Dark Slate Sea [Haiku]

dark slate seas
pound the rocky coast,
fringing it foam-white.

“Ancient” [Poetry Style #5] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]

Immortals ride truth
With lotus in hand,
As chaos unfolds
Unlogged above land.

Moonrise in the East
As good winds are fanned.
Hill shrine in blue night,
Bell rings clear and grand.

The god is now gone
Beyond border lands
Huangdi* is not there
Great Age to wasteland.

NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry. It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a crude translation of the fifth of the twenty-four poems. This poem’s Chinese title is 高古 (Gāo Gǔ,) and it was translated as “Height – Antiquity” by Herbert Giles.

*Huangdi is a name for the Yellow Emperor that is more syllabically friendly than “Yellow Emperor.” In a great oversimplification for the sake of speed and alignment of context, the Yellow Emperor was China’s King Arthur — a mythical leader of great virtue and heroism. The Tang emperors tried to trace lineages back to the Yellow Emperor, but such imagined linkages to the perfect leader are hard to maintain when an Emperor like Xuanzong crashes the ship of state.

Stingproof [Haiku]

the Buddha sits:
untroubled by the bees
enticed by garlands.

“Ah! Sun-flower” by William Blake [w/ Audio]

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Trails [Kyōka]

wildlife trail:
a subtle part in the grass;
human trail:
a bald and dusty line..., but
a buck 'd be hell on your rug, too!

“The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” (1350) by Emily Dickinson

The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants --
At Evening, it is not
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop opon a Spot

As if it tarried always
And yet it's whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake's Delay --
And fleeter than a Tare --

'Tis Vegetation's Juggler --
The Germ of Alibi --
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie --

I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit --
This surreptitious Scion
Of Summer's circumspect.

Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn --
Had Nature an Apostate --
That Mushroom -- it is Him!

Raptor Rides [Haiku]

raptor rides updrafts:
head & eye swivel-pivot;
all else, glides.

Making Waves [Haiku]

hilltop puddle
catches gusting winds:
patterns turn chaos.

“Untitled” [Pronunciation Poem] by Anonymous* [w/ Audio]

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead -- it's said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose
Just look them up -- and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!

* This poem has come to be attributed to a T.S. Watt with a date of 1954. However, the broad divergence of titles and lack of other publication information suggest the alternate possibility that attribution was invented after the fact and has just been mindlessly copied across the internet. I don’t wish to cheat T.S. Watt, if he or she was an actual person who wrote this clever poem, but I also don’t wish to contribute to the spread of false information that happens regularly across the internet. Hence, this note.

Feeding Frenzy [Haiku]

frenzied pigeons: 
a tight, geometric horde—
until food’s end.