Haiku
with a click
through classmate finder:
five impostors of you
the wolf moon
caught in the tree…
prison cars pass by
crowded bus
when the coughing ceases
two men stay
harvest
moon…
walking with
my shadow
Taiwan’s moon
hangs in Ajax sky...the scent
on mother's apron
a long sigh...
these low clouds
unmoving
he gazes at
her finger pointing to the moon—
wedding ring
a
moonlit pond
takes what it sees:
a frog croaks
enter a dream
Chuang Tzu’s butterfly dreaming of me
among the white
moon faces our slanted eyes
folded paper
morphs into a bird and flies away
in the blizzard
a maple tree barks at the quarter moon
Haiku
Sequence
The Years
of Living Dangerously
spring
1975...
sleep in Saigon
but wake up in Houston
summer palace
of the Fertile Crescent—
Green Zone
autumn leaves
bounce and swirl in the air...
echoes of Miss Saigon
shooting stars
cross the Kabul sky—
the wolf moon
Tanka
Death
clad in black negligee
caresses me
how can I stop her
from stimulating my poems?
snow
taking the features
from the landscape—
I unearth them
on a page of tanka
the poem
I’ve worked on for months
gray and cold
time to shuffle off
this mortal coil
every
time
after I finish writing poems
I see
cyclamens by the window
stand unfailingly erect
my favorite
film clips flare on the walls
of the mind
I trap them
with a net of words
a lone dog
barks at the moon
loud, long, piercing
he does not know
the art of tanka
*Gogyohka
the spring wind
melts snow
on the garden
I wish it could do the same
to my frosty loneliness
the autumn
sunset
on a church graveyard
a mangy dog
by the moss
stares into the sky
the smiling
you
waiting by our tree
in breezy spring days
reconnected through Classmate Finder
the same smile from a wrinkled face
I shred
long winter nights
into myriad threads
and weave a spring quilt
as a gift for your return
my desire for you
grows lusher
like spring grass
even though
autumn winds will come
the time needed
for creation to take place
between the pen and the page
is not six days
but a lifetime
mangy dog
hit by a flying bottle
runs blindly through traffic
so does this angst
across my mind
walking
my fingers
over the stony wall
of your heart
Three Colors: Blue
on the radio
when asked
where are you from
I see
Canada geese fly over
their route, my roots
alone
in my attic
I perform
stand-up for a sea of stars
rain returns its ovation
Jesus said
let the children come to me
don't stop them
but some priests put them
under their robes
Gogyohka
Sequence
Either/Or
for Søren
Kierkegaard
buried
under piles of books about Him
I rant and rave
He stands by
and keeps throwing His words
to believe
or not to believe
that is the question
I ponder
sunrays drift in and out of the window
the cracks in the ground
upon which I stand
become bigger year by year
doubting Thomas
in a land of promise
my heart
believes in His words
but my mind won’t
a tug-of-war
for my soul
my life with Him
like riding the merry-go-round
it goes round and round
up and down
but gets me nowhere
alone
in the dark
I hang Him
on the cross within me
finished?
Read
Chen-ou Liu's
"beach" haiku Thread
Poems
Gogyohka
Bibliography
A U. S.
Chapter of the Gogyohka Societey established in 2008 by
Linda Vovos, Elizabeth Phaire, and Joseph Gesick along
with founder Enta Kusakabe. Includes information
about the society, upcoming Gogyohka workshops,
membership, quarterly newsletter, poetry samples, and
links.
