3 Haiku

doing a runner
increasingly popular -
after eating out

a silver dragon
sliding    spitting and foaming
when the river floods.

youthful unemployed
seventeen front page portraits -
smiling happily

Autistic Boy

(The prompt at Jingle Poetry this week was "Languages, Symbols and Signs".)

Imagine mapping feelings like colours on a chart;
each hue, each segment, with its private sign:
the 'word' for what it is or what it does.
To us his world seemed geometric in design,
its people, trees and animals, those Euclid might have drawn -
or doodled in a dream. To Tim
it was a world of raw emotions.

It took a while to tumble to the fact
that this was literature, not visual art,
that symbols such as plus and minus joined
or punctuated words - or sometimes were
for emphasis! His word
for 'brother' was his word for 'friend'.
If overlapping circles spiralled to the sky,
then what was understood was 'steam' or 'smoke' - his word
for 'railway engine', 'kettle', 'factory' or 'fire'.

Whatever was emotive, caused him fear
or gave an object value, was its signature,
engendered that electric charge.
The engine and the kettle shared the steam.
By that they were related, and to that
his symbol pointed. That was what he 'wrote'.
Each day he worked with pen or brush
refining as he went, teasing out new strands of feeling,
feeling for the life he sensed the others had.

"Haiku" #335

they aren't bothered -
the young people interviewed
about climate change

Superman Me

at large on the Poetry Bus
driven this week by TFE.
Unusually I will not try to repeat the prompt, for two reasons: I could not do it justice; and it might give the game away. But do go and have a read - preferably after you've read the poem!

"We'll make a new man..."
Fool of a man
with stethoscope
blocking his ears!

Then comes the dream:
turning the tables
to make a new quack
of the joker out
of the medical pack.

None too pretty
quite nasty and gory -
but that as they say
is a whole different story

leading to me
waking in bed
decomposing composing,
strange in the head.

Light through the curtains
paints on my body
patches of gold
swellings and juttings -
anatomical, bold,
unknowable things.
From the site of his jabbings
antennae and gills.

Rubbing my eyes
the wall opens up
I see through the bricks
to the bedroom beyond
like a blueprint... an x-ray
a scene out of hell.

Closing my eyes
the scene has moved on,
I see in the street
(all the streets in the town)
silhouettes move around -
the traffic the people.
It's echo location -
it comes from my ears.

I hadn't caught on:
the street lamp is out
the light comes from me -
all those patches and things
luminescence I focus
breathing out, breathing in.
I'm the light of my room
the light of my world -
the world wakes to me!

Out there in the street...
that's me going out!
Getting into the car...
driving off in a huff...
now waving goodbye
from the front garden gate -
it's multi-location
I'm me everywhere...
I inhabit the world,
every bit, every jot
omnipresent omniscient -
omni-the-lot!
The seas and the land
there's no one to stop
the march or the flight,
the swim or the light
of what I've become.
I'm a dolphin on land,
an Einstein at sea -
in the air I'll be perfect,
these wings are for me.
I'm supreme on the earth:
all-knowing, all-seeing...
Unstoppable, see?
There'll be peace and accord -
or I'll hammer the lot.

"Haiku" #334

Don't confuse my "Haiku" with genuine Haiku. (see here)

seen on Christmas Day
nesting in the Christmas tree
a turtle dove

Urban Foxes

Urban foxes
visiting each night.
A neighbour feeds them,
puts out bowls of food. Expensive food -
and so, of course they come.

Same lady nurtures cats.
Half feral and her own.
Cat and fox devise routines;
avoid each other
like two plagues.

Another neighbour keeps a dog
it loves to bark at foxes.
Incessantly.
With boy soprano bark -
and fear of foxes?

My daughter met a fox
confronted its two eyes
in total darkness late at night -
it having
cat-flapped in.

Weird sounds the foxes make
like babies crying. Times enough
more boy soprano than the dog.
The copulation finished,
they fail to disengage - I'm told.

So are they truly urban when
their homeland is a park -
the sort with cattle, deer
a golf course and a house -
forget the flowery kind?

And after death their spirits wander back
to lodge among the trees.
I see them etched in bark
or curled around a gnarl.
One runs along a branch

but mostly they look out
on where they used to live:
a head or face with paws.
Though one is stuck -
its tail is all I see.

"Haiku" #333

dress for our visits
window ladies of Amsterdam
the tax men request
(my "haiku" may not be haiku)

Symphony

The above image was provided by Magpie Tales as this week's prompt.

Out of a wood
birds black as jet
one at a time
like beads on a string -
an invisible string -
like notes on a stave.

There must be a hand
a baton
a man
behind what I see
and sounds of a theme
I'm unable to hear.

It's deep in the woods -
double bass and all that -
but over the fields
they rise with eclat.
Then piccolos scatter.
Percussion of guns.

Each motif repeats
understated the change
the woodwinds take hold
(Well they would
would they not?),
clarinets and bassoons.

The high flying beats -
staccato of wings -
introduce a new thought
the woodpecker
pecks at
from out in the wings.

The clash of ideas
emotions and sounds
reaches crescendo
moves me to tears.
It's there in the score
for those who can't hear.

But even in silence
the brain can read sounds
and metaphors peep
through a forest of notes
whilst the birds of the air
sing our babies to sleep.

"Haiku" #332

wanted by police
he gave false details - of one
wanted by police

The Road

The Journey and Road Ahead was this week's prompt at Jingle Poetry's Pot Luck Monday

We knew the road,
did not expect
it suddenly to end
in that dark wood
with not a sign
that we could comprehend.
Not man nor beast
nor living thing
nor artefact was there.
No movements that
might raise our hopes -
just shuffling trees
that gathered round
to block the way ahead.

They closed their ranks
on all four sides,
not rays of light
could slip between
those silent sentinels
that made a night of day.

Before the first
foot ever fell
on stones our fathers laid,
that ancient way
ran through that wood,
across those hills
and by a brook
to where the sun shone true.
And all the roads
we've laid since then
run back from there to here
or skirt the land
of Wood-Bee-There
to bring us back again.

And all the hills
that block the view
and rivers that run dry
are only there
to spur us on
to woods where we must die -
for all the folk
who don't return
are saplings in that wood,
mere shadows of
a past we knew
but didn't follow through.

And in the wood
dishonour stands
implacable
as countless folk
who never saw
the fading light
or thought the light could fade.

A Big Thank you

to all at Jingle Poetry

and all who voted me a Celebrated Poet of 2010 Award...

plus apologies for not having posted this before. I'd like t say I couldn't believe it, but in fact I misread the post completely. It's a good job the
award didn't demand reading skills as well!

Thanks everyone. I shall try to live up to it!

Or, as the bishop said on The Poetry Bus...

There was a choice of three prompts by Emerging Writer who is driving the Poetry Bus this week. I chose L'esprit d'escalier which means The wit of the staircase and refers to that frustrating experience in which the perfect witty response occurs too late to be of any use. But do visit and check it out for yourself. So I will just call this:-

L'esprit d'escalier

More eagle in his eyrie
than bishop in his pulpit, given that
the steely glare from steel rimmed eyes had found
this juicy morsel of an altar boy
about to be confirmed - and had locked-on.
Any moment now he'd swoop, and I
would be consumed. Or carried off
to feed the kids. Conspicuous
in bright red cassock and white surplice (no
one else in that great nave was wearing red -
my uniform had been the vicar's doing!)
you might have called it destined (or pre-destined?)
that a stomach ache the size of hell would strike.
I'd wriggled in its clutches. Now,
impaled upon that stony stare, I squirmed
the more. The beak-like nose had been aligned,
was pointing straight at me. How did he know?
His eyes on me - and only me - each time
he whispered, roared or otherwise re-
iterated his main text (how sinners
feel discomfort in the presence of the Lord),
so multitudes of demons gathered there.

He shook hands with us at the great west door
and whispered as we passed. To me he said:
The Lord will choose you for... but I was gone,
and half-way down the great stone steps before
it came to me: ...his breakfast, I don't doubt!

Medley

Younger they are than us
who lie beneath the ground,
more voluble than us
who never make a sound.

Their projects are complete
their every tool laid down,
their arts have made their marks -
and every word a noun.

Braver than us they were
walking these barren hills
with none of the weapons we use
to fend off the beast that kills.

Lighter than ours, their hearts,
for what they had was a god
like a star that went before
to guide them where they trod.

Stranger than us, they seem
now the bodies have fallen away
but we're one with each soul and spirit -
all made of the same rich clay.

---

all seemed so normal
none of her friends intervened
just what you'd expect
her taking all of those pills
then posting Bye Bye to them all -
the grandest of Christmas jests

---

for convenience
the package changes colour
as the food goes off

---

free of past's shackles
brains reassemble themselves
in time - or so they thought
those advocates of ECT
switching off parts of the brain.

(Not all my haiku are haiku - see here)

From MAGPIE TALES a Puzzle...

(Do have a look at Magpie Tales.)

A skeleton
of something like
a mini-whale
(minutum-
dwarfadon
to such as us)
that NASA found
(or so they said)
full many a mile
below the ground
in thermal ducts.

The whole thing sucks.
My grandma had
a score of these
(given her
by Thick Lips Fred
for spending so
much time in bed)
each with diamonds
in a cluster -
It is of course,
a knuckle-duster.

A Peruvian Child Sacrifice

Little boy
I wish I knew your name
I would address you by it
you deserve that dignity.

What was your death
intended to achieve?
Or were you never told?

How did you die?
Your body language speaks to me
but speaks uncertainly.
So are you huddled there for warmth,
or does some spectre,
teeth and claws,
loom over you?

You seem a creature almost alien,
its body coiled into a ball
that might be fungal
foetal
or an infant
terrified
engulfed by fire
and gone to ground
the way small children do.

I saw a Nazi lampshade once
made from human skin,
it had been seared by fire.
Your skin reminds me of it.

But little boy,
are you as brittle as you look?
A wisp of frozen smoke, perhaps?
And would a finger-touch
then make you disappear
and crumble into dust?
You could be ghost
or haunted corpse.

Fragile, yes
and parchment-like
an origami creature
scorched
unfolding in the heat

then crumpled in upon itself.

There lies the irony:
you froze to death.
They left you there,
knowing that you would.

You are a natural mummy,
freeze-dried in windy mountain air.

But little boy
you were important to them, clearly.
Do not forget,
they gave you shells
(worth more than gold)
with which to barter
or use as freebies for the gods;
they dressed you in long, flowing robes,
allowing for your future growth;
and don't forget:
you were preserved
intact
for all eternity!

"Haiku" #331

strange unearthly life
NASA found it in a lake -
now scepticism

Off to the Jingle Party (and a Haiku)

Hardly am I back from one party than Pot Luck Monday at Jingle Poetry suggests another in this week's prompt. What they want is for us to list the goodies we will take to their mega "Do".


Come with me, my darling
before the year grows old,
we'll have just one more party
before the fun goes cold.

So come with me, my darling
for the party has begun.
Yes, come and have a ball, my sweet,
my favourite honey-bun.

Bring nibbles with you, darling,
hot scones of parsley cheese,
polenta tart with custard -
and salmon, if you please.

Bring pop and fizz, my darling,
cool chablis and a hock
and hot, mulled wine, my darling
for tipples round the clock.

Bring packs of party poppers
and crackers and some beer -
and possibly your double bass
for gravitas, my dear.

And if that's all too much, my sweet,
we'll grab a taxi, dear,
for we shall have a party
to remember all the year.

I've brought a sausage, darling
and stuck it on a stick
and pigs in blankets, sweetheart
and a large vanilla brick.

So come with me, my darling
and bring your fun-filled ways,
for we shall have a party
to remember all our days.

---

the nation's purse strings
the better health of patients
fewer drugs suits both

Haiku

They are more caring
they've more life experience
they're over sixty

Consciousness attained on A Poetry Bus ride

Revolutionary Revelry came up with three suggestions for this week's challenge. Three crackers. One of these was the suggestion that we should consider what we will do this year to advance humanity (if you please!) or simply ourself to a new level of consciousness. Being of a suitably masochistic bent, that was the one I chose.

I place the C.D. in the tray, then close
it to a slight vibration as it spins,
sense how a tomb of dumb and lifeless bits,
dull catacomb of science, understood
by men, unrousing monument to what
is numb, brings forth a ghost (of sorts), unseen,
of simple form - that no one understands -
to weave the ether of our high desires
with intimations that take me by storm.

Yet I am able to relax inside
that storm. This is the great conundrum: we
can understand and build complexities
of tool and temple for our gods to live,
yet they themselves, such simple things, remain
beyond our powers. Sounds take solid shape
or seem but human in their attributes.
What is it of a tune that strikes such rich
emotions in our hearts to lift or save?

to badger? bend and sway? to laugh or grieve?
We are but leaves blown headlong in a squall,
but in that gust the whole of death, desire,
requital of desire, divinity
and beauty, ugliness and sin (each sworn
to silence) faces us with God and man -
the whole of man and that of God we've grown
to know. The confrontation makes us all
more truly man. In that we come of age.

It is the same with any art. In thought
we meet the Maker that we choose. But thought
needs data from the senses or it dies.
We line our homes with images that speak
of freedoms - and in doing so, the walls
and chambers of our souls with purest gold.
I too have felt the dark encroachment of
that old catastrophe. It seems almost too
self-indulgent to increase our good.

But I will take the C.D. from the tray
and know that I am able no way else
to journey to the depths the music took
my captive consciousness on freedom's hook -
though other arts at other times may do
the same. The subject is not that which art
puts in the frame - the landscape, virus, tree
or blushing nude - but that which of those speaks
to me of what is most humane in me.

Haiku

midnight      the new year
orange blossoms fill the sky -
many hot air balloons