why we need to consider doing something that many of today's
plutocrats, economists, bureaucrats and politicians, would dismiss out of hand or
discuss endlessly in terms of perfectly competitive markets, perverse economic incentives etc


Major solution
National taxation change
Human extinction



WORK in HAND

This haiku sequenced eco-haibun is an ongoing project being penned day-by-day by many that care and take action. Your reactions are all welcome, thank you


**Take back control now.  
Cease all squabbling, achieve act - decisively!

Globalisation's, global control cut away.
Diversity sought

Promote well being.  Act with imagination -
for ecology!

Creating employment -
with local utilities, local food and transport

Incentivise tax,  to create local benefits.
Gain prosperity

Income taxation -  value added tax, aged -
dangerous mistake

Local licensing.  Lead don't follow excuses.
Saviour taxation

Imaginative - energy, food and transport -
local licensing

An alternative - energetic strategy,
greening business

Organic foodstuffs - out compete processed food.
Life promoting health

Healthy government - a healthy population. 
Zero income tax!

Locally taxed - by distance it travelled -
and category

Products bar coded.  Point of agreed production -
and category

Local added tax, by distance it travelled -
and category

Local energy, initiatives supplant.  
Replacing at risk

User energy, capture and storage.  
Eco-dwelling plan

Local water works,  supplanting initiative.
Replace the at risk

User water need.  Capturing and storing half.
Securing supply

Communications, local initiatives.
Protecting our needs

Local healthy food, life saving initiative.
Planting guaranteed

Sort unemployment, local work available.
Agriculture base

Radical transport - initiatives needed.
Change made possible

Season’s colours blur - in ageing contemplation
chilling warm breezes

Ganges dried mud - dust
Armed hungry thirsty tide
Generations despair,  lost

Our politicians -
squabble condemn progeny.
Flee panic and die

HAIKU SEQUENCE FINISHED

HAIBUN PROSE BEING ADDED
Day by Day
This haiku sequenced eco-haibun needs prose and additional haiku added day by day.  Contributing comment and reactions considered for inclusion...

copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010
vircapio gale Oct 2012
Haiku:

hiking new forests
mountain homes of moss and dew
more roots deepen


berries ripe
dot taiga heath--
alien planet


yellow blazing sun
'packin'rocks'
from maine to georgia


pain born hero
in oven boots of blood and pus--
summit breeze


barefoot hiker
calls herself 'FearNot'--
toes enjoy same mud


snake rises up
fangs gleam at water lair
cold spring quenches all


***** at each view--
water comes in and goes out
like a filter


at waterfalls, swans
alighting air-- noble poise
on the way to sea


gunas intertwine
my sweet mountain hunger paths
bitter taste of bark


sour grass
garnish of an earthen tract
saliva honeyed


strands of spider flight --
i too catch myself making
web after web


"nature loves to hide"
hidden hermit roars of all
strife and fire flux


spider bite at dusk
afterswing of scenting food
shoo the meal away


change becomes the same--
people streams talking pixels
aging static web

symbols set in light
speed of optic living nodes;
clicking finger fibers


websites spin and stick
plastic tropical alphabets
ant waves clean the keys


fueling in process,
living fossils already
drilling seas--on earth


give or take six months,
happy birthday!
two seasons gone


Haibun:*

A mountain poet has come to the city, blisters pushing up his toenails. His smile spans 15 blocks of concrete and rebar. Strangers coo to see his sunshine gait but cough at his aroma. Hospitality is found after all, in parks and in the drunken streams from clubs gregarious for midnight novelties.

poet's apology--
not exactly 'myself' to
license gratitude
when time gifts symbols distance--
terror war towers still fall

Emergencies of all sorts force their way into my mind, as I live, sometimes as I write. Ambiguities serve as fulcrum nooks for meanings incompossible to hide, not being ready to share what can't be shared, obscurity offers the ineffable reprieve to be spoken nonetheless.

peering in the word--
sound signs meta symbol
witty sea of *****

property stings
abstract fights to earth
mixing labor

i found a haiku
on my coworker's desk--
where is the frog pond?

dad drinks alone--
photo recalls sunlit leaf
and beer can stare

opining fire false
freezing hearts with argument--
cold spring, winters warm

It is with the love of a child that I write, wincing harder into that self-given 'Indian-Burn' of cathartic fetish and psychological indulge. Where is maturity, and what use is it when faced with endless ground-zeros? Still open to answers, still unwilling to speak plainly or straight about the blanket crookedness and blissful meander that colors life most vividly. I imagine dacrygelosis understood.

thawing pond
creaks in headstand calm--
autumn air released

night's insight pierce
heralds migraine's ease--
gong of moon or sun

on dead wood, against
live trees, hours of *** by
mycelia blooms--
fragrant rot and sweat collide
skin spotted with forest sun

love signs everywhere--
two trunks spiraled
in a yellow wood

vocal awe resung
this is love! this is love!
deep summer fruit

rub of bark                      
vast forest sways across skin
                        naked expanse
Jim Davis Jun 2019
Scrounging local garage sales... near ten years past... I had found a flat, welded iron, rusty seahorse... 3 feet high... with a good seahorse shape and poise... edges welded and cut... after the haggle... twenty-five dollars..... perfectly added to my estate... covered rust in gold sheen... mounted upon a tree... to greet all comers... with a seahorse kiss!    
     Seller said it was made by the same artist... of the turtle lady statue... to be found in Corpus Christi!  Asked if I had seen it... my reply... No, but I liked the seahorse piece! He expounded... the artist... only had one leg... but was a surfer... well known for this trait... in Corpus Christi!  
     After I had mounted the seahorse... upon it's tree...I did an internet search... looking for anything about the one-legged surfer artist of Corpus Christi!  Found... nothing!  
     End of May, 2019... visiting my sister, Donna... we were wandering Corpus Christi!  She guided us to the surf museum... not knowing the story... of the one-legged surfer artist... creator of my mounted seahorse!  
     Girl at the front desk... Kyla... real nice and friendly... told her about the seahorse and questioned her... she didn’t know... she never heard of a surfer with one leg or the turtle lady statue!  Looking at us just a bit strangely... one legged surfer???
      Donna and I... started our stroll through the small museum!  Along the right side... stood a long row of surfboards... I’ve never surfed... but I was imagining trying it with just one leg!  
      Anyhow... I didn’t really stop to read or look in any detail at any of the exhibits until I reached the back... there was a glass case... which had a piece of simple letter paper...  8.5x11... taped to the front of the glass cabinet!  I started in reading the last paragraph...

     “Welch, 53, and his wife, Chelsea Louise, 23, died September 15, 2001, when their car plunged off the edge of South Padre Island’s Queen Isabella Causeway, which partially collapsed after a string of barges crashed into the bridge’s support pilings!

     Thought to myself... Wow... Who is this guy???  I jumped up to the middle paragraph...

     “Welch lost one of his lower legs in an auto accident in the 1970s, but he kept surfing with a prosthesis.  He wore a peg-like prosthesis at first, then got one with a foot.  He won the prosthesis division of the United States Surfing Championships on South Padre Island in 1998.”

     In the glass case was a welded metal sculpture of a beach scene... with waves, palm trees, and all!  The piece did have some resemblance in style to my seahorse sculpture!  Also, there was a picture on top of the case... of Harpoon Barry... striking a muscular, no shirt pose... in his tattoo shop... his torso covered in tattoos!  
    
     “It is said... he was on the verge of suicide after losing his leg. In one interview with the San Antonio Express News in 1992 he said;  "I may not make it to heaven, but you can be sure I made no deals with the devil to get where I'm at now, "  Looking down at his false leg stretched out in front of him, Welch said quietly: "It is a real empty feeling when you put one of these on for the first time, especially if you are an adult on your own. And your mama'a not there and your daddy's not there, and the people in the hospital tell you, 'This is the best it's going to get.  I made my first leg myself, out of Hi-C cans. I couldn't wait for my leg to get finished. I wanted to walk. I guess I got the idea from the Tin Woodsman in 'The Wizard of Oz.' That leg actually worked pretty well!”

     I had found my one-legged surfer artist!  I walked towards Donna... who was already half-way leaving the museum...  I hollered to her... she just had to come see this ... “I think I found the one-legged surfer!”  She had recently had partial knee replacement... and was hobbling!  She said if I was fooling her... she better not walk back all that way for nothing!! She came back to the glass case... we read through the letter in it’s entirety!  
     Then we went... and told Kyla at the front desk... she again looked at us again a bit strange... but then reluctantly left her post to go with us to take a look... she was then astounded!  Said she never knew about the one-legged surfer... although she had worked at the museum for several years!  Said there were also a couple metal sculptures... at the front of the museum... she thought were also done... by Harpoon Barry!  We took pictures of those also!  

In the letter we also read...

     “Welch had numerous tattoos and body piercings.  He wore a tiny 14 carrot gold harpoon through one ******.  That is how he got his nick name according to a friend, Scott Gangel.”  

     "I am a unique, self-made sensation!” he said matter-of-factly... in the interview with the Express News!  
    
     It's been 18 years since eight people died when South Padre Island's Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway collapsed... sending 11 people into the water below... four days after the 9/11 attacks!  A string of tow barges had struck the supporting pilings!  A section of the roadway had collapsed...
     I promised Kyla... I would donate my seahorse piece to the museum upon my death!  I only hope my death... is as grand as Harpoon Barry’s plunge into the Gulf of Mexico with his young wife!  Wonder what they were doing during the plunge... what was Barry doing... yelling Yippee Ki Yay... or Surf’s up... Dude!!!... maybe???  
    
Surfed waves on one leg
Young wife... crazy life... grand death
Harpooned by Barry

©  2019 Jim Davis
I doubt I could ever match his life!  !  Though...  someday... I might get a tattoo... or two... or a harpoon piercing... perhaps in a ******! Also... still looking for the turtle lady statue!
PrttyBrd Dec 2010
Blue eyes watching. Blushing at the sight at the very thought.  Flushed with emotion. Hearts beating so fast and hard.  Deafening rhythmic beating.  Quivering at the thought of what may be next.  Hoping it will be so, yet afraid of what is to come.  Self-conscious and embarrassed, time stretches on.  Not wanting the moment to pass.  Holding on hard to the idea.  A soft, almost accidental, brush of the lips.  A light, absentminded gliding of the finger on the skin.  Systems heightened, mind swimming, emotions running rampant, temperature rising.  Taken by surprise the lips plant firmly yet gently.  A breathy moan leaves no doubt.  

Sighs tell a story
Opening the door to play
And so it begins

Tentatively, lips touch.  So sweet and delicate the dance.  Welcoming, beckoning to be entered.  Warm and wet they go exploring, tasting, breathing in the essence of desire.  Doubt gives way to fire, and passion wins out.  Piece by piece the offering is made and accepted.  The game continues.  Silently daring to be outdone.  First one button, then another.  Heat rises.  Smooth skin under rough hands. Electricity.  Fingers trace a line that the tongue follows.  Closer, closer, closer.  Involuntary movement brings skin against skin, breath against breath, body against body.

Minds lost to passion
Floods come to drown the desert
Drink til thirst is quenched

The hand once afraid to touch, briefly runs the length of its desire.  Like a volcano letting off steam.  Embers turn into an inferno consuming all it comes near.  Floodgates opened, beckoning.  Waters tested.  There is no denial, no second thoughts, no rewind.  Short gasps of need, punctuated by the sounds of the flesh.  Glistening in the moonlight, two outlines become one.  

No more wondering
The question has been answered
Hearts have been traded

There are no thoughts left to ponder.  In this moment there is only those eyes.  Those blue eyes that pierce the soul, that see right through the words.  Lips removed from lips.  Watching the moment.  Waiting for its impending arrival.  Fingers grasp tightly as they pull against the skin.  Trying to melt into each other.  They dig in a little too hard, the sounds are a little too loud. Inhibitions lost on the wind.  No longer able to hold back.

And in that moment
There is only perfection
Nothing else matters
copyright©PrttyBrd 24/12/2010
PrttyBrd Oct 2011
Never have I been the best at hiding how I feel.  There is no peaceful game.  My face reveals the truth.  Never to be doubted.  Nothing left to wonder.  Still, I reign it in.  I stifle my reality in an attempt to keep you close.  So tender-hearted beneath that thickening shell.  The shell I penetrated somehow.  Once you found me in your heart, you pushed with all your might.  Trying to get me out.  I cannot be budged. Yet, I am not free to love you.  You refuse to let me be yours in theory or practice.  You love me, but not by choice.  Fear of the possibility of pain keeps you at bay.  Yet saving yourself from pain has deemed my own inconsequential.  For running from me pulls out my heart.  

Pushing me away
What's best, or just what's easy
Burns holes in my soul


Not one to take the easy way out.  Suffering to love you.  There is no expectation of love requited.  There is nothing but a dream, part memory part wishful thinking.  Hot needles still poke at me, slowly breaking me down.  Weakening my very being with the sharp jabs of stinging words or careless action, or worse...absolute inaction.  I have learned to stop expecting the "Morning Sunshine" or "'Night Darlin'" that used to brighten each day.  Those thoughtless things, the tiny nothing things that let me know I was on your mind.  So far from nothing those nothings were.  Days and nights seem incomplete in their absence.  Weaning to make your days bearable makes mine unendurable, empty, and melancholy has come to underlie all things.  

Joy of love melts ice
Heat smothered by a tear cloud
Threadbare soul survives


Challenges faced sideways leave blind spots. Choices made by indecision.  Letting mistakes be made, watching as they choose wrong. I see the truth and know what I know.  Everything is aligned for my own misfortune.  For as a bystander, I lay no claims.  Anything I do will hasten the inevitable.  So I let the weaning drip down to nothing.  Reluctantly I watch as you disappear with my heart in hand.  I stood firm as you ran away in place.  You turned to me, you needed me, you loved me.  As the clouds dissipate and the sun creeps over the horizon, With the blue sky I turn to mist. Slowly fading to the past.  A ghost of could've been, used to be, and never was

**Surrender takes time
                        Reluctantly relinquished
                                               I will fight no more
copyright©PrttyBrd 7/10/2010
PrttyBrd May 2010
It's in the blood and taking over, this feeling undefined.  Moving through veins like lightning.  Taking sanity in burning bits and pieces. Trading hope for function.  Stagnant and murky still seeking the sun.  Time stands still as it rushes passed.  The view eternally slightly askew seeing through those eyes.  Tainted and etched with salted tears.

Broken down and cracked
There's no shelter to be had
Time and space collide


Nothing left.  No hiding places.  Exposed to the universe, alone just the same.  Shoulders soaked through and soggy, gone to dry in the sun.  Far away, the sun shines brightly for them.  For those who think they are whole.  For those who feel the fire, yet are not burned.

Sulfur in the air
A storm of brimstone ensues
Hell is found on Earth


Feared by all. Belonging to no one.  Falling to the depths in isolation.  Longing to be enveloped without fear.  To feel warmth without heat.  To be wooed without woe.  To be naked, exposed, and free, no longer tethered by a past that was never meant to be.  Scars should fade but are still found bleeding.  The heart lies bare in exsanguination. The soul struggles to clutch the tiniest speck of heaven.

**Like a broken wing
Mended hearts may not fly, but
Love can make it soar
52510
DJ Thomas Apr 2010
The play is written to be staged in a pub or a large cave like yurt in Cardiff.  Its action and dialogue provides characterisation, with sound and lighting being used to establish context.  The setting a darkened pub corner that is  modelled on The Bunch of Grapes in Pontypridd.   There are only 6 characters, five speak in haiku-ed verse with the exception of the Drunk who acts as my 'Greek Chorus'.

- Hand-in-hand she enters to **** her thumb in a corner

- Chocolate ice cream soda demanded from Daddy

- Joking banter ceased slowly as the regulars all begin to quaff their brown pints

“Balll uut eass swept -
Chimrrrrr, Chiirriica,
war is never won”

- Church quiet, the village pub listened lips clamped tears swelling

“ ***** cut swapped with eyes -
Chimerica, Chimerica,
war is never won”

- The cornered hero of two Afghanistan tours is seen regressing into childhood*

The set darkens slowly then after 30 seconds a spotlit conversation in lines and stanzas begins.

Haiku and tanka that inspired the coming play include:

******* -
thoughts sought, taught and wrought,
testosterones
Fighting aggressive games,
Afghanistan camouflage


Globalism and War -
cloned greedy conspiracy,
that third tower
Titled selfish-self-grandiose,
deliver warring terror


Springs cut Irises -
dripping vital red not purple,
far from my window*

.
copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010
Prabhu Iyer Oct 2012
A roaring event rips lives apart. Like a river that parts land into two banks. Sometimes brothers are rent apart by life, never to be joined again. Nations arise out of land that was once one.

Born of the same soil, yet separated by the rapid gusts of flowing water. At the culmination though, love breaks barriers. At the ocean, the roar of the river is drowned in the peace of the wave.

Sometimes, we must let go and let life mend itself.

When the river meets
the ocean, sands from two banks
mingle, become one
Maggie Emmett Sep 2014
I catch the rapido train from Milano and edge slowly westward through the stops and starts of frozen points and village stations. The heating fails and an offer of warmer seats in another compartment. I decide to stay here. I put on my coat, scarf, hat and gloves and sit alone. In my grieving time, I feel closer to the cold world outside as it moves past me, intermittently. Falling snow in window-framed landscapes.            

Sky gun metal grey
shot through
with sunset ribbons.
                                                                                                          
Dusk eases into black-cornered night. After Maghera, the train seems to race to the sea. It rumbles onto the Ponte della Ferrovia, stretching out across the Laguna Veneta. Suddenly, a jonquil circle moon pulls the winter clouds back and shines a lemony silver torch across the inky waters. Crazed and cracked sheets of ice lie across the depthless lagoon. The train slows again and slides into Santa Lucia. I walk into the night.                                                                                               
Bleak midwinter      
sea-iced night wind
bites bitter.
                                                                                                      
No. 2 Diretto winding down the Canal Grande.  The foggy night muffles the guttural throb of the engine and turns mundane sounds into mysteries. Through the window of the vaporetto stop, the lights of Piazza San Marco are an empty auditorium of an opera house. Walking to Corte Barozzi, I hear the doleful tolling of midnight bells; the slapping of water and the *****-***** of the gondolas’ mooring chains. Faraway a busker sings Orfeo lamenting his lost Eurydice, left in Hades.
I wake to La Serenissima, bejewelled.                                                                                                                           
Weak winter sunshine
Istrian stone walls
flushed rosy.
                                                                                                          
Rooftops glowing. Sun streaming golden between the neck and wings of the masted Lion. Mist has lifted, the sky cloudless; I look across the sparkling Guidecca canal and beyond to the shimmering horizon.          
Molten mud
bittersweetness demi-tasse
Florian’s hot chocolate                    

I walk the maze of streets, squares and bridges; passing marble well-heads and fountains, places of assignation. I walk on stones sculpted by hands, feet and the breath of the sea. Secrets and melancholy are cast in these stones.                                                                  

At Fondamente Nuove, I take Vaporetto no.41 to Cimitero. We chug across the laguna, arriving at  the western wall of San Michele.  I thread through the dead, along pathways and between gravestones. At the furthest end of the Cemetery island, Vera and Igor Stravinsky lie in parallel graves like two single beds in an hotel room. Names at the head, a simple cross at the foot of the white stone slab. Nearby, his flamboyant mentor Serge Diaghalev. His grave, a gothic birdbath for ravens, has a Russian inscription; straggly pink carnations, a red votive candle and a pair of ragged ballet shoes with flounces of black and aquamarine tulle tied to their the ribbons. So many dead in mausoleums; demure plots; curious walled filing cabinets, marble drawer ossuaries.
                                                                                                      
Bare, whispering Poplars
swaying swirling shadows
graves rest beneath          

I walk to the other end of the island and frame Venezia in the central arch of the Byzantine gateway.  I see that sketchy horizontal strip of rusty brick, with strong verticals of campaniles and domes. It is here, before 4 o’clock closing time, I throw your ashes to the sea and run to catch the last boat.                                                                                          

Beacon light orange
glittering ripples
on the dove grey lagoon.

© M.L.Emmett
First published in New Poets 14: Snatching Time, 2007, Wakefield Press, Kent Town SA.
To view with Images: Poems for Poodles https://magicpoet01.wordpress.com
I wanted to write a Haibun (seasonal journey poem interspersed with haiku). I love Venezia but only in Winter.
DJ Thomas May 2010
Hi, below I copy a humorous hiabun, which I shared as an exercise to mentor enquiring and inspired poets to learn, so they might adopt and try different techniques and then give critique together with awesome comments... Yes, I used the words ***, ****** and **** for context the rest was left to an individual imagination as in good poetry!

It included reflective commentary encompasses innocent classification terminology used in the critique, reading, examining, appreciating, understanding and writing of poetry for example: POETIC DEVICES (enjambement, duality, keriji, images, collocation, semantic, oxymoron, repetition, listing etc.), STORY (personification, characterisation, subject, context, voice etc.), IMAGERY (synaesthesia), STRUCTURE ( lineation, breaks, syntactic etc.), SOUNDS (syllables, rhyme, alliteration, pace, musicality, phrasing, beat, assonance, onomatopoeia, mouthed rhythms, patterned) and WORDS (preposition, determiner, verbs, adverbs, lexical, nouns, adjectives) used by poets, critics and academics...

And here it is :

****** tongue-in-cheek haibun - a reflective commentary on writing a popular tanka

Eye lashes flicker
a shared urgent interest
parting - dancing smile


My first inspiration was ***, passionate life squeezing screaming ***, the thumping wall musicality of ***, exhaustingly inventive sweaty and wet.

I wanted to make it a senryu but for duality the female characterisation demanded two more lines each extending to seven syllables.  

Arousing images captured her moaning splashing loneliness in unusual collocation.

I was first excited by the placement of a hovering extended enjambement to give life to my final line, whilst also considering the satisfaction in using noisy mouthed rhythms.  

I believe I easily hid the wet aroused context with a watery semantic field, that suggested she would choke and drown.

So in my last line I had ‘pleasures’ as a cutting keriji to make clear the dominating ****** context, having previously used a preposition and determiner to maintain duality!


Exhausted shivers
in windowed naked currents
unfolding sinking
then surfing vital wavelets
drowning screams - pleasures wet bite




copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010
PrttyBrd Dec 2012
Stuck in a time long since passed. Heart emptied hopeless. Faces blur along with the days. Nights linger incessantly, haunting all that ever was.  Dreams tease happy.  Sun kills dreams. Time makes scars. Distance allows the fallacy to continue.  The lies turn daily mantra.  The mantra into perceived reality. Reality into dreams, the dreams into nightmares.  Sun cannot **** nightmares.

Hollow glass hearts bleed
Puddle will evaporate
To exist no more


Joy-filled memories leach all hope for future joy.  Heart crushed to powder. Powdered hearts cannot bleed.  Dead hearts cannot feel. Memories, overflow with the shadow of love's embrace. Pain jabs the senses like lightning.  Still, the heart has ceased to exist.  Calluses fill the space that scars cannot.  False emotion permeates the truth.  Future acquaintances see beauty behind dead eyes.  As they close in, icy breath freezes long enough to drain their heart to beat some life into the one lost. Walking away with minimal pulse as their heart is hollowed and bleeding.  Soon too, that puddle with cease to exist.  

**Life's casualties
Joy begets pain begets joy
Hope dies most quickly
Copyright©PrttyBrd 20\12\12
vircapio gale Dec 2012
Either this town is without character, or my own lack thereof blinds
me to what style hums it into history. The brook's rapids are drowned
by the highway roar, central song that never passes through, spilling
over walls and roofs. A railroad collects rust between weeds, silent
authenticity. Impassive clouds remind me of other ways to witness.
And this is real, too; sadness accrues over store counters, fatigue
glowing in the pavement connecting all, cracked and rubble
facing skies a simulacrum grey. Inebriation, par for course,
a hidden semblance of a self-chosen haze within a haze.
Gravity, acoustic footfalls question my arrival here.

phosphene breath--
dark, dark mining town solstice
unearths inner rainbows
PrttyBrd Dec 2010
A life lived in black and white.  No time for middle of the road.  Lines drawn straight and narrow.  Passion, only with rules.  Love, only as stated.  A heart filled with admiration, adoration, and caring.  Nothing missing from the list of "supposed to".  All boxes checked off. I's dotted and T's crossed.  Perfect on paper, perfect to onlookers, perfect in bed.  Never a thought of something missing.  All boxes checked.  Not able to settle into a life.  Unable to blur the lines.  Must be good, always good.  Mistakes happen, but not on purpose.  Not by choice.  

Always the good one
Right is the only option
Mistakes...still happen

Before we fully become, life is full of confusion.  Who we are and what we do are enmeshed within our surroundings, our perspective, our emotion, and our lives.  Pulled together, yet fighting every step of the way.  Beyond our understanding of purpose or passion.  Afraid of everything we are as yet unable to understand.  Trying to get through to the next phase without falling too hard.

Peers skew vision
Rules confine the innocent
Love hides unnoticed

Grown into a life of checks and balances.  A nice life, a good life.  Loved by many, yet alone.  Always alone.  Able to love, willing to love, believing love is what is being lived.  Unseen circumstances. Friendships remembered.  Longing, pulling toward one another.  More than passion could ever be.  More than who we thought we were.  The need to be right, to do the right thing, is stomped unrecognizable by emotion.  The past melts into the future.  Is a life unfulfilled, yet loving, enough to maintain, or is love supposed to be so full of passion that it takes you outside the box?  

The thought of a life
A love left unrealized
A world in a cage

A chance to live in happiness. Fires burn in body and mind.  No sorrow, no regret.  Pushed by one into another.  Two hearts alone run to each other.  Holding fast to all that is real.  Yet casualties will line the road forever tainting all that could be good.  Checks and balances. Pros and cons.  Does one give up happiness to maintain the perfect facade, the perfect family, the "perfect" life?  There is no perfect.  There is only what is.  The possibility of happiness could be short lived.  Hearts broken and bridges burned.  Broken families, broken lives.  Happiness could be tangible.  Happiness could be real.  Pros and cons.  What price shall be paid.  When should love lose and happiness not be a goal?  Choices, pain, there is no fairness.  There is no black and white, there are no boxes in which to fit.  

Straight and narrow life
Checklists, I's dotted, T's crossed
Thwarted by passion
copyright©PrttyBrd 08/12/2010
Richard Alan Oct 2014
Threescore and ten is an average, not a promise, and all too easy to take for granted.  
The years pass, not with the ticking of the clock, but with the silent hissing of sand through the center of an hourglass.  
Their passage is felt more than heard; their piling at the bottom a slow and subtle thing.
The fighter can grasp all he wants.  
He will never hold it all.  
In that fight, time is always the winner, and the grave always receives the trophy.

Winding and throwing
A blow like summer thunder,
He misses the mark
Puyallup, Washington  -  Spring 2009

I thought haiku was the apex of refinement.  Then I discovered haibun.
PrttyBrd Jun 2011
Heart stuck in gray dawn. Subtle remembrances, consume. Longing for more. Lingering for, "used to be".  Vulnerability in pain gambled for strength in love.  Held in place by promises.

Spoken words deny
Actions scream in love and pain
Hearts splinter and crack


Time cannot heal what was not meant to be broken. Change is slow coming.  Dreams of warmth take hold, trying to leach into reality so abruptly ripped apart.  Something once so perfect, so beautiful in its purity, in its simplicity. Forever tainted by selfless gestures turned selfish motives.

Promises broken
Dreams relive yesterday's bliss
Stopping tomorrow


What's good for one, not enough to sustain.  Love enough to last, pushed under, forgotten. Lost to fear. Submerged in darkness.  Yet, there lies the sun.  Warm and alive.  More than a seed, a field of flowers ready to bloom.  Still, flowers of love do not bloom in tears of despair.

**You are the warm sun
Watered by my salty tears
Flowers turned to hay
62311
PrttyBrd Aug 2010
Alone in a sea of the most colorful people.  Rainbow dotted horizons and sparkling reflections of joy.  Amazing view of happiness, of what it should be, of what it could be.  Standing atop a rock in this ocean.  Searching for the unknown.  Waiting and uncertain.  

Passing by in waves
Ebbing and flowing in time
The tide will soon turn


Green-eyed monster tickles toes.  So many cries of glory and elation. The clueless linger atop a rock.  Unseen or unnoticed, unloved or unwanted, or just unintentional and unrealized.  Isolated by fear of falling.  Afraid of the unknown.  Afraid of breaking.  Afraid of the ocean and awash in melancholy to see it pass.

Toe dipped in slowly
Taken out to deep water
Left to drown alone


Confined to that space.  Safe from all who are unable to scale those smooth walls.  Unwilling to drop a line without a safety net.  A smile with each thought of "what if", seems like happiness from afar.  Seems like contentment, Seems like a mirage.
copyright©PrttyBrd 17/08/2010
Caroline Grace May 2010
Harvested-
a basket
of ruby jewels!

Here I stand in the kitchen,
a chilled mother with warm thoughts,
easing tissue-thin skins
from slithers of moist flesh.

Birdsong.
Peaceful solitude.
Time unrolls its red carpet.

Considerably reduced,
I slip a few scarlet streaks
into a bone-white bowl.
A familiar voice calls me to the garden.
"Tea dear!"
but I hunger for something stronger.

A rush of love
flies like an arrow
to pierce silence
copyright © Caroline Grace 2010
Ron Sparks May 2016
You've been here before.  You woke up today and realized that the stress, the angst, and the foreboding that you've allowed to rule your life is there by choice.  You've gotten lost in the spiral of anxiety, again.

If it's not your health, it's your money.  If it's not the money, it's your kids.  If it's not your kids, you're worried about past life choices and how they will affect you tomorrow.  Your fears line up at the door, wrap around the block, and await their turn.  Your door is open to them all and you don't deny them.  You let them in.  

Once they are inside, you wrap your fears around you.  They’re a welcome smothering; a wearying security blanket of trembling phobia.  They are as familiar to you as they are distressing.  These constant, restless, companions are more comfortable than the unknown.  

Today, though, you stare at the line of fears and realize that something is missing.  Happiness.  Contentment.  Acceptance.  These are conspicuous in their absence.  And you remember an old Cherokee tale.  You have two wolves engaged in eternal battle inside you; one is fear and anxiety and the other is peace and serenity.  The strongest is the one you feed and you've been feeding the wrong wolf.  

You've done this your entire life in a self-centered, selfish, guilt-ridden, indulgent, fashion.  You wallow in the darkness because you're afraid you don't deserve the light.

You know you’ll feed the right wolf today.  But can you do it tomorrow?  

  mighty river;
the fish navigates
​as it will
Haibun is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. The range of haibun is broad and frequently includes autobiography, diary, essay, prose poem, short story and travel journal.
PrttyBrd Nov 2014
With all the innocence of old friends, wrapped in silent hoping, knowing but afraid to believe.  The heart beats a bit faster as the words become free. No longer chained in what came before. Transformed by insight, a vision sent to each of us alone.  And in those words were hidden truths that underlay what came before.  A true affection melts in heat into a fire that burns free.  

With a breath was lit
What had always smoldered there
Ablaze on a wire


Tentative in this new-found freedom. We touch delicately, lingering on the words that electrify the flesh and liquify defenses.  Steam wafting in the air as emotion meets desire.  Intoxicated by the ethereal beauty of it all. Left reeling, hearts traded, souls tangled and the lascivious nature of what was once hidden ravages the senses.
111314
For He Who Knows
In a swiveling chair, the black and white images of light to the west, are reflections of mind in a humming machine. Turning a head, there is a closed window, showing an energetically inspired pen the nearing sunset.
                                                Moon swept itching dark
                                             Twilight, sunrises curtain
                                                   pink lids - open eyes

With a blink of instaneous awakeness and sleep, the neck turns fast, to look for inspiration.
                                                    Dusk - apart painted
                                              eight queued paired mare and foal
                                                     foliage lined dark black
Without my sister's presence, the filmed horse's birth is only an image, lost. Indeed, it's the shadows of sunlight that have lit up the southerly tree with darkness!
Free poem by Kongsaeng Chris Everson -2010
PrttyBrd Apr 2011
Instant gratification.  Instant disappointment.  Dreams of yesterday and a blind tomorrow. Talk of closing doors and opened windows does not quell fear.  The unknown is too familiar.  Teetering on the precipice of what was and what will be.  The path is unlit.  In darkness all is equal.  There is no direction.  There is no certainty but that any motion will let gravity take hold.  Falling, falling, falling.  Blindfolded by emotion, a lightless tunnel.  Hoping only to land on the side facing forward.  

Thrown into change
Dragged into tomorrow
Clawing the past


Status quo has been erased.  Eradicated by others.  There is no escaping pain, there is no eluding fear.  Time stood still for ages and the clock has begun to tick in time with the very heartbeat of life.  There is more, more to be desired, more that is deserved, more life to live, more joy to find.  How bad is the hunger?  How strong the need? Driven by hope or fear, or both but driven.  Driven to a new sense of self.  A renewed confidence found only through the art of release.

**Tides will ebb and flow
Sun rises in the morning
Change is imminent
copyright©PrttyBrd 05/04/2011
blue mercury Apr 2017
it's almost like we
glow in every moment now
i feel like we're stars

i didn't think i had the ability to ponder possibility anymore. but here i am, laying in bed, thinking of the future. i want to offer you, and only you, forever. however long forever lasts, (i wouldn't know i've never been) you can have mine.

we're floating in air
our feet never touch the ground
my heart knows the way

split into a better person i want to empty my veins and give you all i've got. i want you to see that time is endless. with you, i am suspended in time. although, we could have every day for the rest of our lives, but that still wouldn't be enough for me. i want eternity- is that too much?

i want careful love
but i also want to be reckless
i'll blossom for you

you say that you don't want to leave me, so you want to go, in two years to college in-state. i love that i'm someone that you want to change the path you take for. two years is a long time from now though and i'm scared we're too young to plan that far ahead. i'm scared of everything these days.

i'm afraid your mind
will change the moment my eyes
are closed - scared to blink
DJ Thomas May 2010
A ravaged beauty -
long threatened tired life,
riding appreciated  


Friday’s  off-road cycle ride started late with a heart-choking chill head-wind blown rain - blurring my glassed vision, so I trusted into the triple lanes of colours slicing through the Vale of Neath.   Here a builder’s ladder jumped boomeranging off it's white van - attempting to decapitate me - behind me it’s miss was announced by squealing brakes and crunching impacts,  scaring alive splattered visions of a flat-end and being posted within a near drain.     Surviving today's devilled ribbon of the dangerous windscreen imprisoned - sitting with pub bound murderous cohorts - I found off-road safe solitude’s mountain bike path East to Coelbren - joining new, a fine yet unsigned cycle route curling around Mynydd y Drum, to open views of Cwm Tawe as I pass hunting twisting through woods a single Red Kite.   Then  gravities speed, circles barriers into Ystradgynlais top - a narrow ribboned descent, hemmed by cars and paved children to the rugby fields.

Senses travelogue -
previously un-experienced,
time spins slower

Here the trails old section points to Swansea - winding lost betwixt fields, paths, trees and roads to Cwmtawe Cycleway proper, there to pedal beside and across Afon Tawe with repeated special offers of  child saddled exhaust roaring  kamikazes, bicycle maiming broken glass, proudly owned attack dogs, branch hung ball-sacks of excrement, visions of the lost ripped-away steel gated stops, hacked-off wooden fences and never-there deceitful dreams of red doggy bins all disguised what passed for hidden beauty, which he called lovely ugly.    Backing-into Pontardawe to crawl away below the dark bridge, past a single inviting  pub - I accompany the Tawe and it's twin a decrepit polished canal through ***** alleys - until our hero stutters, gapes then tunnels under great noisious noxious ribbons of hurtling tired....

Pressured paced life -
impossible  commitments,
Living organic**

.
copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010
Rama Krsna Jul 2021
tis a perfect summer evening. a blood shot moon inches across the night sky in the city of sin. the sage and the enchantress sit at an outdoor cafe under a lantern lit tent exchanging life stories, as a vintage bottle of ‘82 margaux loses its virginity.  

she could’ve been off the cover of Vogue. clad in haute couture, her slit eyes sparkle like the diamond butterfly ring, she elegantly sports. her complexion near flawless. he on the other hand, a hippie, a yogi and ancient as Rome. living proof that the hour glass can indeed be brutal on a city dweller.

her doe eyes dart from the past to the future while his steady gaze stays in the present. quite like the burning candle on their table. the mercury dips into the night as saintly time simply goes rogue.

written in the stars
this unusual kinship ~~
beauty and the beast


© 2021
A Gouedard Jun 2014
The Miner, Absolom
(a haibun)


green hill where sheep graze
white bones and coal, buried, held
seasons all the same
  
My grandfather worked in the mines from age thirteen to seventy. His life was closed in by mountains, the green one at the back, the dark looming one at the front and the pit head along the valley., winding the men in and out of the shaft, day after day, dawn until dusk when they came home singing  

boots ring on the road
deep valley voices echo
backyard starlit smoke

.
They worked on their bellies or crouched, often in water for days, water that undermines rock. Shaft collapses where frequent. Life was cheap. He came home covered in coal dust to his wife and two sons, sons he was determined to keep out of the mines. Yet he loved that coal - coal that he always polished with care before lighting a fire, brushing dust off black diamond surfaces.

water breaks through rock
with wood and straining shoulders
man becomes the beam

He saved twenty lives that day, men he had known from boyhood. When his lungs were affected they laid him off, no pay, no pension, no life. He bought an insurance book with the money he had and every day he trudged over the mountains and valleys gathering pennies that would help to secure some livelihood to the widows who lost their men in the mines. He never told his wife that when a family couldn't pay he put the pennies in for them rather than leave them unprotected.

winter, summer, fall
the mountain hangs over all
tired to the backbone

When the mines were nationalised my grandfather went straight back to the coal face despite his age. He wasn't going to miss those days of glory. Safety was suddenly the watchword and changes were made very fast. Hot showers were installed at the pit head and the miners came home clean at last.

men stripped to the skin
hot water, steam, baptised
brothers singing hymns
Deep within Sleep
Gleam in the beautiful Dream
Attract the mindful Abstract

Pleasantries of meadow breezes praising my soft warm skin, Rows of wild green stemmed roses sway silently to zephyr's sonata, colorful floras bless the land with vibrant violets, blues, reds such desirable scenery to take in upon the moonlit Earth, Distant sounds of soft howls barking at the pale blue moon

Dreaming free__________warmly touched breeze
Vibrant roses__________colorful scene


Moonbeams mend__________Earth's dreamt surface
Blessed soft howls__________restful meadow


Pleasantry__________pristine dreams flourish
Violets, blues, reds__________Zephyr's song


As I open my pale blue eyes the land I possess inside dreamscapes, divinely flourishes with deep beauty, The happy sun makes its presence known by sharing its gifts of growth and warmth with the Earth's den, while nature dances with glee at full blooming process, The birds sing their illustrious praiseful songs unto the newborn life that Mother Nature produced for all to share

Endearing sun
Growing beautiful flowers
Rebirthing nature's bounty
©Aiden L K Riverstone
PrttyBrd Jun 2010
A change of scenery and a new life.  An innocent beginning, as all beginnings seem to be.  Still, after all these years remnants of that incipience still remain.  

A new adventure
Packed, moved, unloaded, emptied
All but for a few


Boxes with pieces of me packed away and disregarded.  Never to bask in the sun or live in all their glory.  Too little too late.  Like a lost retainer straining to fit shifted teeth, they no longer belong to me these bits and pieces.  

Long since forgotten
Secrets held within their walls
Hiding shattered dreams


They had gone unnoticed for so long.  Yet, the secrets of how I came to be the me before you, remain in those dusty boxes, so neatly stacked and so easily overlooked.  They may no longer fit the puzzle, but they are still part of the picture adding splashes of color and bringing zeal and

**Artful shading
To my self-portrait painted
in hues of joy and pain
copyright©PrttyBrd 24/06/2010
calion Mar 2014
a little girl, perhaps 5-6, sits in the meadow and picks flowers. she picks the flowers slowly, meticulously. she looks up and sees a beautiful teenaged girl, with a long flowing dress and short hair with splotches missing. the teenager sits with the little girl. "what happened to your hair?" the little one asks.

"once upon a time,
I picked flowers just like you.
but I picked them all."


the young girl listens and keeps picking her flowers.

"I met a boy who
promised I was beautiful
and made me feel so."


the teenager begin taking the flowers and winding them together. she grabs her knitting needles out of her handmade purse and continues working on a hat to keep her hands busy.

"he always told me
that my head was too pretty
for me to be sad."


"Did he love you?" the little girl asks, playing with her hands.

"perhaps he did, but
he never said that he did.
he never told me."


"after I ran out
of flowers, I began pull-
ing my long hair out."


"please don't end up like me." the teenager says, handing the girl the hat.
vircapio gale Oct 2015
projective geometry used to get me *****
all those positions

,palmately pink and ever green
breathing vasts of void my dark heart laughs in gulping wholes
moaning plenums, hooded over boundless venus-vim

now i'm tired of infinite lines
too many shapes to fit in
too wide, too tight, sharp or empty

,too many ways to come

this was meant to be a disclaimer before a collection of poems

,a way to unclutter
                angst of public  
                              lexicality,
years  after  ­ 'explaining'
                  Samir's 'polygonal me'
                                                to only-me-myself-i-was,
to then indulge this analogic soundlessness...
             
        as i disengage

i can't write without planning on it
i can't write about  writing  without feeling like a fool
                                                            ­                 (,Lear is the only one
that saves me now
                       as now i am the Fool,
                                                 dividing hearts along
in storm-***-love-like railway-*****
                                 steaming full of fiberoptic nooks,
chaining spectra-cogs of a good-will-spirit-****:
                                       concatenated hard-ons every word
each thought a pulsate vulval dream awake,
                                                redichotom­izing lives
                         of shining mons my Athene forehead
                                                      forging fountain thought,
                          urethral letting-beings-be...
freely, my chubby comes back to me
                                         prone before the prostate god)

,in other words
              the same,
                     i cannot write as other than a fool
for
why should i repeat the abject horror of the world?
isn't despair a bit.. overdone at this point?!
and why should i write just the happy!? i'm not in denial, am i?
or am i in denial
about insisting on being in denial absolutely?
--like mind-only schools...
(O the uselessness of words, dismissing patriarchal vigor with yet another wave, the 'brine-milk' ends unending,
forever Femen liberating us of words,
replaced with Fragilaria,
wasting diatomic seas and waterways,
depleted algae gone, extinct: metaphysiCalListo-craticality aborted on a broken Amazonic spear,
our bodies, bodied-hearts, finally won as ours, across Alternaqueeria, fully lucid human-species spanned
i blink my tears and blur my gaze at weeping Pleides

the plan was this: painful poem, pleasure poem, painful poem, happy poem... **** poem, sterile poem, carnal poem, priggish poem, punk poem, open poem, confessing poem, eros poem, **** poem, 'obscene-attractive' poem...
to cleanse inverted mainstreams of my steady-rhythmed pratitpaksha-bhavanams; not "poem, poem, poem, poem..."
but a taut poeming in and out of poems of poemed poiesis prosing poets free to **** again in Issa's snow, or *** on Chiera's cumaholic Shards.

pendulum left, pendulum right; then two pendulums, then none; then one that swings right and left at the same time; then one that spins all the way around, but only clockwise; then one counter-clockwise; then one both clockwise and counterclockwise; then one timeless, then one imaginary one... full of infinite little ones... to represent all the pendulata in the universe as experienced through minor parts of self.. itself as universal part-whole-parcel self-hood spanning star-births yet to come...
,
,
,but it's time to eat a 'square' meal
take off my job-search tie, my peddled lies
                   forget the sunrise vestibules we sipped from,
                                           sleeping by commoding cows

and pretend i'm not dicking myself over
                                                          by­ retreating
into cryptic spectionism-voids again
                                               all seagull-divert-adverts, play
of frozen youth abstrused,
                      self-referred referring loosed
                                          staggered worse than marginalia
no single species 'seagull' singing here
vircapio gale Oct 2015
perfect sunny day--
insects  sing   so    loud!
as i surf the web

pond water--
my hair dries as i click,
getting hot again

One summer years ago, at my childhood home, in a nudist colony whose so-called 'co-founding' is my family's only legacy--perhaps right before my grandmother had passed, or when my father's prostate was scheduled to be removed and he thought it best to hire someone for a last-minute memory (despite his ***-negative crutch-christianity, just in case the operation cost him his jive)--i googled, '*******,' while looking for ****, and the atrocity i found took all of a second to challenge my complacent illusion that i could remain separate or disconnected from the global oppression of women and girls while i consumed the products (i.e., fantasized about having *** with and/or 'making love' to simulacra-women; masturbated to pictures of them) of an industry whose widespread lack of any substantial commitment to fairness, safety, legal recourse and work-place equality has contributed to a new generational acceptance of the ancient memes that perpetuate bigotry:

dismembered girl
on an open body-bag--
why does this exist??

the insects clacking,
droning in the grass--
summer can't hide death

her hip bones' marrow showing,
young *******'s corpse--
limbless

her legs gone--
the image chokes me
from speaking

my sisters, too young to tell--
who do i tell?
why should i tell?

i read she'd run from her ****--
they put her in the river.

young girl,
her blood still--
i can't feel my heartbeat

young woman,
her torso bare--
unfeeling stumps

young woman,
her legs gone,
skin gray from the river

young woman,
your legs gone--
i choke  on words








.
please don't infer any absolute moral judgments here; or absolute relativism; i am questioning harmfulness and interconnectedness.

this experience is from an article i glanced long ago, long enough to leave an indelible pain beyond the mercilessly visceral impact of the image; there is a continuous undercurrent of suffering, accessible each time "feminism" is sneered at or when one wave over another is dismissed outright.

i could never share the article... i felt shame for finding it while searching for **** (which is a sharp irony not lost to me or the puritan in the room); i felt a fear of ruining someone's day, someone's image of me, or the cliche ignorance that seems so essential to happiness; inducing yet additional needless fear in young minds already inflicted with an unfair burden of anxieties seemed pointless if not harmful as well, as if sharing such 'hateful' realities could empower the very organizations that employ these techniques to punish recalcitrance and spread fear (which some may say i'm doing here, though my intention is to overcome fear-induced silence... although i can't imagine sharing the image itself) ... i hadn't realized until recently that i'd also been succumbing to my own fear by projecting it onto others.

these problems are systemic and solutions are manifesting everywhere. future pain is avoidable in the context of education, courageous dialogue, and the kind of love that inspires, liberates and goes to any lengths to understand and empathize.
sweet child of the stars-
never forget these bright lights
and pages of gold

blaze of fireflies-
momentarily trapped in
mason jars; glass-hewn

a saturday evening in july of 1987, pottstown, pennsylvania. the moon peaks over the horizon, craning its neck at the carcasses of lost dreamers littered across the landscape. denim jacket, stone wash; unintentionally half-popped collar. a glass of cinzano bianco in one hand and store-bought iced tea in the other. eight wicker chairs on the deck; chittering and smiling and shuffling and laughing. an evening soirée illuminated solely by stars and citronella candles.  sticky, humid night. grill roars heat as yet another batch of burgers are flipped. step down into the murky dark.

fireworks ignite-
brilliance across nightsky
eyes gaze in wonder

new-age americana at its finest—

we are here and we are now. the product of every moment leading up to now. smoldering remnants of infinite reactions, extraordinary in their own right. what are you cultivating within? what will stay and what will go? what will take hold and manifest? what legacy, what footprint do you dare to leave on the sands of time? in this sublime psalm of life, we can only dream.
never done one of these before! apologies, ik i didn't adhere to form...a creative liberty if you will. ty for stopping by. haibun: haiku poetry and prose.

^don’t ask how i know what cinzano bianco is lol^

part of the last little paragraph thingy was taken from henry wadsworth longfellow’s ‘a psalm of life’.
DJ Thomas Apr 2010
The handsome man entered the Pub hand-in-hand with his father, then sat in the far corner ******* his thumb and humming, whilst the chocolate ice cream he had demanded from Daddy was ordered.

Us regulars hid our sadness by quaffing our brown pints of Rev.James and keeping up the joking banter.
Then, came his mumbled song.....

“Balll uut eass swept -
Chimrrrrr, Chiirriica,
war is never won”

Church quiet, the village pub listened lips clamped tears swelling

“***** cut swapped with eyes -
Chimerica, Chimerica,
war is never won”

As Steve, a veteran and hero of two tours in Afghanistan,
regressed further into childhood...



.
copyright©DJThomas@inbox.com 2010
Caroline Grace May 2010
Suddenly,
season's first sun;
a subtle change of spectrum

Dappled light plays on white walls.  Cotton blanket spread, cool beneath us, we sit in shadow's sanctuary to sip on tea.  Cascades of Jasmine; essence of the garden,

petals plucked
out of the blue.
Afternoon delight.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2010
Chris D Aechtner Nov 2021
This was meant to be a haibun. After the
first sentence, I folded the list of rules into a sparrow.                   I go for a walk,
pass by the place where people write haiku
and roll juxtaposition into irony
as they eat their meals with the wrong
ends of their chopsticks.

he lifts gari with his left hand—
a slot machine jangles

A patron’s nearly full dish of wasabi sits amongst sushi platters that, except
for the left behind rice-explosions,
have been emptied. Around the corner,
a shaman stands near the clocktower
where the grass has died from a winter’s salting. The shadow of a ginkgo leaf flutters on his face like the wings of Buson’s moth. I want to turn off all the lights so that it can see.

The systems are broken. ****. The systems are failing.

Further up Beverly St., an autistic boy
plays with Lego on a front porch. I try to remember his true name, and hope that
he can help break down the foundations, raindance his mind around the blocks’
angles and lines to solve an equation with a variable that is the shaman understanding
why the boy pretends to not see us.

Turn off the lights so that we can see.
06 14 2017

First published in SWITCH Poetry/Prose No 4,
07 2017

Being my own worst critic, I'm offering myself some love in tinkering and modifying. I need to reformat pieces as the original formatting can't be replicated here.
PrttyBrd Nov 2013
thoughts of joy infused my dreams.  despite what life had taught me.  once gray, had changed in hue, and somehow, I believed.  perhaps I just wanted to believe.  the possibility enticed me.  the hope that the claims were real.  nothing forced, nothing false. alas, the excitement was short lived.  as with most things, the gray has returned as black.

**Trust has been broken
Through neglect, if not through lies
Final lesson learned
Copyright©PrttyBrd 21\11\13
Rama Krsna Jul 2021
claiming to possess a “non existent” flick which “supposedly” documents “an affair that never was”,  you lit that strike anywhere match.

soon, all of rome was burning🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

darling grace, did you stop for a moment to wonder how a meandering earthly river could physically touch the infallible sky?  

things swing from unconditional love to bitter hate.  anger, angst and heartache replace joy, banter and sizzling moments of wanton love making.

at a distance, i see the setting orange sun behind the arches of the golden gate.


the space between us
no bridge can ever connect ~~
as memories fade


© 2021
a haibun is a prose poem of a story which ends in a haiku.

— The End —