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JC Lucas Oct 2013
Nocturne
Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne,
whither I call back

After hours, when all
the lights turn out
but mine
I hear birdsongs
as the sun turns on
the sky

Nocturne
whence she calls me
Nocturne
whither I call back
Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne
Best never to look back

After lights out, and all
the streetlight seeps
through sidewalks
I see her there
she turns the sun
back on

Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne
I reply
Nocturne
I turn guiltily
Sometimes dreams remind

Sometimes dreams remind
Some dreams rewind time
Sometimes dreams rewind
Some dreams rewind time

Nocturne,
as she calls me
slowly I reply
Nocturne,
shill she calls me
Guiltfully I close my eyes
Continue reading...
Kaycee33 Jun 2013
The Quest For The Damsel Fish(fable--in process of editing)
The Quest for the Damsel Fish  by Keith Collard

Author's  Atmosphere

On the bow of the boat, with the cold cloud of the dismal day brushing your back conjuring goose bumped flesh you hold an anchor.  For the first time, you can pick this silver anchor up with only one hand and hold it over your head. It resembles the Morning Star, a brutal medieval weapon that bludgeons and impales its victims.  Drop it into the dark world beyond the security of your boat--watch the anchor descend.
        Watch this silver anchor--this Morning Star--descend away from the boat and you, it becomes swarmed over with darkness.  It forms a ******-metallic grin at first as it sinks, then the sinking silver anchor takes its last shape at its last visible glimpse.  It is so small now as if it could be hung from a necklace.  It is a silver sword.  
Peering over the side of the boat, the depths collectively look like the mouth of a Cannibalistic Crab, throwing the shadows of its mandibles over everything that sinks down into it--black mandibles that have joints with the same angle of a Reaper's Scythe.  

I am scared looking at this sinking phantasm.  I see something from my youth down there in this dark cold Atlantic.  I see the silver Morning Star again, now in golden armor.  I remember a magnificent kingdom, in a saltwater fish tank I had once and never had again.  A tropical paradise that I see again as I stare down into the depths.  This fish tank was so beautiful with the most beautiful inhabitants who I miss.  Before I could lift the silver anchor--the Morning Star--over my head with only one hand, turning gold in that morning sun-- I was a boy who sat indian style, cross legged--peering into this brilliant spectacle of light I thought awesome.  I thought all the darkness of home and the world was kept at bay by this kingdom of light...

Chapter  1 Begins the Story

The Grey Skies of Mass is the Name of This Chapter.

                                                      ­­                        
    
 Air, in bubbles--it was a world beauty of darkness revealed in slashes of light from dashing fluorescent bulbs overhead this fish tank.
Silver swords of fluorescent energy daring to the bottom, every slash revealing every color of the zodiac--from the Gold of Scorpio to the purple of Libra combining into the jade of the Gemini. 
In the center, like a dark Stonehenge were rocks. The exterior rocks had tropical colors like that of cotton candy, but the interior shadows of the rocks that was the Stonehenge, did not possess one photon of light. The silver messengers of the florescent energy from above would tire and die at their base.  The shadows of the Stonehenge rocks would stand over them as they died.

 
          When the boy named Sake climbed the rickety wood stairs of the house, he did so in fear of making noise, as if to not wake each step.
   Until he could see the glowing aura of his fish tank then he would start down that eerie hall, With pictures of ghosts and ghosts of pictures staring down at him as he walked down that rickety hallway of this towering old colonial home.  He hurried to the glowing tank to escape the black and white gazing picture frames.
                    The faint gurgling, bubbling of the saltwater tank became stronger in his ear, and that sound guided him from the last haunt of the hallway-- the empty room that was perpendicular to  his room.   He only looked to his bright tank as soon as he entered the hallway from the creaky wooden steps.  Then he proceeded to sit in front of this great tropical fish tank in Indian style with his legs folded over one another as children so often would sit.
  The sun was setting.  The reflections from the tank were beginning to send ripples down the dark walls. Increasing  wave after wave reflecting down his dark walls.  He thought they to be seagulls flapping into the darkness until they were overcome as he was listening to the bubbling water of his tank.
                " Hello my fish, hello Angel, hello Tang, hello  Hoomah, hello Clown and hello Damsel … and hello to you Crab...even though I do not like you," he said in half jest not looking at the crab in the entrance of the rocks.  The rocks were the color of cotton candy, but the interior shadows did not possess a photon of luminescence.  All other shadows not caused by the rocks--but by bright swaying ornament--were like the glaze on a candy apple--dark but delicious.  Besides the crab's layer in the rock jumble at the center of the tank which was a Stonehenge within a Stonehenge--the tank was a world of bright inviting light.
                The crab was in its routine,  motionless in the entrance to his foyer, with his scythe-like claws in the air, in expectation of catching one of the bright fish someday.  For that reason the boy tried to remove the crab in the past, but even though the boy was fast with his hand, the optical illusion of the tank would always send his hand where the crab no longer was.  He did not know how to use two hands to rid the crab in the future by trapping and destroying the Cannibal Crab ;  his father, on a weekend visit, gave the Crab to the boy to put into the bright world of the saltwater tank, which Sake quickly regretted.  His father promised him that the Crab would not be able to catch any of the fish he said " ...***** only eat anything that has fallen to the bottom or each other..."

         A scream from the living room downstairs ran up the rickety wood and down the long hall and startled the boy.  His mother sent her shrieks out to grab the boy, allowing her to not have to waste any time nor calorie on her son; for she would tire from the stairs, but her screams would not, allowing her to stay curled up on the couch.  If she was not screaming for Sake, she was talking as loud as screams on the phone with her girlfriends.  The decibels from her laugh was torture for all in the silent house.   A haughty laugh in a gossipy conversation, that overpowered the sound of the bright tropical fish tank in Sake's room that was above and far opposite her in the living room.
               " Sake you have to get a paper-route to pay for the tank, the electricity bill is outrageous," she said while not taking her eyes off the TV and her legs curled up beside her.  He would glad fully get a paper-route even if it was for a made up reason.  He turned to go, and looked back at his mother, and a shudder ran through him with a new thought:  someday her appearance will match her voice.  

              Upon reaching his tank,  Hoomah was trying to get his attention as always.  Taking up pebbles in his big pouty pursed lips and spitting them out of his lips like a weak musket.  The Hoomah was a very silly fish, it looked like one of Sake’s aunts, with too much make up on, slightly overweight, and hovering on two little fins that looked incapable of keeping it afloat, but they did.  The fins reminded him of the legs of his aunt--skinny under not so skinny.’

               The Tang was doing his usual aquanautics , darting and sailing was his trick.  He was fast, the fastest with his bright yellow triangular sail cutting the water.  Next was the aggressive Clown fish, the boy thought she was always aggresive because she didn't have an anemone to sleep on.  The Clown was strong and sleek with an orange jaw and body that was built like a tigress.
  Sake thought something tragic about the body if the  orange Clown and the three silver traces that clawed her body as decoration -they reminded him of the incandescent orange glow of a street lamp being viewed through the rainy back windshield of a car.   The Clown fish was a distraction that craved attention.
The Clown would chase around some of the other fish and jump out of the water to catch the boy's eye. 
                 Next is the Queen Angel fish, she is the queen of the tank, she sits in back all alone, waving like a marvelous banner, iridescent purple and golden jade.  Her forehead slopes back in a French braid style that streams over her back like a kings standard waving before battle, but her standard is of a house of beauty, and that of royal purple.

                    Lastly is the Damsel Fish, the smallest and most vulnerable in the tank.  She has royal purple also, rivaling the queen. Her eyes are lashed but not lidded like the Hoomah.  Her eyes are elliptical, and perhaps the most human, or in the boy’s opinion, she is the most lady like, the Hoomah and the Queen Angel come to her defence if she is chased around by the Clown.  Her eyes penetrate the boys, to the point of him looking away.  

                      Before the tank, in its place in the corner was a painting, an oil painting of another type of Clown donning a hat with orange partial make-up on his face (only around eyes nose and mouth there was ghost white paint) and it  had two tears coming down from its right eye.  The Clown painting was given to him by his mother, it seems he could not be rid of them, but Sake at first was taken in by the brightness of the Clown, and the smooth salacious wet look of the painting. it looked dripping, or submerged, like another alternate reality.  The wet surreal glaze of the painting seemed a portal, especially the orange glow of the Clown's skin without make-up.  .  If he tried to remember of times  before the Clown painting that preceded the Clown fish, he thought of the orange saffron twilight of sunset, and watching it from the high window from his room in the towering house.  How that light changed everything that it touched, from the tree tops and the clouds, to even the dark hallway leading up to his room.  The painting and the Clown fish did not feel the same as those distant memories of sunset, especially the summer sunset when his mother would put him to bed long before the sun had set.  
Sake did not voice opposition to the Clown.
Then he was once again trapped by the Clown.  
            The boy was extremely afraid of this painting that replaced the sunsets , being confined alone with it by all those early bedtimes.
Sake once asked his mother if he could take it down, whereas she said " No."  That clown would follow him into his dreams, always he would be down the hill from the tall house on the hill, trying to walk back to the house, but to walk away or run in a dream was like walking underwater or in black space, and he would make no distance as the ground opened up and the clown came out of the ground hugging him with the pryless grip of eight arms.  He would then wake up amid screams and a tearful hatted clown staring somberly down at him from the wall where it was hung.  Night made him fear the Clown painting more;  that ghost white make-up decorating around the eyes and mouth seeming to form another painting in entirety.  He could only look at the painting after a while when the lights were on, and the wet looking painting was mostly orange from the skin, neck, and forearms of the hat wearing clown.  But the painting is gone now, and the magnificent light display of the tank is there now.  

                Sake pulled out the fish food, all the fish bestirred in anticipation of being fed.  The only time they would all come together; and that was to mumble the bits of falling flakes: a chomp from the Clown, a pucker from the Hoomah, the fast mumble of the Tang, and the dainty chew of the Damsel.  The Queen Angelfish would stay near the bottom, and kiss a flake over and over.   She would not deign herself to go into a friendly frenzy like the other fish; she stayed calm, yet alluring like a flag dancing rhythmically in the breeze, but never repeating the same move as the wind never repeats the same breeze.  She is the only fish to change colors.  When the grey skies of Mass emit through every portal in the house at the height of its bleakness, her colors would turn more fantastic, perhaps why she is queen.

                 He put his finger in the top of the watery world; the warmth was felt all the way up his arm.  After feeding, his favorite thing to do was to trace his finger on the top of the warm water and have the Damsel follow it. She loved it, it was her only time to dance, for the Clown would descend down in somewhat fear ( or annoyance) of the boys finger, and the Damsel and he would dance.  The boy, thought that extraordinary.

                     Sake bedded down that night, to his usual watery world of his room.  The reflective waves running down the walls like seagulls of light, with the rhythmic gurgling sound and it's occasional splash of the Clown, or the Hoomah swooping into the pebbly bottom to scoop up some pebbles for spitting making the sound "ccchhhhh" --cachinging  like a distant underwater register.  The tank’s nocturne sound was therapeutic to the boy.

                      Among waking up, and being greeted by his sparkling treasure tank--that was always of the faintest light in the morning due to the grey skies of Mass coming through every portal to lessen the tropical spectrum-- the boy would render his salutations " Good morning my Hoomah.....good morning Tang, my Damsel, and your majesty Queen Angel.....and so forth.  Until the scream would come to get him, and he would walk briskly past the empty room and the looming family pictures of strangers.  His mother put him to work that day, to "pay for the fish tank" but really to buy her a new cocktail dress for her nightly forays.  The boy did not care, the tank was his sun, emitting through the bleak skies of Mass, and even if the tank was reduced to a haze by the overcast of his life, it only added a log to the fire that was the tropical world at night, in turn making him welcome the dismal day.
                  On a day, when the overcast was so thick, he felt he could not picture his rectangular orb waiting for him at night. He had trouble remembering what houses to deliver the paper.  He delivered to the same house three times.  Newspapers seemed to disappear in his hands, due to their color relation to the sky.   Leaves were falling from the trees—butterfly like—he went to catch one, he missed--a first. For Sake could walk through dense thorned brambles and avoid every barb, as a knight in combat or someone’s whose heart felt the painful sting of the barb before.  He would stand under a tree in late fall, and roll around to avoid every falling leaf, and pierce them to the ground deftly with a stick fashioned as a sword.  He could slither between snow flakes, almost like a fish nimbly avoiding small flakes.  
                  After he finished his paper-route , he went to his usual spot under an oak tree to fence with falling leaves.  As the other boys walked by and poked fun he would stall his imagination, and look to the brown landscape of the dry fall.  The crisp brown leaves of the trees were sword shapes to him.  He held the battle ax shape of the oak leaf over his eye held up by the stick it was pierced through, and spied the woodline through the sinus of the oak leaf lobe.  The brown white speckled scenery, were all trying to hide behind eachother by blending in bleakfully; he pretended the leaf was Hector’s helmet from the Illiad—donned over his eyes.
“ Whatchya doing Sake?” asked a young girl named Summer.  Sake only mumbled something nervously and stood there.  And a pretty Summer passed on after Sake once again denied himself of her pretty company.  He looked to the woodline again, a mist was now concealing the tall apical trees.  It now looked like the brown woodland was not trying to retreat behind eachother in fall concealment, but trying to emerge forth out of the greyness to say "save us."

“ Damgf” he uttered, and could not even grasp a word correctly.  His head lifted to the sky repeatedly, there was no orb, and the shadows were looming larger than ever; fractioned shadows from tree branches were forming scythes all over the ground.
             He entered the large shadow that was his front door, into the house that rose high into the sky, with the simplicity of Stonehenge.  He climbed the rickety petrified stairs and went down the hall.  Grey light had spotlighted every frame on the wall.  He looked into the empty room, nothingness, then his room, the tank seemed at its faintest, and it was nearing twilight.  He walked past the tank to look out the w
Continue reading...
Frankie Gestone Mar 2013
A Life In Dreams (short story)
He woke up in a rapid sweat, darkness surrounding him, his soaked pillow was pressing up on his neck as he could feel the uncomfortable stabbing cold run right threw his whole body. His mouth was dry and his body was in great pain. He lay there practically naked, but not just physically, also emotionally. It was like a catatonic state where the person’s body is paused in reality, but the actual person is far away and isolated even from himself. He wondered why he was so comfortable being uncomfortable and remaining frozen in time.  He saw nothing but the subtle moonlight that peaked through the blinds of his window. A point of existence, he feels nothing because all he has ever felt has drowned him. His numbness was being accepted and he embraced that if he remained this way, he would never have to feel hurt or heartbreak again. It’s better this way, he confirmed.

Eventually he got up out of his bed, walked outside to a nearby empty field. He looked up at the infinite night sky and contemplated the moon, the stars, and the endless space that sustained all of its existence. A tear fell down his cheek as he remembered the beautiful wonder of life and the universe; his realization that he is just a small spec of dust compared to all that is and all that is wonderful. Whatever happened to that universal happiness he used to feel? The feelings of the unseen, the cosmos, the mysteries that remain unsolved were all love. He then felt ancient and brand new at the same time-always being around all that is, but recently born into the unknown. The silence of the night swarmed him, and he suddenly embraced all the things he could not accept. The lullaby of the wind put him to sleep.

When he awoke, it was twilight. The sky was a lighter, deep blue and the sun in the far distance was rising in a fiery halo of mixed red, orange, and yellow colors, and the early morning clouds were clear and transparent. He heard the sound of a train horn in the far distance. He followed the sound with his ears as the sound became slightly louder and louder. Then, suddenly he could see the light of the early morning train.

The train had stopped as he approached it, and he hopped on with no hesitation or looking back. This runaway train was going to take him to where he needs to be, and he blindly and faithfully accepted that his fate was out of his hands now. No more heartbreak, no more reminders of the past, and most importantly no more drowning in his tears. As the train proceeded to move forward, he could feel fresh air gently touch his face, and all that he saw and ever knew were now flashing lights disappearing into eternity.

It was hours into the late morning when the train made its first stop. He listened to the train conductor speak out over the intercom, almost incoherently, say, “This is Brightstone Park. Next stop will be Riverhead.” A nostalgic feeling suddenly came over him as he could remember that his very first kiss was in Brightstone Park with Jessica Garzi. That was not his first true love, but his very first heartbreak. Riverhead was a forbidden memory, as he knew a classmate who had committed suicide off the Riverhead Bridge. He had not returned there in five years because of his haunting memories that would always come back to remind him just how cold and frightening the world really is.

While lost in thought, he felt a rough, sand paper-like wet feeling on his forearm. He looked down and it was a black cat, but not all black. The paws were all white like socks, and the chest and stomach were snow white. The loud prominent purr was a very peculiar reminder of a cat he once owned. Her name was Midnight. She was not the friendliest cat to strangers, but she loved him, especially when he massaged her paws. This cat was practically identical to Midnight. Midnight was put down three years ago though. As he began petting the cat’s back, it ran away and jumped off the moving train. He looked out in a hurry, but it was gone. It was just like everything else he loved. There for one moment, then gone the next. The strange thought that has one wondering if anything had actually existed that is now no more. A person, or a thing, could mean everything to you, but once they slip away, they become like the wind: occasionally brushing up against you, but never revealing its form.

On the train he began to wonder how he got where he was, and in general how the smallest decisions he made lead to bigger events and all in all, everything was all connected. There are no isolated events, or isolated people- it is all proven fact and science. Everything depends on each other to survive. The trees depend on the sun to keep themselves alive; we give off carbon dioxide to the trees and in return, we receive the oxygen we need from the leaves of the trees. He thought about the potential of a seed-for example, a tomato seed. Within that tiny seed is unlimited potential of life: The seed may produce one plant of several tomatoes, and within all those tomatoes are countless other seeds. This is all from one seed. Then, one may take a couple of seeds from a picked tomato and plant them throughout the yard creating a garden. That original seed came from another tomato seed inside a tomato on a plant, and that seed came from another seed. When did this cycle of reproduction begin and when does it end? Is it just another form of the infinite? When a person eats a tomato from that original seed, he receives certain essential vitamins his body needs for surviving and sustaining good health. This good health will effect his offspring and so on and so on. When he defecates, that will all return to the earth for potential fertilizer used for other tomato seeds. This is the same when he returns to the earth again. His dust will fertilize the same world that he came from, for all things come from it just to inevitably return to it.

He continued to think about how matter is never created nor destroyed and the same for energy. Nothing ever truly dies; the form changes into something new, like how water becomes a cloud and the cloud becomes water. Though this comforted him, he noticed that a few feet away from him was a former coworker and friend, Natasha Karev. She always infatuated him and they became close friends, but he always wished it had continued and gone even further than it did. One night, only a couple of years ago, they were at a friend’s party. Both were drinking, but not so heavily. That night they bonded and got so close, that she admitted she loved him. He was never quite sure how real that “I love you” was, but it was burned inside his heart ever since. That night there were moments she would tell him how much she wanted to make love to another guy at the party, Kevin, but was afraid to approach him. She told him she desperately wanted to lose her virginity that night to somebody because she was eighteen and only getting older. This was like a sharp knife slowly penetrating into his heart. He remained speechless for quite a few minutes. Finally he decided to go up in a bedroom alone. To his surprise, she followed him up and kissed him. He felt her clothed body up and down, and she touched areas not many have touched before. She told him she wanted to have *** and that she wanted him to rob her of her virginity. He was speechless, but extremely excited. Then, abruptly, she told him she could not because everything was happening way too soon. Why couldn’t she just make up her mind? He sat frustrated in the darkness, again, all alone. After that night, they spoke and remained close, yet that night was never mentioned again. It was as if it had never happened. After about two years of an on and off friendship, they just went their own ways. There were no fights or disagreements. Life just separated them.

“You’re just a figment inside somebody’s dream. So far from reality, you are a dream within a dream within a dream.” Startled by this soft voice, he quickly turned around to see Natasha smiling at him. “Ha-ha! I knew I could scare you. Were you abused as a kid, or something?” No words could come out at that moment, but he hugged her tightly. She explained to him that she is getting off at the next stop to meet a friend. He was sure he wanted to follow her and see where life would take him. She reminisced and told him how she had been away inside her own cave for several months, but is now very happy to meet up with everyone she had lost contact with.

The next stop arrived, but he did not catch the name of the stop he was getting off. As he got off with several others, both he and Natasha met up with her friend, Valeria, who he found quite cute. She resembled Natasha a bit in that they both had ***** blonde hair and blue eyes. They walked right into a giant street fair with a crowd of people looking at the foods and desserts, the trendy clothes, cheap jewelry, and children play rides.

As he looked around, he began seeing many familiar faces. He saw Kevin, a childhood and grammar school mate there with another co-worker of his, Jenny. Jenny was a Colombian beauty in his eyes and who was a flirt and tease to him, but never actually gave him any time alone. Incidentally, he knew both of them at different times in his life and had no idea they knew of each other. Kevin stopped contacting him during high school without any arguments or disloyalties that would tear a friendship apart. Keeping his head down, he walked a few feet to discover another childhood best friend, Jack, who was with a mutual childhood friend, Melanie. Melanie was a best friend of his and also a first childhood crush who also had a crush on him. He thought it was odd because even though Melanie and Jack were also best friends, Melanie never liked Jack in a special boy/girl way. He felt a moment of heartbreak, but quickly turned away and kept walking. A little further up the road, he saw two more childhood friends, Chris and Jimmy, who as children did not get along that well and only hung out with each other in the company of him. How peculiar it was suddenly seeing them together after ten years, and as seemingly best of friends.

That was not all. Things were getting stranger and stranger. It was like all the people who had made an imprint on his life were now coming together around him. He saw his two therapists, one he had gone to as a teenager and the other as a young adult, stand next to each other selling prescription drug samples. Both stared at him with a blank face, but with a prominent smile. He could barely nod at them. Natasha directed them to a local bar. Inside the bar was huge and also had a second floor. He noticed the music playing in the background was, Nocturne In E Flat Major, Op.9 No.2, by Polish born Romantic composer, Frederic Chopin. He became fixated on the elegant eighth note, left hand arpeggios, and the sweet and peaceful fast moving seven, eleven, twenty, and twenty-two notes from the right hand. If he thought about the most beautiful song ever written and all that is wonderful in one, this was the song.

They all took a seat and began looking at people and laughing at their behavior. Everyone was wearing masks. Social masks. They observed how different people act when they are in social gatherings, and how if you carefully study their body language, it will become clear that what they are saying and trying to put out is not what is actually being expressed through the body. One young man was frantically shaking his right leg as he tried to flirt confidently with a young woman he had just recently met. His face began to turn noticeably red, in an embarrassed flush, and he was making sudden hand gestures and quick eye blinking. She, on the other hand, pretended to be interested in what he was saying; yet her eyes would often look around the room and her body was a good distance from him with her arms folded.

Then as they were all laughing, he abruptly stopped and looked ahead to see two drunken women making out two tables away from them. As his eyes focused in on them, he realized they were two of his former crushes, Claire and Veronica, who he had no idea knew of each other because in fact, they were from different time periods of his life. He began seeing former teachers and professors from each stage of his school career, laughing hysterically with one another. Some of his most inspiring teachers and professors were gathered with other teachers and professors he despised. A young, tattooed hipster woman entered the scenery with a little Cairn Terrier that had an uncanny resemblance to his recently passed dog, Petey, who was put to sleep when he was away on a vacation, unexpectedly. His sorrow began to overwhelm him for not being able to say good-bye and see him for a proper last time. Everything about the dog’s high energy, playfulness, and watchdog attitude was exactly like Petey. A tear ran and fell off his cheek from his left eye right into the hand of Natasha. He looked up at her and she said, “Your tears are my tears. For what pain you withhold, I take and share with you.” She then wiped her right eye with the hand that held his tear. Natasha’s friend began to speak slowly into his left ear in Russian. Though he could not understand a word she was saying, it sounded just like a poem based on the pattern and rhythm’s consistency. It made him feel free of melancholy, but then thought of Angela Antonaci entered his mind.

He thought that the last painful experience ended with the break up of his closest best friend ever to play a part in his life. She was his girlfriend for the last three and a half years. They had known each other for ten years before they broke up their entire relationship. She was thirteen and he was fifteen when they first met in a park. She was always all over him like a little schoolgirl and he would often get frustrated with her obsession over him, for he believed he was no big deal. She was the first person to ever make him feel special and important, and even though he would resent her likeness towards him, he could never keep his eyes off of her or stop himself from always coming to her when he felt lonely. After about seven years, he realized he was in love with her. He had always been in love with her from the first time they met eyes. His long road had always lead back to her home in life. Every time he tried forgetting her and moving on, they would meet again. That person people search their entire lives for, he had found.

He rose out of his seat and briefly said goodbye to Natasha and her friend and went upstairs. He wanted time to be alone and walk around until he suddenly saw Jessica walking towards him. He stopped and waited for her to say hello, but she walked right by him, as if he had never existed. He felt a little insulted, yet relieved as any awkwardness that would arise was avoided. Looking ahead, he saw Angela’s two best friends, Kate and Julie, with her high school crush, John. John was playing an acoustic guitar on a lounge chair, singing to the two friends, almost enticing them with his eyes and voice. His jealousy overcame him, as Angela had been infatuated with him on and off even though he had played with her feelings throughout high school and college. John would tell her he loved her and make her believe he was a romantic, then when she fell into his words, he would leave her and keep a distance for long periods of time, leaving her in despair.

The conclusion occurred to him that maybe she was nearby. He searched throughout the entire bar not finding any other clues that she was around. When he went downstairs, he saw Natasha and her friend asleep, as well as most of the bar, except for the bartender. It was like everyone just passed out from the alcohol or possibly inhaled some type of knockout drug. The bartender was watching the news forecast of a tornado watch and dangerous thunderstorms. The bartender looked at him and said, “It’s better if you stay in here. It’s dangerous out there. I recommend you don’t go out!” He just listened, but decided to leave to the outside anyway.

He walked three blocks through the heavy rain and strong winds. He took a moment to stop and look at the black and gray clouds above him. As he looked across the street, he saw her. She was with her mother, sister, and mutual friends of theirs, Chrystal and Mike. He also saw behind them, his own mother and sister. He ran across the street to her and she shockingly with excitement screamed, “Hey!!! Oh my God!! Please stay with us. I missed you so much. You have no idea. We have to get to a shelter away from this storm. Hold my hand…” Smiling, he kept walking with them. They walked for twenty minutes and entered a giant field. After ten minutes of walking restlessly through the field, they all stopped to catch their breath. Angela’s mom ordered everyone to hold one another’s hand. An enormous gust of wind pushed them all to the grassy ground. He began to shake violently as he felt the touch of death nearby. He wondered if this would be the end, as he felt unaccomplished and left with so much left unsaid to her. Thoughts raced through his mind like a speeding highway about how to get to safety. Unable to control and remain focused on one rational thought at a time, he blacked out for a minute.

Then there he was right in the middle of a storm. In so many ways, he realized where he was ending was where he originally began. All the imprints from all he ever knew came back all at once to watch him finally leave all he ever knew from this life. And in the last moments, he found himself with her. He held her hand, while she held his, and the hands of their family and friends. The world was so dark and cold. The wind became much more rapid and an enormous bright light from it came within just miles of them. He kept looking up at the dark black and gray clouds over them, never as frightened as he was now. His focus was on the great strength of the wind. Whatever melancholic thoughts he had of his life, he would not give up hope. Maybe he was just hopelessly hopeful, but holding each other tightly might, in some miraculous way, save them. Then suddenly a deep peace began to sustain his very being. He remembered whose hand he was holding- the only woman to ever understand every level of his being. He looked down at her big, precious eyes pouring out tears. Their eyes locked, as she had been watching him the entire time. No words needed to be said from one another. They knew exactly what they felt and meant. For the first time in his life, everything was all okay. All was beautiful. The whole situation was beautiful, not tragic. In that moment, he understood this was where he was meant to be. This was where he wanted to be, for only in such a life altering moment does one comprehend the very nature of love and life. To just glance into her eyes and see the same person staring back in suspense, while all he ever knew was being born, growing, and dying simultaneously in complete acceptance. They began to fade and disappeared into the light.
#life #dreams #love #despair #meloncholy #past #mystery
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CK Baker Apr 2017
James Street Parade
Sunday sermons are spilling on the inner city streets
through the green heaps and brown bags
through the downtown whisperers
and sage solitude souls

Army bands prepare for march
(their trench members filling packs with canister and cane)
the high command and tricked militia head pinned
quick on the look for splinter, lorry and skuttle

Traffic patterns change at the COP connect
camouflage bearers break formal stride
battle men slip between colorful floats
unsuspecting slumlords (vein pricked and weary)
grin in their second suite dying rooms

Twitching men and rubbernecks
sit discreetly on the corner wall
JJ and the chief revere a 21 gun salute
holy rollers raise cheer (in a moment of silence)
chess men hold steady
with ivory cues

Flames belt from the distant foundry
streets come alive with crackle and dust
members of the attic group glance down from their perch
an elderly man in a straight jacket (happy in the now)
sits solemnly with a cold reflective stare

It’s not far from the steely mud holes
from the flying fragments and sharp broken dreams
from the arsenal digs and madmen (who quietly turned the *****)
the ivy trellis
and flowing white gown
are a nocturne fit
for this elevated rolling highland
#hamilton #ontario #downtown #steelcity
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Corvus Apr 2017
Nocturne [NaPoWriMo #17]
Stars sprinkle the inky night sky
Like crumbs of diamonds on a still, midnight ocean.
I am not afraid to be here, alone,
In the vastness of twilight.
For these few moments, time is as long
As the space between those stars,
And as empty, too.
The uncertainty that sunrise will follow.
As sure as the sun is destined to rise everyday,
When there's only darkness surrounding you,
Pierced slightly by the silvery glow of moonlight...
You're all alone and helpless.
You only have the vague hope that the sun will return.
And as I sit here now, star-gazer,
Faceless nomad on the damp grass;
I feel immortal, and I am afraid
That I will always be alone with the stars.
#nocturne #napowrimo #napowrimo17
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Martin Narrod Feb 2015
The Plateau
Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road
#love #loss #california #francisco #britniwest #san #paloalto #fascination #plateau #sfbst
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Michael R Burch Oct 2020
Matsuo Basho Haiku translations
Matsuo Basho Translations

There are my English translations of haiku by Matsuo Basho...

My Personal Favorites

The first soft snow:
leaves of the awed jonquil
bow low
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Come, investigate loneliness:
a solitary leaf
clings to the Kiri tree
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The cheerful-chirping cricket
contends gray autumn's gay,
contemptuous of frost
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Whistle on, twilight whippoorwill,
solemn evangelist
of loneliness
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The sea darkening,
the voices of the wild geese:
my mysterious companions!
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The first chill rain:
poor monkey, you too could use
a woven cape of straw
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

This snowy morning:
cries of the crow I despise
(ah, but so beautiful!)
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

I wish I could wash
this perishing earth
in its shimmering dew
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Dabbed with morning dew
and splashed with mud,
the melon looks wonderfully cool.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



Basho's Butterflies

The butterfly
perfuming its wings
fans the orchid
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Will we remain parted forever?
Here at your grave:
two flowerlike butterflies!
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Air ballet:
twin butterflies, twice white,
meet, match & mate.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Ballet in the air! ―
two butterflies, twice white,
meet, mate, unite.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A spring wind
stirs willow leaves
as a butterfly hovers unsteadily.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

As autumn deepens,
a butterfly sips
chrysanthemum dew.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
aki o hete / cho mo nameru ya / kiku no tsuyu

Come, butterfly,
it's late
and we've a long way to go!
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Dusk-gliding swallow,
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers!
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



Basho's Famous Frog Poem

An ancient pond,
the frog leaps:
the silver plop and gurgle of water
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

An ancient pond sleeps...
untroubled by sound or movement...until...
suddenly a frog leaps!
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Explosion!
The frog returns
to its lily pad.
—Michael R. Burch original haiku



Basho's Heron

Lightning
shatters the darkness—
the night heron's shriek
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Lightning―
the night heron's shriek
severs the darkness
― Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A flash of lightning―
the night heron's shriek
splits the void
― Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



Basho's Flowers

Let us arrange
these lovely flowers in the bowl
since there's no rice
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Like a heavy fragrance
snowflakes settle:
lilies on rocks
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

High-altitude rose petals
falling
falling
falling:
the melody of a waterfall.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Revered figure!
I bow low
to the rabbit-eared Iris.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Cold white azalea—
a lone nun
in her thatched straw hut.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Glimpsed on this high mountain trail,
delighting my heart—
wild violets
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Disdaining grass,
the firefly nibbles nettles—
this is who I am.
—Takarai Kikaku translation by Michael R. Burch

A simple man,
content to breakfast with the morning glories—
this is who I am.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
This is Basho's response to the Takarai Kikaku haiku above
asagao ni / ware wa meshi kû / otoko kana

Ah me,
I waste my meager breakfast
morning glory gazing!
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Morning glories blossom,
reinforcing the old fence gate.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The morning glories, alas,
also turned out
not to embrace me
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Morning glories bloom,
mending chinks
in the old fence
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Morning glories,
however poorly painted,
still engage us
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
asagao wa / heta no kaku sae / aware nari

I too
have been accused
of morning glory gazing...
—original haiku by by Michael R. Burch

Curious flower,
watching us approach:
meet Death, our famished donkey.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



Basho's Poems about Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter

Spring has come:
the nameless hill
lies shrouded in mist
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Spring!
A nameless hill
stands shrouded in mist.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The legs of the cranes
have been shortened
by the summer rains.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

These brown summer grasses?
The only remains
of "invincible" warriors...
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

An empty road
lonelier than abandonment:
this autumn evening
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Autumn darkness
descends
on this road I travel alone
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Taming the rage
of an unrelenting sun—
autumn breeze.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
aka aka to / hi wa tsurenaku mo / aki no kaze

The sun sets,
relentlessly red,
yet autumn's in the wind.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
aka aka to / hi wa tsurenaku mo / aki no kaze

As autumn draws near,
so too our hearts
in this small tea room.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
aki chikaki / kokoro no yoru ya / yo jo han

Late autumn:
my neighbor,
how does he continue?
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter in the air:
my neighbor,
how does he fare?
― Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Winter solitude:
a world awash in white,
the sound of the wind
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The year's first day...
thoughts come, and with them, loneliness;
dusk approaches.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



Basho's Temple Poems

Graven images of long-departed gods,
dry spiritless leaves:
companions of the temple porch
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The temple bells grow silent
but the blossoms provide their incense―
A perfect evening!
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

See: whose surviving sons
visit the ancestral graves
white-bearded, with trembling canes?
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Like a glorious shrine—
on these green, budding leaves,
the sun's intense radiance.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
ara toto / aoba wakaba no / hi no hikar



Basho's Birds

A raven settles
on a leafless branch:
autumn nightfall
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A crow has settled
on a naked branch—
autumn nightfall
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A solitary crow
clings to a leafless branch:
autumn twilight
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A solitary crow
clings to a leafless branch:
phantom autumn
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

A crow roosts
on a leafless branch:
autumn nightmare
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

NOTE: There has been a debate about the meaning of aki-no kure, which may mean one of the following: autumn evening, autumn dusk, the end of autumn. Or it seems possible that Basho may have intentionally invoked the ideas of both the end of an autumn day and the end of the season as well. In my translations I have tried to create an image of solitary crow clinging to a branch that seems like a harbinger of approaching winter and death. In the first translation I went with the least light possible: autumn twilight. In the second translation, I attempted something more ghostly. Phrases I considered include: spectral autumn, skeletal autumn, autumnal skeleton, phantom autumn, autumn nocturne, autumn nightfall, autumn nightmare, dismal autumn. In the third and fourth translations I focused on the color of the bird and its resemblance to night falling. While literalists will no doubt object, my goal is to create an image and a feeling that convey in English what I take Basho to have been trying to convey in Japanese. Readers will have to decide whether they prefer my translations to the many others that exist, but mine are trying to convey the eeriness of the scene in English.

Except for a woodpecker
tapping at a post,
the house is silent.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Swallow flitting in the dusk,
please spare my small friends
buzzing among the flowers!
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch




Basho's Insects

A bee emerging
from deep within the peony's hairy recesses
flies off heavily, sated
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

That dying cricket,
how he goes on about his life!
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The cicada's cry
contains no hint
of how soon it must die.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Nothing in the cicada's cry
hints that it knows
how soon it must die.
—Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The cicada's cry
contains no hint
of how soon it must die.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch




Basho's Moon and Stars

Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The moon: glorious its illumination!
Therefore, we give thanks.
Dark clouds cast their shadows on our necks.
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

The surging sea crests around Sado...
and above her?
An ocean of stars.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
ara umi ya / Sado ni yokotau / Ama-no-gawa



Basho's Companions

Fire levitating ashes:
my companion's shadow
animates the wall...
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Among the graffiti
one illuminated name:
Yours.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Scrawny tomcat!
Are you starving for fish and mice
or pining away for love?
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



Basho's End of Life and Death Poems

Nothing happened!
Yesterday simply vanished
like the blowfish soup.
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch
ara nantomo na ya / kino wa sugite / fukuto-jiru

Fever-felled mid-path
my dreams resurrect, to trek
into a hollow land
—Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Sick of its autumn migration
my spirit drifts
over wilted fields...
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

Sick of this autumn migration
in dreams I drift
over flowerless fields...
―Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch

NOTE: While literalists will no doubt object to "flowerless" in the translation above ― along with other word choices in my other translations ― this is my preferred version. I think Basho's meaning still comes through. But "wilted" is probably closer to what he meant. If only we could consult him, to ask whether he preferred strictly literal prose translations of his poems, or more poetic interpretations! My guess is that most poets would prefer for their poems to remain poetry in the second language. In my opinion the differences are minor and astute readers will grok both Basho's meaning and his emotion.

Too ill to travel,
now only my autumn dreams
survey these withering fields
― Matsuo Basho translation by Michael R. Burch



New Haiku Translations, Added 10/6/2020

Air ballet:
twin butterflies, twice white,
meet, match & mate
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Denied transformation
into a butterfly,
autumn worsens for the worm
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dusk-gliding swallow,
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Up and at ’em! The sky goes bright!
Let’***** the road again,
Companion Butterfly!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Higher than a skylark,
resting on the breast of heaven:
mountain pass.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Farewell,
my cloud-parting friend!
Wild goose migrating.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

A crow settles
on a leafless branch:
autumn nightfall.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An exciting struggle
with such a sad ending:
cormorant fishing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Secretly,
by the light of the moon,
a worm bores into a chestnut.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

This strange flower
investigated by butterflies and birds:
the autumn sky
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Where’s the moon tonight?
Like the temple bell:
lost at sea.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Spring departs;
birds wail;
the pale eyes of fish moisten.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon still appears,
though far from home:
summer vagrant.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Cooling the pitiless sun’s
bright red flames:
autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Saying farewell to others
while being told farewell:
departing autumn.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  
Traveling this road alone:
autumn evening.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Thin from its journey
and not yet recovered:
late harvest moon.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Occasional clouds
bless tired eyes with rest
from moon-viewing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The farmboy
rests from husking rice
to reach for the moon.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon aside,
no one here
has such a lovely face.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon having set,
all that remains
are the four corners of his desk.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon so bright
a wandering monk carries it
lightly on his shoulder.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The Festival of Souls
is obscured
by smoke from the crematory.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The Festival of Souls!
Smoke from the crematory?
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Family reunion:
those with white hair and canes
visiting graves.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

One who is no more
left embroidered clothes
for a summer airing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

What am I doing,
writing haiku on the threshold of death?
Hush, a bird’s song!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Fallen ill on a final tour,
in dreams I go roving
earth’s flowerless moor.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

Stricken ill on a senseless tour,
still in dreams I go roving
earth’s withered moor.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

Stricken ill on a journey,
in dreams I go wandering
withered moors.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch


New Haiku Translations, Added 10/6/2020

Air ballet:
twin butterflies, twice white,
meet, match & mate
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Denied transformation
into a butterfly,
autumn worsens for the worm
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dusk-gliding swallow,
please spare my small friends
flitting among the flowers!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Up and at ’em! The sky goes bright!
Let’***** the road again,
Companion Butterfly!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Higher than a skylark,
resting on the breast of heaven:
mountain pass.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Farewell,
my cloud-parting friend!
Wild goose migrating.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

A crow settles
on a leafless branch:
autumn nightfall.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An exciting struggle
with such a sad ending:
cormorant fishing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Secretly,
by the light of the moon,
a worm bores into a chestnut.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

This strange flower
investigated by butterflies and birds:
the autumn sky
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Where’s the moon tonight?
Like the temple bell:
lost at sea.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Spring departs;
birds wail;
the pale eyes of fish moisten.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon still appears,
though far from home:
summer vagrant.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Cooling the pitiless sun’s
bright red flames:
autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Saying farewell to others
while being told farewell:
departing autumn.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  
Traveling this road alone:
autumn evening.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Thin from its journey
and not yet recovered:
late harvest moon.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Occasional clouds
bless tired eyes with rest
from moon-viewing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The farmboy
rests from husking rice
to reach for the moon.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon aside,
no one here
has such a lovely face.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon having set,
all that remains
are the four corners of his desk.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The moon so bright
a wandering monk carries it
lightly on his shoulder.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The Festival of Souls
is obscured
by smoke from the crematory.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

The Festival of Souls!
Smoke from the crematory?
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Family reunion:
those with white hair and canes
visiting graves.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

One who is no more
left embroidered clothes
for a summer airing.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

What am I doing,
writing haiku on the threshold of death?
Hush, a bird’s song!
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

Fallen ill on a final tour,
in dreams I go roving
earth’s flowerless moor.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

Striken ill on a senseless tour,
still in dreams I go roving
earth’s withered moor.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch

Stricken ill on a journey,
in dreams I go wandering
withered moors.
—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation of his jisei (death poem) by Michael R. Burch




NEW BASHO TRANSLATIONS 06-19-2025

SPRING

Blame the rainy season
for my absence,
old friend Moon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

For yet a little while,
the pale moon
floating among blossoms...
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Moon past full:
darkness
increasing.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Spring rains
so heavy
they overflow the waterfall.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I’ll catch up
about cascading waterfall blossoms
when I drink with Li Bai.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fluttering rose petals
fall
into the river’s gurgling waters.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Spring rains
overwhelming the falls,
overflowing...
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rainy season downpour
sours even the ears
of ripening plums.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Flood!
Stars will soon sleep
atop a rock.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I’ll dare drenching
my paper robes
to nab a sprig of spring blossoms.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Where is that handsome man
no long with us:
the rain-hidden moon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So much harsher
than other mouths,
the wind devours newborn blossoms.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So taken by their beauty,
I long to take
the maiden flowers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Trembling, feeble,
heavy with dew:
the maiden flowers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Other flowers bloom,
the camellias
remain indifferent.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An orchid’s
lingering fragrance
veils the bedchamber.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The boy’s bangs
retain the scent
of youthful grass.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Spring winds
tickle the flowers
till they burst out in laughter.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Falling to the ground,
returning to its roots,
the flower’s farewell.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So many things
recur in memory:
spring blossoms reopen.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seeing them naked
almost makes me caress
the ******* flowers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As temple bells fade
flowers strike their fragrance
into the silence.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The bat also emerges
into the birds’
world of flowers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When planting,
please handle the infant cherry tree tenderly,
gently, like a baby.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How can one fret
during cherry blossom time?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How I envy them,
growing high above our transient world,
the mountain cherries.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Curiosity:
a butterfly alights
on nectarless grass.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A solitary butterfly
hovers over
its own shadow.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A solitary butterfly
flutters above
its own shadow.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since spring showers insist,
the eggplant seeds
commence sprouting.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Never belittle
the tiniest seeds:
the spunky pepper reddens.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Once green,
behold!
The red pepper.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

After spring rains
mugwort shoots up
in grassy lanes.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Higher than the larks,
resting amid the blue,
this mountain pass.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The blossom-filled day
makes the tree’s sadness
seem all the darker.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Goodbye, old friend:
no longer beckoning
miscanthus plumes.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Spying plum blossoms
the infatuated ox
bellows, “Yes!”
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The day-lily,
dripping water
into the grasses’ forgetfulness.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Scooped up by my hands,
the springwater
shocks my teeth with its iciness.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The cats’ noisy mating subsides;
now into our bedroom
creeps the quiet moonlight.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here at Wakanoura
I’m finally in step
with fleeting and fleeing spring.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A bell-less village?
Who will ring in
the end of spring?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The temple bell unheeded?
Unheard?
Still, spring is fleeting.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The sun’s about to set:
the spring’s last shimmering heat ray.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

SUMMER

Such coolness
when shouldered:
the summer’s first melon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A wicker basket
shields the coolness
of the first melon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Morning dew:
the muddy melon
exudes coolness.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Early summer rain:
the green spikemoss,
how long to remain?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Timidly the willow
refrains from touching
deutzia blossoms.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

An oiled paper umbrella
attempts to push aside
unobliging willows.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The ancient river
ogles
the slender willow.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So like life:
this small patch of shade
beneath a wicker hat.

Still alive
despite the slightness of my hat,
I cherish its shade.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This summer world
floats in the lake’s
silver waves.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A weary horse
collapsing in barley:
traveler’s rest.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On the distant plain
the deer’s voice
seems an inch tall.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How sad, the bellowing of bucks,
The bleatings of does,
at night.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Even woodpeckers
hold this old hut sacred,
still standing in the summer grove.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Toppling from the topmost bough,
emptiness aloft:
the cicada’s husk.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The hollyhock
leans sunward
in the summer rain.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ah, the splendid resplendence
of sunlight
on tender evergreen leaves!
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fragrance of oranges...
In whose farmyard
is the cuckoo calling?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Temple bells reverberate:
cicadas singing.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Shouldering hay bales,
someone left enough straw
to mark our way.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fireflies
turn our trees
into well-lit lodges.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A noontime firefly,
dim by daylight,
hides behind a pillar.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Firefly watching,
the tipsy boatman
rocks the boat.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Rising above fields of rice and barley,
the cry of the summer cuckoo.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tedious life!
Plowing the rice field
back and forth...
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lying in the summer grass,
discarded like a king’s robe,
the snakeskin.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The shrubby bush-clover?
How impudent
her appearance!
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Glistening dew
sways without spilling
from the bush-clover.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I bow low
to the venerable
rabbit-eared Iris.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Rabbit-eared Iris,
pausing to chit-chat,
one joy of my journey.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The rabbit-eared iris
inspires
another hokku.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Rabbit-eared Iris,
admiring your reflection?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Inside Uchiyama,
unknown to outsiders,
blossoms full-bloom.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Uchiyama was a temple little-known to the outside world. In fact, uchi means “inside.”

AUTUMN

First of autumn:
the sea and the rice fields
the same green hue.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The autumn wind
like a ventriloquist
projects its piercing voice.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Voices in the reeds?
Ventriloquism
of the autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

East and West
united by the autumn wind
into a single melancholy.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seeing a friend off,
his hunched back
lonely in the autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Illuminating
sawn-off tree trunks:
the harvest moon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

After pausing
for harvest moon viewing,
we must be on our way.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Our moon-viewing interrupted
on Asamutsu Bridge,
dark yields to dawn.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Consider lonesomeness
surpassing even Suma’s:
this deserted autumn beach.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The temple bell
drowned in the sea,
and where is the moon?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My humble take on the world?
Withered leaves
at autumn’s end.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Withering flowers:
out of such sadness
seeds emerge.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Red on red on red,
the sun relentless,
yet autumn’s unimpressed.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This lusciously cool autumn day
we peel
aubergine melons.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cling to your leaves,
peach trees!
Autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This whiteness,
whiter than mountain quartz:
autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Shocking the grave,
my grief-filled cry:
autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Spider,
to whom do you cry?
Autumn wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How to reach safe haven?
An insect adrift
on a leaf.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Reverential tears:
the falling leaves
bid their trees goodbye.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Plates and bowls
gleaming dimly in the darkness:
evening coolness.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Twice the pity:
beneath the headless helmet,
a chirping cricket.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Secretly
by moonlight
weevils bore chestnuts.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cranes on stilts
surveying the rice paddies:
autumn village.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Thankfulness:
someone else harvests rice
for me.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How touching
to survive the storm,
chrysanthemum.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Slender again,
somehow the chrysanthemum
will yet again bud.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As autumn deepens
a butterfly sips
chrysanthemum dew.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

His loosened jacket collar
invites the cool breeze.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Butterfly wings:
how many times have they soared
over human roofs?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mosquitos drone
with dusky voices
deep within the cattle shed.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Basho leaves shred in the gale;
the basin collects raindrips;
all night I listen, alone in my hut.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The dew drips, drop-by-drop...
I’d rinse this world clean,
if I could.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fire’s banked ashes
extinguish
your tears’ hisses.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Turn to face me,
for I am also lonesome
this autumn evening.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Plucking white hairs
while beneath my pillow
a cricket creaks.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Everything that blossoms
dies in the end:
wilted pampas grass.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

As autumn departs,
shivering
I scrunch under too-small bedding.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It seems, to dullard me,
that hell must be like this:
late autumn.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

WINTER

The year’s first snowfall;
such happiness to be
at home in my hut.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Fire-making friend,
let me show you something grand:
a huge snowball!
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Written for Basho’s dear friend Sora, who visited Basho’s hut to feed the fire, cook, break ice and make tea.

Come, children,
let’s frolic in the snowstorm,
dodge the hail.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Farewell for now,
we’re off to find snow
until we tumble into it.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let’s get up
until we fall into
the snow we seek.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Yesteryear’s snows,
have they fallen anew?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Winter drizzle;
irate, I await
snow adorning the pines.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Practicing bowing,
the bamboo
anticipates snow.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Bowing low,
the upside-down world
of snow-laden bamboo.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Melancholic flowers
shrivel
in the frost.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hailstones
stitching
the silken snow.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oars slapping waves,
the stomach a-shiver,
these nighttime tears.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Icefish
shoaling through seaweed
swim into my hands.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Sunrise:
one-inch sliver
of the whitefish’s iciness.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Alive
but congealed into one:
the frozen sea cucumbers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Somehow alive
yet congealed into a single solid mass:
the frozen sea cucumbers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Water so cold,
rocks so hard,
where will the seagull sleep?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Plovers depart
as evening deepens
windward toward Hiei.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Crying in the darkness,
unable to locate its nest,
the homeless plover.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The plovers cry:
“Be watchful of the darkness
at Star Cape!”
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mushroom-gathering,
rushing to beat
cold evening rains.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ceremonious
hailstones
assail my hinoki hat.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Caught hatless
in a winter shower?
So it goes.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How many frosts
have tested
this pine’s mettle?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A winter drizzle
obscures
the field’s freshcut stubble.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The drinkers’ faces
paler than the snow:
a flash of lightning.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The polished mirror
clear as snowflake petals.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The relentless wind
sharpens rocks and stones,
topples cedars.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cold fear
desolate as a deserted
frost-crusted shack.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

How marvelous,
the winter snow
will return as rain.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Children come running,
dodging jewels:
hailstones.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

At least the world has left,
unblemished and unbegrimed,
a single wooden bowl.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The bowl in question had been left by Rotsu in Osaka, and was returned undamaged seven years later. Rotsu was a Basho disciple.

The mud snail’s closed lid:
winter confinement.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Inside my hut,
watching my own breath:
winter confinement.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

So weary of Kyoto,
of the withering wind
and winter life.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will soon be included
among the fortunate ones:
beyond winter.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

VARIOUS

As clouds drift apart,
so we two separate:
wild geese departing.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The old nest deserted,
how empty now
my next-door neighbor’s hut.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Yesterday?
Departed,
like the blowfish soup.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Exciting,
but with a sad conclusion:
cormorant fishing.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The one who died:
her delicate kimono
hung out to dry.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Behind the veiling curtain,
the wife in her bedchamber:
plum blossoms.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

See her slim figure:
the ingenue moon
not yet ripened.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Clouds now and then
offer intermissions
from moon-viewing.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Drinking
alone with the moon,
my shadow makes three.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon and the blossoms
lack only a man
drinking sake, alone.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Unbar the door,
allow moonlight
to enter Ukimido.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Ukimido was a temple Basho visited in 1691.

Drinking morning tea,
the monks
silent amid chrysanthemums.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Its fragrance whiter
than the peach blossoms’ whiteness:
the narcissus.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The narcissus
reflects the whiteness
of a paper screen.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Hibiscus flowers
garland
an otherwise naked child.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The overproud
pink begonia
thinks it’s a watermelon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Echo my lonesomeness,
mountain cuckoo.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The cuckoo’s lone voice
lingers
over the inlet.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Solitary hawk,
a heavenly vision
over Cape Irago.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

At Cape Irago
the incomparable cry
of the hawk.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Better than any dream,
the thrilling reality
of a hawk’s cry.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The hawk’s eye narrows
at the quail’s call.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Naptime!
But my drowsiness is nixed
by busybody warblers.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Carolers:
the sparrows smile
at their warbling.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Giving thanks to the flowers
for brightening my visit:
farewell.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Melancholy nub!
The bamboo bud’s
sad end.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This lightning flash
the hand receives in darkness:
a candle.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Carrying a candle
into the dark outhouse:
the moonflowers’ whiteness.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seeing a moonflower,
I poke my sake-addled face
through a hole in the window.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Nighttime folly:
grabbing a thorn,
expecting a firefly.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

More nighttime weirdness:
a fox stalking
a melon?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It’s better to become a beggar
than a critic.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No rest:
the carpenter
hangs his own shelf.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Blowing away
the volcano’s molars:
the typhoon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What decays
have you endured,
watchful tomb ferns?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A disgusting smell
slimed on waterweeds:
pale chub entrails.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A country boy
shucking husks
gazes at the moon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The poet’s heart?
Will we ever really understand
ume blossoms?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

For at least today
let all the poets be
melodious as winter rains.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I believe the haiku above was written during a gathering of poets.

What tree blossoms here?
I do not know
its mysterious aroma.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I will lodge here
until the tender goosefoot
matures into a walking stick.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I’d compare a flower
to a delicate child
but the field is barren.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Basho wrote the poem above for a friend, Rakugo, who had lost a child.

Even a poorly-painted
morning glory
pleases.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The morning glories
ignore our drinking,
drunk on themselves.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Slender glistener!
Each dewdrop a burden
for the maiden flower.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The moon absent,
treetops cling
to the nighttime rain.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

May you tumble safely
onto sand or snow,
sake-addled horse rider.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I miss my mother and father
so much:
the kiji’s cry.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The kiji is a green pheasant but also a metaphor for the love of one’s family and kiji is also a homophone for “orphaned child.”

I pause from my journey
to observe the fleeting world
going about its housecleaning.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

No simile!
Nothing compares
to the crescent moon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The overstaying moon
and I
linger in Sarawhina.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Her ascent easy
and yet still hesitant,
the cloud-veiled moon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A cuckoo flying,
cawing, crying and cajoling:
busybody.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

What’s all the ado
about this busybody crow?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Art begins
with ancient rice-planting chants
drifting on the wind.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Today’s words
vanish tomorrow:
evaporating dew.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Basho may have proved himself wrong with the poem above, since so many of his poems are still being read, studied and translated.

Unregarded by the high-minded
the lowly chestnut
blossoms by the eaves.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Clinging for dear life
to the bridge,
these winding vines.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This swinging bridge:
hard to imagine
horses crossing.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Even in Kyoto,
a longing for Kyoto,
the cuckoo calling.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The cuckoo symbolizes nostalgia. Here Basho seems to be in Kyoto but longing for the Kyoto of his past.

Rock azaleas
dyed red
by the cuckoo’s tears.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Japan the cuckoo is said to shed tears of blood.

I would wipe away the tears
brimming in your eyes
with these tender leaves.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Reincarnation?
The fawn’s first dawn
falls on Buddha’s birthday.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Forbidden to speak
of holy Yudono,
my sleeves wet with tears.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Let us learn
from the travails
of these ancient pilgrims.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The samurai’s
overlong discourse:
the tang of bitter daikon.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tender-horned snail,
point those tiny tips
toward distant mountains!
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A dragonfly
clings tentatively to the air,
hovering above waving grasses.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tiny river crab
creeping up my leg?
Back to the water!
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The windblown butterfly
is unable to settle
in the waving grass.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Even the wild boar
is blown about
by buffeting winds.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The boat
comes to rest
on a beach of peach blossoms.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Lightning
does not enlighten,
of what value?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

A banked fire,
the shadow
of a guest.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Remember:
the thicket
guards plum blossoms.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t chortle with glee:
through the leaves of the silk tree
stars wink at me.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The Kiyotaki’s unblemished waves
gently dispersing
still-green pine needles.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This is said to have been Basho’s last haiku. Kiyotaki means “clear” and is the name of a river.

Immaculate white chrysanthemums:
no matter how closely investigated,
without a blemish.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I suspect the two poems above are related because the first poem in one version had “without a blemish” or “nary a blemish.”

Faint
in a trace of water:
floating chrysanthemums.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

OTHER POETS

Observe:
see how the wild violets bloom
within the forbidden fences!
—Shida Yaba (1663-1740), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When no wind at all
ruffles the Kiri tree
leaves fall of their own free will.
—Nozawa Boncho (1640-1714), loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Keywords/Tags: Basho, haiku, translation, Japan, Japanese, Oriental, Orient Occident, nature, season, seasons, waka, tanka, life and death, compassion, empathy, mrbhaiku, mrbbasho
#basho #haiku #english #translation #japan #japanese #oriental #nature #season #seasons
Continue reading...
NeroameeAlucard Feb 2015
Nocturne In The Moonlight
"What is a man?!
A miserable Pile of Secrets!" he shoutes
then he sprung his attack
with the holy whip of my ancestors in my hand
I intended to make it his epitaph.
we battled for hours on end,
using holy water and dodging fireballs that would've meant my doom
when I had him beaten, he transformed into a grotesque demon
which also distorted the room
I didn't know which I was battling, my own head or Count Vlad Tepes Dracul
Anyway, after one final strike, The Undead terror had finally been slain
I hoped and prayed that no-one would ever speak his name
Okay, you have one guess as to what video game inspired this poem. One. Guess. lol
#nerd #vampire #dracula #videogames #alucard
Continue reading...
W. H. Auden
Nocturne
Now through night's caressing grip
Earth and all her oceans slip,
Capes of China slide away
From her fingers into day
And th'Americas incline
Coasts towards her shadow line.

Now the ragged vagrants creep
Into crooked holes to sleep:
Just and unjust, worst and best,
Change their places as they rest:
Awkward lovers like in fields
Where disdainful beauty yields:

While the splendid and the proud
Naked stand before the crowd
And the losing gambler gains
And the beggar entertains:
May sleep's healing power extend
Through these hours to our friend.
Unpursued by hostile force,
Traction engine, bull or horse
Or revolting succubus;
Calmly till the morning break
Let him lie, then gently wake.
Continue reading...
Joy Ann Jones Aug 17
Walking The Paper Plank
In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank

where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
on air

to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly

danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind

or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.




©joyannjones June 2023
Continue reading...
Donald Guy Nov 2012
Nocturne
The clock strikes, the hour shines
A warm rain brings fruit to the vine
An evening cool, a freshness divine
The sweetest grapes, the finest wine

In this hour, time churns
Life breaths, an ember burns
And ever still, the earth turns
As a glowing moon crosses the sky

Waves crash to shore, minutes grow dim
A cool wind directs a flowing hymn
A mornings warmth, a sparkling gem
The reddest rose, yet the greenest stem

But in this hour, time dissuades
Life chokes, the ember fades
And ever still, the earth waits
Until a garish sun crosses the sky

~D.B. Guy ( December 14, 2008 )
<3
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harlon rivers May 2018
On half-moon lake ☽
(a travelogue)

He stared down through
the unbroken silence
lapping the shoreline
Water skippers dart around
the rocks and windfall driftwood
settled juxtaposed in cattail reeds
and emerging broadleaf sprouts

A petrified heartwood timber
lie fallow waiting bare barked,
hushed like a pining lover’s
     timeworn love seat,
     rubbed smooth as
     the crystalline waters
     of  half-moon lake

Lingering for a while  ―  
like a hidden stalker,
a perched wildcat waiting
for the full moon’s  
swooning spell to saturate
the thickening dusk quietude;
     arousing the urgent
     call of the wild —
exhaled from the held breath
of the wilderness nocturne
    on half-moon lake

The stillness was scattered
with the soft downy hairs
of the sleeping cattails,  and
the newly shed catkins
a spring gust bestrewed
from a tall resin birch tree
nigh the Sitka willows

     He  sat  quietly ...
     time out of mind ―

tossing his eyes up into the sky;
taking the time to read the stars ―
catching  them  each  again
as they fell into his gentle hands,
to show him who he was

Seeing their sparkly tracers  
trail-out above the cattails,
     from a distance
they resembled falling stars
unable to perceive their own renaissance ―
plashing lightly upon the still-water
     on half-moon lake

A lone shadow glides stealthily
near mid-tarn,.. swimming  
enchantingly with the grace
     of a blackswan
Appearing to glance shoreward
at the glowing low stars
rise and fall, as his eyes
twinkled skyward over
     the moonlit lagoon ―
heavenward of its moonlit ballet;
the lone sleek dark shadow
     slipping through
     a faint circular ripple
stirring the smooth as glass waters ―  
disappearing like a fleeting moment
     waning deep aneath
     a subtle silent wake.

When all the clear lines blurred,
he knew it had been so long ...

     but hearken !
… an interceding
     long drawn out wail  
     echoed  a feral ache
     across the stillness,
     breaking the silence ―

as the shadow reappeared;
     his tears surrendered
to the undulating call of the wild;
he felt the spirit of the sole Loon,
     as black and white
     as the moonlit night,
stir deeply in his wanting heart ―
     lay bare the silence
in lengthy yodeled psalms
to the god of the moon

Diving down deep yet again,
keeping the light he’d been given,
vanishing into the lifespring
sanctuary of half-moon lake


harlon rivers ... May 2018
travelogue: 4 of some more
Notes: i'm certainly aware i've not been here as often and active as i once was. **** happens and so does life, and it will ... so much so, the travelogue chronicles felt worthwhile for a moment, the first 4 were from the 1st 3000 mile leg of a 6000 mile and 6 month round trip road-trip journey ―

All apologies to those that found the length of my work tedious.   When i've tried to make the ink go other than where and how long it flows naturally ― i fail and stifle, paused in my own sown silence.   Too predictable to continue to ignore ― peace
#travelogue #chronicles #narrative #journey #loons #halfmoonlake #nocturne
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Leah Aug 2015
*** and nocturne
my favorite movie
clueless
my favorite song
nocturne
and you would never see them through
and so you would never know me.

tonight I asked you
when you last saw me sober
and you couldn't give me an answer.

tonight, I told you
just how many bottles
of *** I go through
in a week.

that night that I cried
over you
is a continent and a month away
but it existed.

I listen to nocturne
and blues.
and I could've spent this night
alone on your sofa.
but instead I spend it alone
on my floor
because here
I play Chopin
for myself
and not for you.
8/11/15
#*** #nocturne #chopin
Continue reading...
Muyiwa Oyinloye Jul 2012
The Bog of Nocturne
1.   Nocturne, Nocturne, mercy me
Your pull, your glow, has got me
In a fix, in a mess, can you see?
Are you good, good for me?


2.   In this bog of night
A mate, a friend I find
And now it's okay, it's perfectly fine
In this bog of nocturne, your hand in mine
Continue reading...
Joseph the Dreamer Apr 2013
Nocturne to noonday sun
sinews held in by rivets rh-rhy-rhythymed apart
frayed like cello bowstrings - the silly string hallways of hearts
a war where the marching drums sound like violins
the weapons wielded merge heartbeats and equestrian -
hook-hairs that snare the steely strings
ones not quite so metallic as we think -
they've frayed like flesh and refrained-
from sn-snaa-snapping -but just barely-
they still trip - trying to make music merrily -
still beat themselves up -with the singsong self-hate they're carring
they prefer to hide in the woods at the moment -
their cries as slight as the winds - perhaps they're out of breath
from trumpeting explanations - or perhaps they wish to rest -
tired of touching lips-
to instruments----------------
- they don't want this symphony to crescendo into treble this time
-  they're starting from the base up -
Happy for now and trying to hold their face up-
they are aware that they could be used
to make garottes  -or grand music -
to suffocate mute musician's who refuse to hear their sound -
or strangle guitar necks as deceptive cadence mimics resonance and resolve-
. . .
.........
there's a duet full of dissonance and you won't-
believe it but by the tear-tearing disbelief
you will timber like a tree -tone in two-
voices arguing inside of you- staccato soliloquies -
punctuated with melodic defeat -
intercede with a sharp or two - cut down to the root, the truth -
result in music i can dance to - symphonies , harmonies, rounds -
we are notes - in twoes and fours - together we are sounds-
adagio acrobatics emanat from where our feet touch the ground
in time, intonation the same as our romantic inclinations -
dances we just both seem to know - impromptu instrumentations-
the interval betwen  these two half notes made whole is zero-
you're a maestro whose got my heart crying in half time
-its the sound of requiem turned serenade - I was Alive on our wedding day -
and so were you - proceeded by a promenade -
of promises -
a recital of something more than just lyrics -
you said I Do to me-
a staff of out of sync harmonics
It's ironic  - I worship with shhhh- under my fingernals
and you - you love the sound - and the smell

Dancing so long that nocturne
turned to noonday sun -
until I , nightingale, and you the gales in night-
are one
Continue reading...
Willow-Anne Apr 2015
Philophobia (Collab with Erenn)
It doesn't matter how hard I try
I never seem to get away
Cause after all you did to me
I fear these feelings will always stay

Your lies I believed were the truth beneath
The pain recedes but the heart bleeds
My instincts were right all along
I’m just a part of your love song

You see, I live my life in fear
Fear I won't succeed
And every small critique I get
Makes me once again recede

My Iloveyous to you were inevitable
Like the sun emitting his ardor
Despite the moon in slumber’s nocturne
He shines brightly with fervor

I live my life, always afraid
That I am not on the right path
And if I take one small misstep
I'll have to face somebody's wrath

Time consumes me while I waste it away
Like grains of sand as I clenched and ran
Only to lose it
Again and again

I am eternally scared
That all my judgments are wrong
And if I ever meet someone
They'll only like me for so long

But then I met you out of the blue
You were trying to forget someone too
We sparked like fireworks in the night sky
But the fire burnt out and our colors faded hue

I live my life in constant fear
I fear that you were right
I simply am not good enough
And I will not be alright

Thank you for proving me right
That we were not meant to be
How could you love another light
When I was the one your darkness pleased

But even worse than all these things
Is my terror that someday
I will meet someone else like you
And not be able to get away.

You complete me
&
You destroyed me
So honored to have done my first collab ever with the wonderful Erenn
*Erenn is Italics
~Check out the rest of his work~
Regular Account - http://hellopoetry.com/ErenY/
Collabs Account - http://hellopoetry.com/erenn-collabs/

Thank you so much for doing this collab with me Erenn!! ^.^ You are so talented! :)
Hope you all enjoy it.
Continue reading...
Carl Sandburg
Nocturne In A Deserted Brickyard
Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming ***** of an old pond in the night.
Continue reading...
Delmira Agustini
Nocturno (Nocturne)
Spanish

Fuera, la noche en veste de tragedia solloza
Como una enorme viuda pegada a mis cristales.

  Mi cuarto:…
Por un bello milagro de la luz y del fuego
Mi cuarto es una gruta de oro y gemas raras:
Tiene un musgo tan suave, tan hondo de tapices,
Y es tan vívida y cálida, tan dulce que me creo
Dentro de un corazón…

    Mi lecho que está en blanco es blanco y vaporoso
Como flor de inocencia,
Como espuma de vicio!
  Esta noche hace insomnio;
Hay noches negras, negras, que llevan en la frente
Una rosa de sol…
En estas noches negras y claras no se duerme.

  Y yo te amo, Invierno!
Yo te imagino viejo,
Yo te imagino sabio,
Con un divino cuerpo de marmól palpitante
Que arrastra como un manto regio el peso del Tiempo…
Invierno, yo te amo y soy la primavera…
Yo sonroso, tú nievas:
Tú porque todo sabes,
Yo porque todo sueño…

    …Amémonos por eso!…
    Sobre mi lecho en blanco,
Tan blanco y vaporoso como flor de inocencia,
Como espuma de vicio,
Invierno, Invierno, Invierno,
Caigamos en un ramo de rosas y de lirios!





              English


    Outside the night, dressed in tragedy, sighs
Like an enormous widow fastened to my windowpane.

    My room…
By a wondrous miracle of light and fire
My room is a grotto of gold and precious gems:
With a moss so smooth, so deep its tapestries,
And it is vivid and hot, so sweet I believe
I am inside a heart…

    My bed there in white, is white and vaporous
Like a flower of innocence.
Like the froth of vice!
    This night brings insomnia;
There are black nights, black, which bring forth
One rose of sun…
On these black and clear nights I do not sleep.

    And I love you, Winter!
I imagine you are old,
I imagine you are wise,
With a divine body of beating marble
Which drags the weight of Time like a regal cloak…

Winter, I love you and I am the spring…
I blush, you snow:
Because you know it all,
Because I dream it all…

    We love each other like this!…
    On my bed all in white,
So white and vaporous like the flower of innocence,
Like the froth of vice,
Winter, Winter, Winter,
We fall in a cluster of roses and lilies!
Continue reading...
Paul Verlaine
Nocturne parisien
Roule, roule ton flot indolent, morne Seine. -

Sur tes ponts qu'environne une vapeur malsaine

Bien des corps ont passé, morts, horribles, pourris,

Dont les âmes avaient pour meurtrier Paris.

Mais tu n'en traînes pas, en tes ondes glacées,

Autant que ton aspect m'inspire de pensées !


Le Tibre a sur ses bords des ruines qui font

Monter le voyageur vers un passé profond,

Et qui, de lierre noir et de lichen couvertes,

Apparaissent, tas gris, parmi les herbes vertes.

Le *** Guadalquivir rit aux blonds orangers

Et reflète, les soirs, des boléros légers,

Le Pactole a son or, le Bosphore a sa rive

Où vient faire son kief l'odalisque lascive.

Le Rhin est un burgrave, et c'est un troubadour

Que le Lignon, et c'est un ruffian que l'Adour.

Le Nil, au bruit plaintif de ses eaux endormies,

Berce de rêves doux le sommeil des momies.

Le grand Meschascébé, fier de ses joncs sacrés,

Charrie augustement ses îlots mordorés,

Et soudain, beau d'éclairs, de fracas et de fastes,

Splendidement s'écroule en Niagaras vastes.

L'Eurotas, où l'essaim des cygnes familiers

Mêle sa grâce blanche au vert mat des lauriers,

Sous son ciel clair que raie un vol de gypaète,

Rhythmique et caressant, chante ainsi qu'un poète.

Enfin, Ganga, parmi les hauts palmiers tremblants

Et les rouges padmas, marche à pas fiers et lents

En appareil royal, tandis qu'au **** la foule

Le long des temples va, hurlant, vivante houle,

Au claquement massif des cymbales de bois,

Et qu'accroupi, filant ses notes de hautbois,

Du saut de l'antilope agile attendant l'heure,

Le tigre jaune au dos rayé s'étire et pleure.

- Toi, Seine, tu n'as rien. Deux quais, et voilà tout,

Deux quais crasseux, semés de l'un à l'autre bout

D'affreux bouquins moisis et d'une foule insigne

Qui fait dans l'eau des ronds et qui pêche à la ligne.

Oui, mais quand vient le soir, raréfiant enfin

Les passants alourdis de sommeil ou de faim,

Et que le couchant met au ciel des taches rouges,

Qu'il fait bon aux rêveurs descendre de leurs bouges

Et, s'accoudant au pont de la Cité, devant

Notre-Dame, songer, cœur et cheveux au vent !

Les nuages, chassés par la brise nocturne,

Courent, cuivreux et roux, dans l'azur taciturne.

Sur la tête d'un roi du portail, le soleil,

Au moment de mourir, pose un baiser vermeil.

L'Hirondelle s'enfuit à l'approche de l'ombre.

Et l'on voit voleter la chauve-souris sombre.

Tout bruit s'apaise autour. À peine un vague son

Dit que la ville est là qui chante sa chanson,

Qui lèche ses tyrans et qui mord ses victimes ;

Et c'est l'aube des vols, des amours et des crimes.

- Puis, tout à coup, ainsi qu'un ténor effaré

Lançant dans l'air bruni son cri désespéré,

Son cri qui se lamente, et se prolonge, et crie,

Éclate en quelque coin l'orgue de Barbarie :

Il brame un de ces airs, romances ou polkas,

Qu'enfants nous tapotions sur nos harmonicas

Et qui font, lents ou vifs, réjouissants ou tristes,

Vibrer l'âme aux proscrits, aux femmes, aux artistes.

C'est écorché, c'est faux, c'est horrible, c'est dur,

Et donnerait la fièvre à Rossini, pour sûr ;

Ces rires sont traînés, ces plaintes sont hachées ;

Sur une clef de sol impossible juchées,

Les notes ont un rhume et les do sont des la,

Mais qu'importe ! l'on pleure en entendant cela !

Mais l'esprit, transporté dans le pays des rêves,

Sent à ces vieux accords couler en lui des sèves ;

La pitié monte au cœur et les larmes aux yeux,

Et l'on voudrait pouvoir goûter la paix des cieux,

Et dans une harmonie étrange et fantastique

Qui tient de la musique et tient de la plastique,

L'âme, les inondant de lumière et de chant,

Mêle les sons de l'orgue aux rayons du couchant !


- Et puis l'orgue s'éloigne, et puis c'est le silence,

Et la nuit terne arrive et Vénus se balance

Sur une molle nue au fond des cieux obscurs :

On allume les becs de gaz le long des murs.

Et l'astre et les flambeaux font des zigzags fantasques

Dans le fleuve plus noir que le velours des masques ;

Et le contemplateur sur le haut garde-fou

Par l'air et par les ans rouillé comme un vieux sou

Se penche, en proie aux vents néfastes de l'abîme.

Pensée, espoir serein, ambition sublime,

Tout, jusqu'au souvenir, tout s'envole, tout fuit,

Et l'on est seul avec Paris, l'Onde et la Nuit !


- Sinistre trinité ! De l'ombre dures portes !

Mané-Thécel-Pharès des illusions mortes !

Vous êtes toutes trois, ô Goules de malheur,

Si terribles, que l'Homme, ivre de la douleur

Que lui font en perçant sa chair vos doigts de spectre,

L'Homme, espèce d'Oreste à qui manque une Électre,

Sous la fatalité de votre regard creux

Ne peut rien et va droit au précipice affreux ;

Et vous êtes aussi toutes trois si jalouses

De tuer et d'offrir au grand Ver des épouses

Qu'on ne sait que choisir entre vos trois horreurs,

Et si l'on craindrait moins périr par les terreurs

Des Ténèbres que sous l'Eau sourde, l'Eau profonde,

Ou dans tes bras fardés, Paris, reine du monde !


- Et tu coules toujours, Seine, et, tout en rampant,

Tu traînes dans Paris ton cours de vieux serpent,

De vieux serpent boueux, emportant vers tes havres

Tes cargaisons de bois, de houille et de cadavres !
Continue reading...
Zach Gomes Feb 2010
Labyrinthine Nocturne
I have grown used to
or at least numb to this way of living.
The rain drips through the ivy above,
hitting against the grey planks.
No water lands on my skin;
I am sprawled across the parallel lines of planks in the wooden floor.

I call this the ‘sun grotto’
because of the sundial,
now dark with rainwater,
standing in the circular clearing in the hedges
in front of the entrance to my gazebo.

Today might be a day in October.  And,
since the first drop fell,
I’ve been waiting under the grotto
for what feels like hours—
I haven’t been into the maze at all today;
the darkness on the hedges mirrors
the shadows that line the clouds.

I see no point in moving
from the grotto today, and while I wait for the rain
to pass, I remember
my first day here, a few summers ago—

The humidity at noon under
a liquid sun,
a girl in a rose-colored dress,
our August trip to the hedge maze in the neighboring county,
the laugh she gave as she trotted away:
“let’s get lost in the maze—
come and get me!”
the last I heard of her,
and a glimpse of red cloth rounding the edge
of a wall in the maze,
the last I saw.

We had felt so much excitement
and fear
pressing further through the winding paths
decorated here and there with
fountains, gardens,
idyllic cherub statues,
and the grottoes
which I now use as sleeping places
and—like today—
as cover from the rain
which pours here so often.

The downpour recedes
allowing me at least the chance to walk
through the maze to one of
the tulip gardens.

Not today of course,
but there are days when I hear
the soft laughter of children, friends, and lovers
echo somewhere in the maze—only
a few lanes of manicured green separating me
from them.  Days like those
are difficult to bear.

One day, not too many weeks ago,
I heard those sounds and I smiled;
but it came as a shock to hear
the patter of a pair of running feet, so clearly just around
the clean-cut corner of the hedge I was using for shade.
It was the first—the only—time I had heard a sound in the maze
this close, close enough to see and touch—
through the pinhole gaps in the foliage-wall
I saw a burst of color, like clothing.
I shot around the corner, I glimpsed the flicker
of pale red cloth flagging
behind the form that had slid
into another path through the maze.

The chase had failed
well before I had taken my first wild steps,
hitting the well-tread path hard
with desperate feet.  I yelled like a drunkard.
Later, I noticed the cuts on my fingers and neck,
sliced into the skin as I flung myself through
one wall of green and skid against the next.

Today’s shower is completely over.
I walk myself through the maze, and
avoid the shallow lakes that have formed
in the dips
in the paths, beaten firm by thousands of trampling feet.
Under the sparse autumn light
I collect flowers from one of the many small squares of garden
which I have come to know so well.
With a clump of black
and white tulips in my hands,
I look for a place to ****.
Life here is difficult in the winters.
Continue reading...
Anggita Nov 2015
Nocturne
it was raining and I played nocturne
there was the time when I knew you were my tune
to every single melody I composed
each of them kept blooming like a rose

with you, I was brought to a solemn admiration
and an overflowing sentimental emotion
with you, I thought I found guidance
and an utter chance to change

I thought we'd prepossess a rhapsody
and whirled being nocturne
I guess I might execute errancy
love, you said you weren't certain

today, as the love keeps beguiling me
with selfishness towards yourself
I can't cease to adore
and begin having no help

today, the agony sets its own tune
and I guess I may call it nocturne.
#love #pain #sadness #brokenhearted #yearn
Continue reading...
Robert Ronnow Jan 2020
Number and Verse
"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."
www.ronnowpoetry.com

--Rothman, David, "Verse, Prose, Speech, Counting, and the Problem of Graphic Order," Versification, Vol. 1, No. 1, March 21, 1997
--Harris, Roy, The Origin of Writing, Open Court Publishing Co., 1986.
#bone #number #poem #verse #writing #nature #humor #world #book #mountain
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Jude kyrie Oct 2018
NOCTURNE WITH CHOPIN
In the darkest hours of the night
I sit at my piano.
sleep is now for another time.
Inside of me
I am lonely in a way
that no closeness can mend.

I play chopin's nocturne.
Just like I used to play it for you.
before I lost you.
Touching the keys as softly
as you once touched my skin.

Through the open window
My nocturne joins the echoes
of the woodlands.
The milk toast pools of moonlight
gather silvered  in our pathway.

The melody is gentle and  sweet now
And pouring melancholy
Into my veins.

All I can feel is you.
I know that in that illuminated
World that knows no pain or sadness
You have your hand pressed against
A distant window,
And my music is playing in your heart
LOVE CHOPINS NOCTURNE
JUDE
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David Aug 2015
strawberry milk
your body, the drain plug,
that climactic days of a day
murky sweet strawberry milk water
ebbs and sways
around, surrounds, and surmounts you

Your body the dumping ground
for pretty poppy seeds
seep, steep
seeded somewhere deep

as

synthetic stinging metaphor rain
pours on your mistreated singing skin
spotted, dotted, synaptic rule
akin to lemon poppy seed muffin tops
your head- a top
spins round
and mimics
never-ending bath drain whirlpool

ambulances and ambivalences soundtrack
this nocturne
night of a morning
mourning already
my poor lost sister
a little less than intact
lost in her head
I'm loosing her

and she's nodding

            and she's nodding

                          and she's nodding

                                    and she's nodding
and she nods
and grumbles,
fumbles for words that aren't there
four words that aren't there
forward isn't there

because what do you say
about matters
when your high
and breathing last breaths overlapping
in humble showers
in heart crumbling nakedness
your faithlessness trapping
murky sweet strawberry milk waters.
#love #addiction #drugs #sister #showers #strawberry #brother #bath #nocturne
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Sally A Bayan Oct 2017
☕️ ☕️ ☕️ COSMIC COFFEE SHOP ☕️☕️☕️
Past midnight...
apart from a nocturne playing
i hear a symphony of peaceful breathing
and snoring...rhythmical, this quiet evening,
it sends me soaring up my own universe,
with eyes closed, it grows more immense
creates some kind of a calm, in the silence
surrounding me, and my muse's presence.
stardust and moon provide me a crown
while i float...and probe around,
seeking something i don't know about,

in this journey,
i feel the absence of souls, slumbering deeply,
dreaming their simple, or strange fairy tales.
the firmament, wears a navy blue veil
stars are dots, they glow and scintillate,
like a warmth in the cold....emancipates
my invisible wings flap and fold,
a door ****...my hands take hold,
my destination...bright, resplendent,
"Cosmic Coffee Shop," a place, transcendent,
brewing a blend
-the dark, the positive
-the sweet, and the negative
a sign says, "write....there's pen and paper
in every corner..."
an invite, for people to create prose and poetry
where coffee is free, smells...tastes heavenly
a place to share...with brethren, in poetry.
::::::::
(an old poem)
1:01 AM


☕️ Sally ☕️



Copyright November 21, 2016
rrab
on a sleepless night,
  ...a plane roars
     ...breaks the silence-
#brethren #poetry #cosmiccoffeeshop #symphony #journey
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Janette Nov 2012
Nocturne:
Night,
and there is nothing more fragile
than this fever, an opus
of guitars swelling with song
and water, fluent
as the nocturnes are tuned
to the lower scale and strings vibrate deep within
the marrow as they ascend,
the soul blowing glass,
and filling the lungs
with a long slow taper of light, streaming
as fingers are brought to bear on frets
covered in hoarfrost,
and stray hair is pushed back from countenance,
to reveal the fractions of fire caught upon iris

there come slow indulgences,
and forgotten things,
to twine the body
in banners of winter silk,
scarves about the wrists, roped
in tethers and these feathers
of night-blooming jasmine
hang in long strands of pearl,
from my temple, teal threads of opal
and heather braids twine
the tone, the time
is not all poems
upon a blank page or songs
to coo the concert of souls
muted in chambers acoustically
formed of minutes, stolen in a glance,
at glimpse of skin or the tender touch
of cheek as eyes brim
soul-filled to overflow,

nocturnal blends the silent pause
between movements upon a page
where there is room for words,
though never found ,but in gesture
and margin's note that lays soft upon the tongue,
behind lips suited for sighs
these lost manuscripts begin
a long hand of notes held whole

Let the music play again,
its plea, eternal,

my love, please
do not forget how to preserve me,

for this is night,
and it is fragile....
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ryn Dec 2017
Nocturne
.
Solemn nocturne
accompanies my night

Invisible orchestra
serenading the moon

You will sing
the chorus in this twilight

But all had ended
in a verse sung too soon

.
#hellopoetry107 #nocturne
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