sprawling tree,
laid asunder by its own weight:
a crack plus time
Asunder [Haiku]
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Category Archives: poem
“There’s a certain Slant of light” (320) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Audio]
There's a certain slant of light,
Winter Afternoons --
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes --
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us --
We can find no scar,
But internal difference --
Where the Meanings, are --
Non may teach it -- Any --
'Tis the seal Despair --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air --
When it comes, the Landscape listens --
Shadows -- hold their breath --
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death --
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Longanimity [Haiku]
One Fish [Haiku]
solitary fish
darts about at lake's edge:
taunting fates & fishers.
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“Tortuous” [Poetry Style #17 (委曲)] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]
Climbing Taihang Mountain,
On the green winding way.
The jade-lined trail in fog,
Floral scents from the gray.
Stuck in unflowing time,
'Til a song sung bright and gay...
I'm steered back to my past
With the grace of ghosts at play.
Skirting roiling waters,
A Roc soars after prey.
The Tao is unbounded --
Round or square as it may.
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 seventeenth of the twenty-four poems. This poem’s Chinese title is 委曲, and has been translated as: “Grievance” and “In Tortuous Ways.”
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Burnable World [Haiku]
after the harvest,
farmland - dry & ignitable:
distant smoke.
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“Should the Wide World Roll Away” by Stephen Crane [w/ Audio]
Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.
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Singer [Haiku]
a lovely voice,
heard down the valley, grows
louder & louder.
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“In the Prison Pen” by Herman Melville [w/ Audio]
Listless he eyes the palisades
And sentries in the glare;
'Tis barren as a pelican-beach --
But his world is ended there.
Nothing to do; and vacant hands
Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think -- to recollect,
But the blur is on his brain.
Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
Like those on Virgil's shore --
A wilderness of faces dim,
And pale ones gashed and hoar.
A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
He totters to his lair --
A den that sick hands dug in earth
Ere famine wasted there,
Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
Walled in by throngs that press,
Till forth from the throngs they bear him
dead --
Dead in his meagerness.
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Grazing [Haiku]
horses graze upon
dandelions and green grass,
under snowy heights.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 