Haikus and Tankas – 33 of them

04Mar09

On this blog I collect my literary work. Recently I did a post on my Buddhist blog of Haiku and Tanka poems as a response to a certain piece of Buddhist writing . While they have a specific context which you can read about in the original post they do stand alone as Haiku and Tanka poems so I am reproducing only the poems themselves here.

In fact outside of their original context they have even further meanings which surprised me as I read them. That’s one thing that always stuns me about the writing process. The original impetus can become lost or combined with other inspirations and the results resemble none of those inspirations and become something of their own.  Something other than the sum of their parts.

33 Poems About Sitting Instructions

-some poems about meditation

Poets make castles

A world or the universe

Tiny paper gods

A silver dollar

Signals a helicopter

Sent for the rescue

Someone said plainly

to eff the ineffable

An interesting practice

Alan Watts (1961) wrote, it involves trying to speak the unspeakable, scrute the inscrutable and eff the ineffable. Wiktionary

Rooms here are many

The first thing to discover-

How to lock the door

The grocery list

Does not include chips, ding-dongs

Tiramisu or Shiraz

Chasing the sardines

Minds fanning like outspread nets

Fishing in shallows

Without any choice

Not two or ten thousand things

Litter the pathway

A bird on a wire

Sings the same shrill melody

As when on a branch

My two hands are cleaned

Before preparing our food

Both help cut onions

In India the left hand is used for washing the genitals with water after using a squat toilet. The right hand is used for eating food.

The conductor shouts,

“Stop the train. We have arrived.”

The platform empty

A photo album

Bulging overstuffed pages

Is set on the shelf

There’s always a path

That veers into the forest

Leaves cover the way

Going forward or backward

Direction not to be found

A carpet of grass

And a rounded mushroom top

Look. The Cheshire Cat

An arch of the spine

Subtle bridge of antique bone

Cantilevering

Across the rushing waters

Traffic humming. Dive. Dive. Dive.

Preparing the tents

Carnival of thought goes calm

Work to be done first

Holding timelessness

In elegant folded hands

Fingertips sparking

An old leaning shed

Provides a little refuge

When propped up just so

A stake in the ground

Pounded down with diligence

To tie a wild horse

Perspective drawing

Lines, planes, angles, points all joined

The picture complete

Eyes open mouth closed

Listen to the bumblebee

Outside the window

As it taps incessantly

Wanting to be admitted

Nasal rasp and whine

Breathing with influenza

Not exactly soft

I have the flu as I am writing these poems

When planting a tree

The gardener digs a hole

And settles the roots

Stationary things

Provide a leverage point

For the fulcrum tilt

Physics is not a subject

Without any awareness

Jump up from a seat

And risk a broken body

The ceiling is low

Upstairs or downstairs

The house is inhabited

And the lights burn bright

On a humid day

Though beads of sweat sting the eyes

They remain open

Dust from open windows flies

A fan hums in the corner

Traveling around

Here and there, getting nowhere

To sit and to know

Check the ticking clock

There may be some small spaces

Lost between minutes

The photographer

Must lower the camera

To replace the film

Nothing is hidden

Compass and map are options

For other journeys

The books are in boxes

In some garage or attic

Their words all consumed

The mind’s committees

Will never agree on terms

That mean surrender

Inheritances

Are not merely on paper

But in memory

…

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