Some random non-traditional haikus

A dewdrop sparkles
the sunshine smiles on it
the dewdrop disappears

***************************

The first shark of summer
took its prey, one swimmer's
summer's final day

***************************

Hand to hand, the one-armed man
applauded wildly
with his one-armed friend

[ The sound of one hand clapping... ]

***************************

The sound of one hand slapping
enlightened her
enough for her to leave

***************************

There was a pin-drop silence
after he asked
the obvious question

***************************

A multitude arrives
but few survive,
Darwin's favoured season

***************************

In your cake, you found
a lucky coin -
that Christmas was your last

***************************

Ants carry a butterfly's wing,
summer's beauty, stored as
winter's food

***************************

What did your face look like
before you were born-
again, Christian

***************************

I can't complete the puzzle
a piece is missing: I am missing
you

Adrift

This is another one from a few years back...

Drifting

Drifting is easy
Driven by winds,
Or borne along by currents
Not resisting
Rudderless
Going in any direction
Going nowhere

A day of drifting
the swirling eddies
sweeping you along
innocuously

A week,
a month of drifting
Not a care
in the world
Then a year
A decade
A lifetime

Drifting to that
other shore
having gone
nowhere

Like Magic

This poem is about the same girl I wrote about in Naked Beauty (though some of the imagery reminds me a little of the fiddler in Celtic Woman, who danced barefoot as she played.)

Like Magic

There was a touch
of the houdini
in her

while those around her
settled in the snug, smug comfort
of their strait-jackets

she escaped
dancing her
wild freedom
singing her
wild joy

they couldn't understand
seeing their
strait-jackets
as life-jackets
protecting them from
doing what they feared
(and even deeper down:
desired)

yes, there was a touch
of the houdini
in her
and even more so
when she shed
her last restraint

and disappeared.

Snowflakes

This one again is from a long time ago and is kind of 'rhymy', as well as a bit cliche...I guess the only original aspect of it is the marrying of uniqueness and transience together...plus it's almost in sonnet form!

Snowflakes

I've never seen a snowflake
I've heard that no two are the same
which means when one has melted
that its like is never seen again

It's frozen lace will turn to drip
a trail along the frosted glass,
we'll hardly even notice it
before it spiderwebs its last.

And so it is with those we meet,
the snowflake lives, that on the street
pass by, are never seen again,
a transient uniqueness then

evaporating in life's heat,
as evanescent as the sleet.

One sentence summary

To sum it all up in one American Sentence:

After I put my foot in my mouth,
I ended up kicking myself

---

Evictus

This poem is about the same thing as The Road to Hell, but the more I think about it, the more I think that sometimes something has to be completely demolished and the rubble cleared away for something better to emerge. But demolition and clearing take time and even then maybe nothing will end up being built...

(and notice how the rhyme scheme is different in the 2nd last stanza vs the rest of the poem!)

Evictus

It started as a house of fun
But rooms just vanished, one by one
Till we were trapped in one small room
As dark and airless as a tomb

We stepped on toes, it was so small
Until we barely spoke at all
Until one day as I had feared
That room completely disappeared

It was just like when it began
A cold and empty piece of land

One day perhaps we could rebuild
Make something good from something ill
A place with much more elbow-room
But not right now, nor even soon

we need to stretch, we need to see
what happened didn't need to be
each needs to cut the other slack
to cautiously find some way back

   Things ended with such bitterness
   that silent text-and-email fight,
   perhaps I hope too much I guess
   that I could somehow make things right.

A vacant lot remains it seems
with broken glass of shattered dreams
weeds overgrown, and the flowers dead
from things I wish I'd left unsaid.

---

University poems using random words

By popular demand (by friends I used to work at the University with) here are some of the little poems I wrote when I worked there. When things were light on and we were bored, my friends would send me a little list of three or more unrelated words and I'd make up a poem using them...

Here are two of the better ones:

#1:

Word list: Einstein, Lady Godiva, equator, saliva

Einstein was quite impressed
When he saw Lady Godiva
His eyes were bright, his tongue hung out
all coated with saliva

And tho' the Lady knocked him back
He knew he couldn't hate her,
because he was so taken with
the sight of her equator

#2:

Word list: antelope, elope, chocolate, feathers, elusive

A rooster loved an antelope
He wanted her to wed
But she said to him: "We can't elope,
because we have no bed"

Nor chocolates, nor flow'rs, nor jew'ls
Would ever change her mind
It 'twas a bed or nothing
for that daft elusive hind.

And so the rooster plucked himself
With feathers to construct
A bed which would enable him,
His antelope to f**k

But his new strange appearance
Made the antelope quite sick
A naked chook? No second look
She gave that cock the flick.

The Road to Hell

This one is about something that I did where I thought that I was doing the right thing but it ended in me losing someone I really cared about. As the saying goes "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Maybe this could be combined with Robert Frost's famous line "I took the road less travelled and that made all the difference". Because, yeah..it did make all the difference...

The Road to Hell

They say
It’s better to
have loved and lost…
But when I count the cost
I say: They lie

For when you
hurt the one
you love
And see
how their opinion
Of you plummets
down into the void

You know
the thing
you cherished
is the thing
you have
destroyed

You fill yourself
With cold recrimination
Of the words you said
you wished you could recall

The words you said
That she could
only see as barbs
When that isn’t
what you meant at all.

Weeds

A poem I wrote years ago, not much depth to it, but pleasant enough in its own way...perhaps it is to a poem as a weed is to a flower ;-)

Weeds

They are the rabble
of the garden
despised by the
more cultivated
yet sturdy and prolific
venturing where
tamer blossoms
fear to grow

Much adored
in children's posies
their only sin, not
to be included in
that elite class,
the flowers,
destined never to
be part of a bouquet

outcasts, yet full
of life, wild, untamed
and free, and despite
adult disdain, still
frequented by
butterflies and bees,
nature's riff-raff
growing where
they please.

Ombrophobia

I actually like rain quite a lot, especially heavy rain. I even like driving in the rain at night. So this poem really isn't about my experience! The rhyme is deliberately repetitive and for some reason the whole poem reminds me of something from Edgar Allen Poe...

BTW: Ombrophobia =  the fear of rain.

Ombrophobia

The rain, the rain
it pours and pours,
it hammers on the iron roof
it hammers on the door,
Until its liquid hammering
fills my entire brain
and all that I can think of is
the rain, the rain, the rain

The rain, the rain
it falls and falls;
at first I was uneasy
but now I am appalled.
Incessantly as it drives down
it's driving me insane;
precipitating madness is
the rain, the rain, the rain

The rain, the rain
it eases now,
the sun dries streets
that golden towel
but I feel pangs of mortal fear
I'll hear that beat again
Deranged, I dread the drumming of
the rain, the rain, the rain!

Shallow thoughts

I wrote this poem several years ago. This is actually a shorter version of the original poem since a whole stanza was pretty dated in its references, so I decided to omit it entirely.

Shallow Thoughts

It's so nice
being superficial

No deep heart-searching,
tiresome analysis,
No concern with underlying
motivations
Or looking fruitlessly
for every moment to be
pregnant with meaning...
all my moments are virgin

What's wrong with fleeting pleasures?
Why always seek behemoths
in the deep,
Rather than minnows
in the shallows

I'll leave the deeper implications
to others.
I'll gulp down the sparkling
Coca-Cola of the moment,
leaving the vintage wines
to those with more
pretentious tastes.

In my garden

This is another one about death and the transience of life...quite cheery, wasn't I?...

In my garden

In my garden
death is common
though seldom ever seen

the ants carry
the reminders along
their trails

and remnants
in tattered spider-webs
shiver in the breeze

empty snail shells
by the path
the afterdeath debris

dried insect husks
and dessicated worms
a solitary butterfly wing

death is common
in my garden
but the dying is unseen

Serpent's Tooth

The title of this poem comes from Shakespeare's King Lear "How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child" (or something like that).  It's a bit too "rhymy" for my taste, but I was playing with different approaches at the time and for a lot of people, it isn't a poem unless it rhymes, so what can I say?...

Serpent's Tooth

Chained to thankless domesticity
     She does her daily tasks
Blamed for her complicity
     Though she was never asked
Her hands in soapy water
      In reverie she dreams
Of better for her daughter
      Impossible it seems

But as years pass, she slowly wins
     and as her daughter grows
she knows an untamed freedom
     that her mother never knows

Until the young professional
     ambition-filled and smart,
a fearless ladder-climber
     groomed to play a bigger part
She looks down on her mother
     and her drudge-filled narrow life
and turns her back, unmindful
     of her mother's sacrifice.

Acrobat

Acrobat

He is a tight-rope
walker, who works
witout a net,
one foot slowly
then the other
careful as death
since a fall could
break a bone

Some school kids
go tripping by
with the free and easy
gait of youth.
But he lacks their
pliable young bones
and the pains that
wrack his hips and
back keep his
attention honed

And so he takes
it slowly as he walks
- an aging acrobat
with bones of chalk

Re:Birth

I've always had a bit of a thing about existentialism, but also a bit of a thing about Buddhism and I guess both of these philosophies try to answer the question "What is the point of it all?"

This poem doesn't answer that question.

Re:birth

The shortest life I lived
was as an ant, only the third day foraging
above ground, when
slurp...eaten by an echidna
oh well, at least no bad karma there

And the longest life I lived
was as a tortoise in the Galapagos
a hundred and fifty years
give or take a decade
munching peacefully on grass
I remember the arrival of a big
log surmounted by a cloud
and a man scratching marks
on strange white leaves
(not very tasty!)
darwin was the sound he responded to
when called by others of his kind
I wonder what ever happened to him

And the sweetest life I lived
was as a hawk
soaring swiftly on the winds
my mate and I feeding bloody
shreds of vermin to our chicks
seeing their first flight
then never seeing them again

And my life now?
without the mindless purpose
of an ant
or the peaceful sedateness
of a tortoise
or the fierce and untamed freedom
of a hawk

My life unplanned by nature
my actions in my hands
missing the irresponsibility of mindless instinct
feeling the heavy burden
of choice

Naked Beauty

This one was inspired by a girl I once knew, it’s seems like a long time ago but it’s only about 10 years ago…

Naked beauty

At birth
you were naked
and beautiful
even though
red and wrinkled but

now that
you are grown
some say it’s a
a crime for

you to be naked
even though
you are still
beautiful but

your skin is
tanned and
smooth as a
baby’s bum

Muse

When I was doing my PhD research in mathematics, I did a visualisation as I fell asleep one night where I imagined wandering through a forest and finding a little hut in which there lived a wise old man. And in the dream, the wise old man gave me the answer to a problem I was working on. When I awoke, the answer was still there and when I checked it, it exceeded my wildest expectations and became a key theorem in my field...still I think that rather than a wise old man, I would prefer the muse of my poem...


Muse

slinking in softly
while he sleeps
she bends over him,
whispers in his ear

he stirs, she waits
expectantly, he stirs
but hugs his pillow
settles back

she hesitates
then stoops again
to whisper, hesitates
again and muses

other magic looms
await her cool illumination
other looms await to
weave her dreams

on this cold winter’s night
she softly strokes his hair
and leaves him peaceful
leaves him unaware

he snuggles deeper
snuggles in the warmth
to dreamless sleep till day,
to face again a page of snow,
the moment lost
but he will never know

Object D'Art

I wrote this poem maybe 10 years ago or more and I initially intended it to be in sonnet form but it just wouldn't fall into place. I then did a public reading of it at Poetry At the Pub, which if I remember rightly was broadcast on the local university radio station 2NUR. At that time I went through a phase of using French phrases for the titles, I have no idea why!


Objet D'Art

She is the object of her only art,
the art to keep her loneliness at bay,
and so she starts preparing for her part
as she has done a thousand other days

Her palette ready: colour for er cheeks,
her lips, her eyelids, lashes, for her face
She tilts her head, admiring her technique,
soft focus beauty, subtle seamless grace

A woman now transformed to fantasy,
her marketplace the comfort of the bar,
where other artists promise ecstasy,
compete like her to sell their works of art

The evening blurs her tidy artistry,
some of her color left on other lips,
(or worse if all goes well) and she
counts out her small commission as she sips,

A glass of wine. Then home to clean her canvas once again,
for other masterpieces, other evenings, other men.

Yin and Yang

A little bit zen again (or taoist I guess)...nothing can exist without its opposite...

Yin and Yang

To catch your reflection in
    a stinking puddle
      muck mirror image
         and the pristine sky behind

Or glimpse a road kill
    in full stench, its architecture
         peeping through its skin
             amid the gently blowing roadside grass

To thrill to see a hawk
     snatch up its prey
          yet know the converse agony
               of beak-ripped dying flesh

To see the ugliness and beauty
      the life and death entwined
          and know its seamless unity
               Designerless design

Onion Zen

Feeling a bit zen when I wrote this...

Onion

Once I thought an onion was just an onion
And then I marvelled at its nested mystery
Now I think an onion is an onion
But the whole world is an onion...

Reaper

This is another poem I wrote in 1998. I was trying to capture a sort of Celtic feel in it and I am pretty happy that I did

Reaper

I wish I could harvest the red of your lips
I wish I could harvest the blue of your eyes
I wish I could harvest the gold of your hair
But the time of the harvest is gone

I wandered the land and I wandered the seas
I sought with my eyes and I sought with my words
I searched for the clue that would give me the key
But the time for the seeking is done

I buried my love in the dark fertile earth
I buried my life and I buried my soul
I buried my hope and I buried my heart
But the time of my mourning lives on

I'll see many harvests, I'll wander the land
But I'll never again find the love I found here
I'll mourn for her death till my own death's at hand
And the grass will grow deep with the years,
Yes the grass will grow deeper than tears.

Two Lives

I wrote this poem way back in 1998. But only a couple of months ago I saw a documentary which showed that according to the latest research the heart actually does have a little brain of its own, comprising about 40,000 neurons (about as smart as a slug), so maybe some memories do pass from the donor to the recipient:

Two Lives

It was over in an instant
live one moment, dead the next
a careless pointless instant
his accidental death...

She was young, some would say pretty
she was barely in her teens
he would have loved to give his heart
to this school-girl in blue jeans

To feel it beat within her breast
the warmth on her face of the sun
to feel it leap with all the joys
of a lifetime still to come

They say embodied in the heart
the donor's tastes live on
anonymously yearning
though the giver's life is gone

well...she finds she now likes chicken
and the sometimes football game
though she still likes hanging
with her friends and walking in the rain.

His family will mourn their loss
while hers will celebrate
rejoicing in this second chance
the end of a long wait

He'll never now have children
He'll never have a wife, but
He gave her the gift of a lifetime
He gave her the gift of a life.

American Sentences

In Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, Kim Addonizio describes American sentences, a kind of American haiku, a short poem which often records a poignant moment. Here are a few of mine:

Father and daughter walking the dogs
He holds them back, they pull her on


The old couple, both slow
He stops for her to catch up
And takes her hand


The joyful eyes of the little girl
Smiling quietly just because...


The dog barks at the dog barking in the distance
At the dog barking in the distance


A little girl with her mother
Climbing the steps at Borders singing as she climbs
The faster she climbs, the faster she sings