haiku
The temperature rose in our flat, hotter even, than the 40-odd red faced, spherical celciuses that danced around heads, puffing their steaming air all over us and in our direction.
So we escaped to the State Library, an edifice of the state that is disarmingly cool and inviting. Chilly inside, like the personal offices of a South East Asian statesman (for they have internalised colonial myths that connect laziness with humidity and heat).
And I selected a volume of Haiku, printed at the height of the old empire, spilling its pages like so many crisp syllables.
I learned of the history of the form, and found this to be my sultry favourite, very suited to the weather:
Koibito wo Omo-
Okie mitsu
Nete mitsu kaya no
Hirosa kanaLonging for My Sweetheart
I sit up or lie down and yet,
How large is the mosquito-net!
By Ukihashi (a poetess)
Here now are a few that I wrote, so taken by the form was I, that I might have been a 90′s yuppie, clothed in kimono, trimming bonzai, practicing calligraphy, rolling sushi and so forth:
Broken Skin
A peach bursts its skin
And spills out all of its life
Into the fruit bowl.Starry-eyed
Cold light in my cell.
It burns my eyes, catches dust:
Now planets, now stars.Glow
Summer’s sun light burns
Now not seeing light that shines
lower than before.
Category: noetry | Tags: haiku 2 comments »
February 11th, 2009 at 16:10
Love the new-look site, Ben. And keep up the commentary, we need it. hope you’re well and happy and you haven’t burst your skin into a fruit bowl for all the life that flows in you.
That haiku reminded me of a D H Lawrence poem I once read, called ‘Peach’ (believe it or not). I found the text in an archive online, so it might not be entirely accurate, but you get the picture:
PEACH
Would you like to throw a stone at me?
Here, take all that’s left of my peach.
Blood-red, deep;
Heaven knows how it came to pass.
Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up.
Wrinkled with secrets?
And hard with the intention to keep them.
Why, from silvery peach-bloom,
From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem
This rolling, dropping, heavy globule?
I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it.
Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?
Why hanging with such inordinate weight?
Why so indented?
Why the groove?
Why the lovely, bivalve roundness?
Why the ripple down the sphere?
Why the suggestion of incision?
Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball?
It would have been if man had made it.
Though I’ve eaten it now.
But it wasn’t round and finished like a billiard ball.
And because I say so, you would like to throw something
at me.
Here, you can have my peach stone.
—
It’s rare that I enjoy poetry, but this has always stayed with me. It’s just so cheeky, and a good sentiment to remember when you encounter detractors: stay calm, enjoy your ‘peach’, which I take to mean ‘values’ or ‘ideas’, and let them have their ‘peach stone’, which I take to mean ‘strawman argument’, even if that’s reading too much of my own ideas into the metaphor, but hey, that’s my peach. ‘I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it’ is my favourite line.
February 15th, 2009 at 00:46
Hi Ryan,
Beautiful poem, and I like your analysis.
I read it especially as a defence of artistic degeneracy, and that’s something we can all enjoy.
Where are you now?