One of the few nineteenth century poems that move me is Invictus by William Ernest Henley. The poem’s spirit of unflinching defiance can be expressed in more contemporary ways. (Henley’s way is still good.) After one very contemporary way inspired by trees, we end with a quick riff on forms and freedom in poetry.
Category: haibun
Eight Years and Counting
The year 2020 is not all bad. Carpe Diem Haiku Kai (which is one of the islands of light in an ocean of darkness) celebrated its eighth anniversary on 2020-10-01. The fine haiku poet who founded and curates CDHK suggested writing “a nice festive haiku or tanka” for the occasion.
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CDHK Celebrates its 8th anniversary – Carpe Diem 1829
Introduction to a new month.
My response salutes the pluralism and progressivism implicit in CDHK. We can honor and build upon the past w/o being confined by it.
Old Pond & Beyond
To sing of all that’s
true and good and beautiful,
write haiku poems.
Vertical Shoreline
How can a shoreline be vertical? Well, steep cliffs can plunge nearly straight down into the sea. There may be a cave entrance right at the actual shoreline. Do we dare enter the cave? Perhaps (to borrow a few words from Patrick Jennings’ Challenge #220) a beautiful light awaits us there.
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Shoreline ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #220
Is the sea at Capri’s shoreline still as clear now as it was when I was there in 1977? I hope so.
While we’re on the subject of clarity, let’s note that it is not clear whether the eponymous goats really did live on ancient Capri. But it is clear that the island sited precursors of Mar-a-Lago for Imperial Rome’s fat tyrants.
From the outside, the Blue Grotto (Tiberius’ private pool) looks much like the (other?) grotto in my photo. The view from inside is entirely different.
A cave entrance right at the shoreline can sometimes work magic.
Blue Grotto (Capri) [edited image]
Capri Shoreline, Long Ago
Goats traverse cliffs while
pink whale swims in blue grotto.
Naked emperor.
Enemy of My Enemy
To a female mosquito, I look like lunch: a big bag of nice warm blood. So the mosquito is my enemy. But I also have a friend. My haiku about their interaction could respond to a prompt for either the friend or the enemy.
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One day in 2015, I happened to arrange my lunch veggies so as to look a little like a dragonfly, with snow peas as wings. Hmmm. Maybe I could pull more veggies from the fridge and make an arrangement that looks a lot like a dragonfly to me. (No real dragonfly would be fooled.) This little project reminded me that a dragonfly is the enemy of my enemy, and thus my friend.
What’s for Lunch?
Mosquitoes in flight
are seen as meat on the hoof
by a dragonfly.
Vampire Bunny at a Haiku Party
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).
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
Kelly green moss on
rocks near the clear quiet stream
with water striders
Deciduous
Lifeless? No, leafless.
Trees hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
Lifeless? No, leafless.
Trees hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
No Pots of Gold
Seek ends of rainbows.
You will not find them? Okay.
The quest is enough.
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!
Debts rise; incomes fall.
Hard times demand bold action:
tax cuts for the rich!
Vampire Bunny
With coprophagy
as the alternative,
you might suck blood too.
With coprophagy
as the alternative,
you might suck blood too.
What Lovers Watch
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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© Betty Shelton | 123RF Stock Photo
Lovers joined the crowd on the beach last night, watching fireworks shot from a barge. Now they watch the sunset.
© Dan Hahn
Sunset on the Next Day
The clouds burn yellow,
smolder red, and fade to gray.
The love keeps burning.
Rockets lit the sky last night;
more fireworks in bed tonight.
Rainbow Revisited
I found a splendid photo to illustrate a haiku about a rainbow in 2016. Can I use the same photo for the same purpose w/o repeating myself? Yes. The photo is a gift that keeps on giving.
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Carpe Diem #1410 Rainbow (short-haibun)
In response to an earlier CDHK rainbow prompt, I wrote a haiku and later found a splendid photo to illustrate it (and inspire some haibun prose). Can I use the same photo here w/o repeating myself? Yes. The photo is a gift that keeps on giving; it has inspired a new haiku.
Out of Reach
Hard fingers rise up,
trying to grasp soft colors
as the rainbow fades.
The image used here has been resized from a photo by Randy Olson with a termite mound in the foreground.
Prints can be bought.
Prints can be bought.
Including the post title and credits, the response above has 98 words.
Sacrum Sutra
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Can a haibun be a sutra? Is the Kama Sutra anatomically correct? We will see.
Climbing the Tree
(cropped)
The sculpted couple embrace, each standing on the left leg while hugging the other with the right leg. She entrusts some of her weight to his strong stone hand and thigh; he entrusts some of his seed to her willing womb.
They have held their pose for something like a thousand years. They ignore the admiring gaze of pilgrims who ponder the mysteries of life and love and whether flesh and sinew can hold that pose for anything like a thousand milliseconds.
Climbing the Tree
She climbs his body
as a tree that burns with lust
(and lower-back pain).
Oh Come, All Fibo-ku
An old Xmas lighting tradition defies a darkness worse than long nights. I honor it with my lights and with a fibo-ku (a haiku using the Fibonacci series rather than 5-7-5 for syllable counts).
My response to
Carpe Diem Weekend-Meditation #10
Fibo-ku winter time
could be called a “fibo-bun” because it is like a haibun but has syllable counts from the Fibonacci sequence in the haiku part.
Several cultures have responded to the long nights of winter with festivals or structures celebrating light at roughly the time of the solstice. While not quite old enough to have personal memories of Stone Age passage tombs aligned with the sunrise (on a few of the several days that amounted to the solstice with Stone Age time-keeping), I do remember multicolored Hanukkah candles and the cheerful chiaroscuro of multicolored Xmas lights draped over trees and large shrubs.
Nowadays I see mostly different kinds of Xmas lights. Some people set out ugly jumbles of inflated Santas and other symbols of the gifting frenzy; others outline their houses with harshly uniform white lights. But some still carry forward the old Xmas lighting tradition (with LED-s now). And the glorious vocal music of Hanukkah and Xmas still transcends the literal meanings of the verses (2 of which inspired my titles here).
Darkness worse than long nights and garish decorations hangs heavy in today’s air. Maybe this darkness will also recede. My lights are up.
Yet in the Darkness Shineth
Red,
green,
blue, and
yellow lights:
multicultural
winter solstice celebration
defies dark tribal hatred to sing of love and light.
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Australian Rainbow
Randy Olson’s superb photo of a rainbow is both a visual complement to the yearning expressed in the famous Judy Garland song and a great illustration for one of my haiku. A rainbow is forever out of reach. And yet …
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To illustrate my response to Carpe Diem # 1020 rainbow, I did a quick search that found more fine images of rainbows than I could view in a lifetime. The image used here jumped out because it has a vertical format, does not need the rainbow to grab me, and hints at a futile yearning. The termite mound in the foreground looks like a hand trying to grasp the rainbow.
Termites are much too busy building mounds and digesting cellulose to indulge in such yearnings. Humans are busy too, and many of us have some awareness of the geometric reasons that a rainbow is forever out of reach. We sometimes yearn anyway.
No Pots of Gold
Seek ends of rainbows.
You will not find them? Okay.
The quest is enough.
The image used here is a photo by Randy Olson that was available at the time of posting as computer desktop wallpaper from National Geographic.
Invictus in 5-7-5
As there is already more than enough grimness in the real world, I usually dislike grim art. The haiku by Poet Rummager that is effectively reblogged below is one that I admire despite its grimness.
At her throat, he pressed
The knife and told her to strip
She leaned on the blade
In response to Carpe Diem Utabukuro #12, I admire Poet Rummager’s haiku for 3 reasons.
- It is so well-crafted.
- It pushes the envelope of haiku subject matter.
- It honors an unflinching spirit, as in William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus.
Whether #1 also applies to my own grim haiku is for others to say; I do have #2 and #3.
Edge of Enlightenment
Behold the abyss
without flinching. If you can,
then you are at peace.
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Mellow Curmudgeon 