Do You Haiku?

I watched a slug crawl
On the edge of a razor
Slithering slowly

And still surviving
My life seems to be the same
It is my nightmare

 

It's fall. Denver was at 84 degrees yesterday. But today will be cold---and we will get snow this afternoon---probably an inch in the mountains.


hito fumanu
yama no furudera
aki kaze ya


No one steps in
the old mountain temple
Autumn winds!


or

the old mountain temple
abandoned
Ah! Autumn winds.

 

yama fukashi
tzuku kiri shizuka
jizobosatsu


Deep in the mountains
a horned owl breaks the silence
The little stone buddha

Jizobosatsu are little stone buddhas that are placed in shrines, temples, and special places in the mountains. Bosatsu is actually a bodhisattva. Today they are just about always placed there to protect the spirits of stillborn or aborted babies. (It could be one, or it could be many---Japanese doesn't specify.)

 

I've imagined you
Everything was so surreal
Sometimes, dreams can haunt

 

I JUST WANT A HOME
A PLACE THAT I CAN AFFORD
TIRED OF THIS PAIN

:bigcry:

 

Haiku poets also use a poem form called a Tanka-----it takes a haiku (e.g. 5/7/5 syllables), and adds another 7/7 verse.

As a Tanka, you would take the first 3 lines (the haiku), and add this:



I watched a slug crawl
On the edge of a razor
Slithering slowly

And still surviving, my life
seems to be the same nightmare

 

This is a very good death poem. But it is also brilliant at the pathos of the survivors--the loved ones.


I especially like the ending, which is similar, or along the same vein as a haiku I once composed about the festival in Japan at the end of the O-bon season---in the fall, when the ancestors come back to visit the Japanese---where they put little boats with lit candles in a river which, as they float away in the river's current, guides the ancestors back home to the land of the dead. I used the continuing flow of the river as a metaphor on the passage of time, from one generation to the next. There is something interesting about the permanence of the world in the face of the temporal nature of human physicality. Unfortunately it is in my first kuchou (haiku journal) and I am not sure where that is right now.

The first time I really remember thinking about this, was while hiking around the mountains just North of Kyoto, Japan. I came upon a trail that led to some old stone steps, which were half overrun by the thick Japanese foliage. I climbed the steps and came upon an old temple, called, Amida-ji. No one was there, but on either side of the altar was this long tapestry that hung all the way down the wall. Then there were these little bells on the bottom of the tapestry, and as the wind would pass through the temple it would
slam these bells against the hard wall and the bells would give off a ring. It suddenly dawned on me that even if all of mankind had met its demise, these bells could continue ringing. The interesting thing about the experience is that thre was a steady breeze so the bells rung in a continuous rythm. I've written several haiku on that including the following Tanka (I explained tanka in my previous post):

aki no arashi ya
nankai mo
amidaji no
suzu wa naku ga
ki koeru hito nashi


The fall storm!
over and over
the little bell
in Amida Temple rings but
No one is there to hear it


(Actually the haiku part fails to stand on its own---I see that was a work in progress...)

(All this Buddhist stuff I've posted, and people will think I'm Buddhist----but it is deeply intertwined with Japanese culture.)

 

And what became of,
Yesterday's eager promise?
Today never comes.

 

Words are gone
Everything motionless
The blank page

 

That is a very beautiful but sad haiku

 

kangarasu
demo matsu ka
omoi yukigumo


Even the
cold crow awaits?
Heavy snow clouds


This is a good example of how well Japanese is suited to haiku----instead of writing several words to express the concept of a cold crow (karasu ga samui), Japanese simply combines the Chinese characters to create 1 word, kangarasu, for a cold crow.

This could be a good response to youfreeme's haiku on death. None of us, not even nature itself, can escape the inevitable---whether a bad snow storm, old age, or even death. Winter and the year end can serve as a metaphor for the end life, including the breaking down of the mind and body in senility and old age...

 

In post #127, just a few posts above, I wrote of an old temple in the mountains above Kyoto, where these bells on the ends of two long tapestries on either side of the altar, continuously hit the wall from the breeze and the wind. Here is another haiku I composed about that experience. It is suuitable, because tonight, here in Colorado, snow is starting to fall...


rin rin to
suzu naru amidaji
yuki furi

Ting... ting...
the sound of a bell from Amida-ji
snow falls.


There is a vagueness in the Japanese---on the one hand, one might experience the sound of a bell making its way out of the old temple in the silence of the snow fall, on the other hand it could be a causal relationship where the ringing of the bell causes the snowfall, or the snow, the bell... (Amida-ji = Amida Temple)

 

hatsu yuki ya
ikegiri ni
kamo hitorigiri

The autumn snow!
in the foggy lake
a duck all alone

 

Relax your mind some
Don't let stress get in the way
Serenity now

 

fuku suteru
sekiri no yogore
ochiba kana

Throwing away clothing
dysentery stains
falling leaves!

 

Time rushes backwards
Stirring sleeping dark creatures
Their hour has come

 

The cold can cut through
Keeping it moving, moving
To chase cold away

 

Furu yamaji
yuki furi furini
oto wa sezu

Old mountain path
snow falls and falls
without a sound

 

asagiri
karasu no koe wa
shiranu ki kara

Morning fog
a crow's voice
from an unknown tree