Vampire Bunny at a Haiku Party

Posted on 2019-08-132019-08-17 by Mellow Curmudgeon

Follow tradition or push the envelope? Normal or weird? (Normalcy spiked with weirdness?) Haiku or senryu? This crowd does not fret about simplistic dichotomies. Let’s get some saké and join the party.

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Haiku poems often want (and sometimes need) to interact with images or prose, as in haiga or haibun. Here is a gathering of ten haiku that could stand alone if they had to. (Some would rather not.) They have been invited to come here and interact with just each other, while enjoying some good saké (or whatever).

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Overlay © Incognito – Russian Federation | 123RF Stock Photo

A haiku inspired by an image may or may not speak to readers who have not seen the image. It’s hard for the writer to make this call objectively. That’s OK. As Stephen Jay Gould often told readers of his articles in Natural History, perfect objectivity is a myth anyway. (The path from my raw data to “facts” that matter to me depends on my cultural baggage and personal experience.) Rather than pretend that my judgement calls are objective, I try to compensate for my biases. In particular, some of my haiku were not invited to the party because they might be too dependent on their inspirations to stand alone. That’s OK too. Unlike me, they are not compulsively self-reliant.

Like some of the other guests, October was originally posted in a haiga or haibun context. That’s why the title it wears as a name tag is also a link. (When a pale yellow background indicates that several such guests arrived together from the same place, only one of them has a link.) Click on a link to see the guest(s) interact with an image or some prose that adds to the experience of the haiku.

Seen in Spring
|Kelly green moss on
|rocks near the clear quiet stream
|with water striders

|October
|Bright sun and cool air;
|azure skies and pumpkin pies.
|Leaves fall in glory.

Who Miscounted?
|This so-called “haiku”
|ignores five-seven-five, so
|it’s not a haiku.

|Deciduous
|Lifeless? No, leafless.
|Trees hold their breath all winter,
|exhale leaves in spring.

This is Not Apollo 13
|Is failure an option?
|No, it is a given.
|But we will still try.

|No Pots of Gold
|Seek ends of rainbows.
|You will not find them? Okay.
|The quest is enough.

Fiscal Responsibility
|Debts rise; incomes fall.
|Hard times demand bold action:
|tax cuts for the rich!

|Seize the Breeze
|Helicopter seeds
|fall from maples and travel
|far enough, this once.

What’s for Lunch?
|Mosquitoes in flight
|are seen as meat on the hoof
|by a dragonfly.

|Vampire Bunny
|With coprophagy
|as the alternative,
|you might suck blood too.

What Lovers Watch

Posted on 2019-07-07 by Mellow Curmudgeon

The prose and poetry below respond to a CDHK challenge about love in summer. At 50 words in total (not counting boilerplate), they could have responded to an earlier challenge in the same series but were not ready in time. Can’t rush love (or barbecue).

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red-rocket

Lovers joined the crowd on the beach last night, watching fireworks shot from a barge. Now they watch the sunset.

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Carpe Diem #1696 Beach Love

Carpe Diem #2019 Summer Love … extreme haibun

history, politics

Independence Day, 2019

Posted on 2019-07-04 by Mellow Curmudgeon

It’s a pardonable oversimplification: celebrating “the” day the Continental Congress held some truths to be self-evident. Yes, they were all privileged white males. Yes, some lived off the toil of slaves. But their concept of public service was not based on pandering to bigotry and whoring for campaign contributions.

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Knowingly or not, the signers of the Declaration of Independence started something big, still far from finished, and now critically endangered. They started the long hard slog to build a nation with liberty and justice for all.

Happy July 4th!

flowers, haiku, photography

Lavender Elegy

Posted on 2019-05-25 by Mellow Curmudgeon

My lavender rhododendron contributes a visual elegy to the Memorial Day observances in 2019. Memorial Day is a time for sadness, along with the pride and gratitude that the same plant helped visualize in 2018.

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Memorial Colors
|Lavender salutes
|red, white, and blue of our flag.
|Pride and gratitude.

haiku, humor, language, oversimplify, photography

Red-y or Not …

Posted on 2019-05-17 by Mellow Curmudgeon

Some short color words are spread thin in common usage. Words like “red” are pinned on many things that are slightly reddish. If plant breeders ever develop a cabbage that is actually red, they will find that the name “red cabbage” has been usurped. Chaos in the produce aisle! Hope spinach stays green.

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Red ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #187

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Salad Paradox
|Red peppers are red.
|Red cabbage is purple but
|is said to be red.

(reblog), haiku, photography

Emptiness Revisited

Posted on 2019-04-272019-05-05 by Mellow Curmudgeon

Empty talk and empty bowls elicit different responses.

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Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #81
Poetry Archive (5) loneliness or emptiness

Choose a haiku, tanka or other form of Japanese poetry from your archive and share it with us all. Tell us why you have chosen that poem … and create a new poem inspired on your choice.

A short sequence of 3-5-3 haiku dealt with emptiness for a challenge in another series. I like the way the first haiku sets up the second one, so the whole sequence is my archive choice. Can I write a new poem for the current challenge? Yes, and there is a reason to put it before the archive choice. The new poem is a 5-7-5 haiku:

Not Alone
|Lonely in the crowd
|and weary of empty talk,
|I seek solitude.

cartoon people in the crowd

Here and There in 3-5-3

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Emptiness Here
|Empty bowl
|atop microwave,
|just for looks.

Emptiness There
|Empty bowl,
|heavy with nothing.
|Hunger pangs.

I give to several charities that help hungry people in many places with a mix of short-term and long-term efforts. In particular, my next gift to CARE will be matched 5X. The matching grant offer on CARE.org/match will expire 2019-05-25. (A popup on CARE.org has another match that expires sooner, on 04-30.) If U can give more than whatever U may have already given to charities like CARE this year, now is a good time.

(reblog), haiku, photography

Clams in the Clouds

Posted on 2019-04-15 by Mellow Curmudgeon

The [Menu] button (atop the vertical black bar) reveals widgets like the Search box. Typing just the [Enter] key into the Search box is a way to browse WordPress blogs.

Abalone-Shell

Carpe Diem #1645 Abalone (modern kigo)

The cloud images in this post were in an earlier post (for a photography challenge) that emphasized synergy between pastel pink and green. Now I am responding to a haiku challenge with emphasis on synergy between poem and image in a modern haiga (with a photo as the image). Haiku #2 uses the modern kigo abalone.

To those who have not seen many nacreous clouds, the poems’ metaphors might seem far-fetched. Presenting the photos along with the poems they inspired may reassure readers willing to trust that the photographers refrained from deceptive editing. I took the calm photo; Sue Ranscht took the dramatic one.

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Clams in the Clouds #1
|Serene clouds
|give mother-of-pearl
|to old eyes.

Clams in the Clouds #2
|Molten pewter clouds:
|some are tinted pink or green.
|Abalone shell.