Peace on Earth

March 11, 2012 § Joseph D. Milosch

By Joseph Milosch

The loneliest place is the bottom of the hill
where an old man begins to curse.
Leaning on his cane, he breaks his climb to church.
His swears, and his curses don’t fulfill
an ambiguous need but drive his will through his knees.
Therefore, his curses become prayers for his pain to cease.

He’s repeated these oaths for years and wishes
he could conjure words as powerful as Merlin’s curses.
Then, the power of his speech would give eyes
to the concrete, enabling the sidewalk to see
all who would trespass in the vision of its destiny.
Thus, it would obtain consciousness of its own demise.

Does growing old force one to accept it is enough to enter
church, to genuflect, and to settle in on the pew’s kneeler?
Closing his eyes, he makes the sign before whispering,
“Lord, don’t let me forget I was born here, danced,
married, and welded rivets in the tallest building.
Let me remember the prayers taught by my mother and aunts.”

Sliding back into the pew, he waits for service to begin.
While he sits he snoozes, and his cheeks seem to slough.
His hands settle into his lap, and one could imagine
him dreaming of legs — young and strong enough
to stroll over hills, but it seems clear that his slumber
doesn’t bring him dreams of surfing or hiking Big Sur.

Upon reaching the state where he stops thinking
about his wife’s death, as well as his wishing
to be free of or at least able to control his pain,
he arrives at the point between memory and dream;
thus, he finds his ancestor’s path to peace on earth.

Squares And Disks

March 8, 2012 § Paul Sohar

by Paul Sohar

Men come in angular squares,
women whir on and on as disks,
children bounce around
as octagons
till they hit a wall
and turn into
squares and disks.

Spare Rain

March 5, 2012 § Diane Payne

by Diane Payne

People ducking beneath wet umbrellas,
avoiding the woman’s hand reaching

out from the window ledge. “Spare
change?” she asks to no one in particular.

“Spare rain?” a man laughs running to his car,
giving the woman one last look before crawling

into the driver’s seat, while the woman remains
crouched, filling her hand with spare rain.

Awakening

March 3, 2012

by Joseph Milosch

What we know
about the mocking bird
is next to nothing.

John says the bird mimics
everything it hears: a chainsaw,
a Jeep wrenching an iron post,
the squeaking of a wooden gate.

His wife says the bird mimics
only the animals it hears:
a feral cat, calling out its young,
and from her room, a woman
moaning in the early morning rain.

Ornithologists say that
a mocking bird mimics
other birds to confuse
birds of prey.

My wife says she doesn’t care
what the mocking bird mimics
as long as it sings its song
somewhere far from us.

Perhaps, I respond, the mocking bird
was a raven in another life.
Having stolen the eggs
and the young of other birds,
it’s condemned to sing songs
of the birds it terrorized and to fly
from tree to tree fleeing the bird it was.

This morning mist seemed trapped
between being fog or drizzle
and I heard a mocking bird,
sobbing in the orange tree.

Harmony at Twilight

March 2, 2012 § Melissa Kesead

by Melissa Kesead

Fragile pitter-patter, pitter-patter
of the rain
falling gently, ever-softly
on the window pane

Quiet tap, tap, tap
of the branches swaying
the whispering silhouette
of a woman praying

Noisy drip, drop, drip
of a faucet leak
silent scurry of a mouse
a tiny squeak

Dragging bang, dragging bang
of a shutter loose
lonely honk, invisible honk
of a wandering goose

Breathless sigh, moving eye
of the sound asleep
lowkey growl, echoed howl
from the forest deep

Creaking stretch, stretching creak
of a settling floor
rattle stop, rattle stop
of a wind shook door

Fragile pitter-patter, pitter-patter
of the rain
falling gently, ever-softly
on the window pane

Haiku: oooh … aaah!

March 1, 2012 § Neal Whitman § Poetry Prof.

by Neal Whitman, Poetry Prof

Something new this month: footnotes. Not to worry. Nothing here will be on “The Test.” It is just that this month’s profession of what I believe requires a little documentation to credit others. Next month I will return footnote-less and footloose.

In the 18th century, while Yosa Buson, dubbed “Poet of the Eye,” was painting and writing poetry in Japan, Immanuel Kant in Germany, writing on philosophy and aesthetics, had his eye on how to apply reason to experience and postulated that there were two kinds of feelings in poetry: the sublime and the beautiful. To illustrate, he suggested that tall oaks and lonely shadows in a grove were sublime; flowerbeds and low hedges were beautiful. 1 The feeling of sublime creates a sense of quiet awe; beauty, a more charming lightness.

Not to say no one today writes for beauty’s-sake, but today the counter to poetry that is sublime is poetry that shocks. To reverse the terms: in contemporary poetry, our choices are Shock and Awe. My military reference is not accidental. If one were to trace the history of modern poetry, we could begin with the impact of World War I and cite, for instance, Daniel Hipp’s The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon. 2

Of course, there are many ways to categorize haiku written today, but, I believe that looking at two types will elucidate one of the fault lines in contemporary haiku. As I offer examples to demonstrate two aims that fall along shock versus awe, I will reframe these competing aims with the more poetical oooh and aaah. The oooh is how a reader might react to haiku that, if not quite shocking, at least creates what poet Kim Rosen called, “friction between two unalike things happening at the same time that creates a moment of surprise…” 3 The aaah is how a reader might respond to haiku that combines two images written to capture a sublime experience. Consider this haiku:

light bird
bending sagewort
morning flight

I submitted it to Modern Haiku where it was accepted by editor Charles Trumbull for the winter-spring 2010 issue. Still, he felt short-changed, as expressed in his handwritten note added to his typed letter: “I am still looking more for haiku that present two concrete images in a way that creates new & unexpected resonance.”4 While I was aiming for the aaah, this editor was suggesting that, in the future, he would prefer the oooh. I may have hit his mark when he then accepted this haiku in my next submission.

rising moon –
a dog barking
somewhere

Two haiku editors, Dick Whyte and Laurence Stacey of Haiku News propose that one of the most common structures  of  haiku is juxtaposition in which meaning is created between two images, oftentimes with unexpected results.5 They have posted over 20 of my haiku in their online journal, some of which may have and may not have met the oooh standard, but another editor who has rejected three of my submissions put a period on it with this advice: “I suggest you try juxtaposing two dissimilar images and see how they affect one another.” 6 In short, give me an oooh!

I do not know if editors consciously use the oooh versus aaah typology to make their decisions, but I detect editorial favoritism for the oooh. Still, I see both types of haiku in the same journal issue and I like reading both. My sense is that aaah haiku use a general phrase for its “kigo” – its reference to the season. The second image is more specific and, in combination, the two images give me the feeling of “season-ness” in the experience the poet has rendered. For example, in the autumn-winter 2011 issue of Mariposa, here a haiku by Bruce Feingold: 7

coming of summer…
the whiteness
of roses

aaah … I love this haiku for bringing me into the arrival of of this season. I bring to it my own set of feelings about “summer-newness.” Then, in the same issue, here is haiku by Carolyn Hall: 8

faceless moon
I too am buried
in this grave

oooh … I love this haiku for its juxtapositon of two things that do and do not go together. With an element of surprise, it awakens me to my unknown future.

I hope this month I have helped you find a new way to read haiku … and to write it. Though some editors prefer one aim over the other, I profess love of both.

References

  1. Kant, Immanuel. “1764 Konigsberg: Systems of Being.” reprinted in Lapham’s Quarterly. Summer 2008, p. 22.
  2. Hipp, Daniel. The Poetry of Shell Shock: Wartime Trauma and Healing in Wilford Owen, Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2005.
  3. Rosen, Kim. Saved by a Poem. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc., 2009. p. 92.
  4.  Trumbell, Charles correspondence to Neal Whitman, November 18, 2009.
  5. Dick Whyte. Haiku News. “A Note on the Haiku Form.” www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews.
  6. personal email to Neal Whitman, February 5, 2012.
  7. Feingold, Bruce. Mariposa. Autumn-Winter 2011.
  8. Hall, Carolyn. Mariposa. Autumn-Winter 2011.

Places of the Hand

February 28, 2012 § Joseph D. Milosch

by Joseph Milosch

I found the pain that’s been bothering me like threads of light divide the room into atoms of day and night.

You are remembered in death, you, who whipped me
for not obtaining a B average
in the third grade,

for opening your clarinet case
and touching the woodwind that shimmered
there like black silk,

for hanging tinsel in a ball
instead of strand by strand.

I asked the priest
if I had sinned. Told him you said,

“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
as you unsheathed your belt.
The strap is soundless.

“When we need money, we won’t have it,” and to keep from screaming, I clapped my
hands across my mouth.

I told the priest, I dreamed of oak
with mistletoe shadows and caught myself asking, “Is the promise of death
a promise of sleep without memory?”

I said, “You believed I’d learn
respect for money only through fear
of pain.”

The priest replied ‘How will your
brother use your hand-me-downs,
if you won’t care for them?’

Some nights my right hand traced a cross
in the air, as if it longed to move
beyond the memory of rain
and gently touch lips in a whiskered face.

Sometimes, I obeyed,
turned my cheek, hoping you’d see.

Once, I ran up the school bus steps.
Punched out the first guy I saw.
I said, ‘He made a face.’
You said, “When will you ever learn”
and took off your belt.

Sometimes you’d called me back to
rub my head, hug me
as if you could erase memory.

I remember forgetting my missal;
you slid your hand along the pew’s back,
leaned over, your tie clip hissing,
and whispered, “Wait until we get home.”

I’ve come to the split, spit-break of burning wood;
come to cotton-ball shined shoes; come to you,
your linen ties, tie clips, cuff links, the hard
and soft places of your hands.

Pebbles

February 25, 2012 § Rena Lee

by Rena Lee

All their angles
they have lost.
Eternal friction
of sea and sand.
Hybrids
of water and land.

And even in form
they are something between
a drop
and a stone.

Third Equinox #2

February 22, 2012 § John Dutterer

by John Dutterer

In from the window: fallen
leaf looks like a
decaying sturgeon sinking
in the clear
lake of the air

Workday before Christmas

February 19, 2012 § Joseph D. Milosch

by Joseph Milosch

Torrey pines,
buckwheat,
black sage,
and beside a granite
boulder
deer tracks,
rabbit droppings,
a coyote’s nose
sniffing,
rubbed on dirt,
licked.

A wind blown cloud
descends slopes,
coats windows,
exhaust stacks,
and vinyl seats
of dozers.
I remove
the ripper’s pin
with hammer – punch.
Feel sweat,
fog,
steel, dirt,
later
rain.

After work
I drive home in darkness
undress
in the work shed,
scrape mud
from my boots,
bang mud off socks,
off knees of jeans.
I run to the kitchen
wearing
jacket,
shorts,
sandals.
Smell tamale makings
chile, masa
garlic, pork,
as Patsy’s fingers
caked
in dough and lard
are cool
on my thighs.

Rx

February 16, 2012 § Michael Gullickson

by Michael Gullickson

Bottles to be filled,
the empty vials surrounding me.
I think I’ll take a holiday
in some soft land,
where the dust from your body can not fall upon me,
where your eyes are further away
than memory

The Myth of Sisyphus (Tanka Prose)

February 13, 2012 § Chen-ou Liu

by Chen-ou Liu

people awake
work, eat, and sleep
the Mondays of present
follow the rhythm
of the Sundays in past

Blank years in and out. This is daily life.

And then the sudden moment of being: the stab of memories, the sting of longings, the slaughter of time. There is no screaming tragedy in ordinary life.

Remember

February 10, 2012 § Harold G Grimes III

by Harold G Grimes III

Remember when everyone was young?
And we would sit there
Saying how stupid they were?
Remember how we had so much fun?
And now we just sit here
Saying how stupid we were?
Remember how you said
With love we would live forever?
It was a lie and now I suffer.
I am alone and now I suffer.

Addendum

February 7, 2012 § Howie Good

by Howie Good

I like the way it sounds
like a splash of bells,

and a giant stumbling heart,
and the prayerful name

of the saint of vagrants.
And I like what it means,

something added –
Sorry, or Love you,

or tomorrow.

Previously published on Right Hand Pointing

Stash’s Letter To His Lost Child

February 4, 2012

by Joseph Milosch

I haven’t worked for 24 weeks.
Instead, I walk the streets
in the hours I used to drive.

During these months,
I’ve come to wonder
if I’m too old to work.

Outside the small shop beside
an equipment yard, a mechanic
begins to torque the engine bolts.

The shop employs a Doberman Pincher
for a security guard. A black bird
jumps from the curb

where a baseball rests beside a cat-eyed marble.
I grab the ball and roll it across my hand.
I clean the moss and mud between the stitches

and wonder if our commonality is
that nothing
is more useless then we are

unless it is the sycamore leaves,
which have remained long enough
to coat the concrete black.

October

Private

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