Learning to Paint Clouds

Consequently, when I am 80, I shall
have got to the bottom of things.
                                 —Hokusai

Now you are done with seeing things, begin
by setting down your name,
forgetting everything you ever knew:

those tints and tinctures that were never you,
the way by which you came,
perfecting feather, flower, leaf, and fin.

Erase the lines, but leave the shadows in,
with all that they contain;
such lack of artifice was always true.

Only the necessary things remain:
plain parchment, candle flame,
a quill of water from a grail of rain;

all else is still within,
and, consequently, finally,
your seeing is a seeing through.

Now you are done with seeing things.
Begin.

~ ~ Philip Quinlan

First published in The Flea

WE COULD CALL HIM ADAM

We could call him Adam
this guy who thinks he knows love because

he loves, like a wave
loves the beach. He’s wrong. Watch

him when she leaves. Watch him
pacing the long night alone into dawn as

he stumbles through empty rooms. Watch
him guard the cage

of his ribs with bare
arms sheltering the absence,

a heart drained
by the receding tide.

Now he knows love.

~ ~ Larry Sorkin

Anaximandrian

hung
between two

absences

like
light waiting

to be let in, to let us be

~ ~ Philip Rowland   

Published in Ekleksographia #1, January 2009.

Enge (Narrowness)  -  Artist:  Janett Brown-Dwehus

anchor 
i
tic 

~ ~ Philip Rowland

Road Runner Haiku Blog, (Scorpion Prize-23), December 2011

I am who I am until I dream
who I am
a fraction and a fiction
an annunciation amidst apparitions


waking up in the middle of the night

as if it had a middle for a while

                 dreams are single
                 passenger
                 vehicles
                 untested
                 by the crash
                 dummies


~ ~ John Levy

 

Fledglings of the Cymbal

Dawn, the ledge of day, is where
every dreamer’s reflexes are tested;
one misstep is enough. Each waking
is a fall from that high surefootedness,

a descent from grace. All sleepers
thread their beds with this steadiest
of paths that they may arrive at last
in the plunge, the giddiness of worlds grasp—

Now who shall lift his hands to show
an hourglass in each armpit: birds emerge
screeching, we devour his wormgroin.
His moist declivities scour our habits.

When evening empties the buildings of
what is tall in them, we will return
each to his roost, ledging and listening
to a percussionist lapping against lilypads.

~ ~ Bill Knott

      ikke mund nok til flere spørgsmål ::: en ung måge passerer 

        not mouth enough for more questions ::: a young gull passes

~ ~ J. S. H. Bjerg

The sound of singing in a darkened sky :: 
self spills from silence to source

~ ~ Grant Hackett 

drunk on moonbeams poetry melts the ice inside me

~ ~ Chen-ou Liu 劉鎮歐

 From Sketchbook 6:6 (Nov/Dec 2011).

            Planjava

                    Bolj in bolj mi je lepo,

                    bolj kot luni,

                    ki se sprehaja po svoje

                    in se skriva za smreknami

                    in se razpolavlja in polni

                    in prazni.

                    Ko sem kje na samem

                    gledam luno in zvezde

                    in samota neha žgati.

                    Je tako preprosto?

                    Ni, ker moram hoteti.

                    ~ ~ Ifigenija Simonović


Open Field

I feel better and better,
I feel better than the moon.
She circles her own path
and hides behind pine trees
and divides herself in two
or makes herself full
by her own volition.

When I am alone somewhere
I look at the moon and the stars
and loneliness
ceases to burn.

Is it so simple?
No, because I have to
want it.

~ ~ Ifigenija Simonović

Translated by Ifigenija Simonović  and
Anthony Rudolf.  

From: Kakor da bi snežilo [As if it was snowing], 2011. 

Weischeit (Wisdom) - Artist:  Janett Brown-Dwehus

How Wars Begin

What he
Calls
a  Log

I call
A
Tree


~ ~ Bob Arnold

 From Yokel: A Long Green Mountain Poem, Longhouse Publishers, 2011.

     after: the spell is cast
 
luck  bars  immortality
eventually
your toes will  wear  down to stubs   and you will crawl
blindly
seeking to feed again  upon  the light: be
there
night,  instead of  this eternal
bliss

~ ~ Peter Greene    

©  Peter Greene.  All rights reserved.

Calligraphy in Green and Brown No. 1
Artist: Lila Lewis Irving

•blue 79

as your janitor i would like to inform you :
i don't do
windows or cobwebs :  it's
for love of the spiderlight   I   might
occasionally take one down
if it touched me  :  otherwise  let them hang
in majesty
over my relatively
clean floors :  catching
dust, and flies
and making a spectral
                                                         Alhambra                      of my skies
seen from
within:   from
the outside, i  just   look   like   a   messy old man

~ ~ Peter Greene

© Peter Greene.  All rights reserved.

"String Duo" -  Artist:   Lila Lewis Irving

Histoires

Un inventaire de petites plumes,

des cailloux, insérés dans la chair du sens,

et à peine cousus

dans l’ourlet de lumière

qui fait remuer la poussière dans les corridors

de la maison.

Des histories dans lesquelles notre imagination s’accroche,

dans les fragments du désir,

et la légèreté de ta paume,

musique répétitive,

torrent

d’une harpe.

~ ~ Irina Moga

Fables

An inventory of plumelets,
pebbles, stored inside the feeling body,
barely sewn
inside a stitch of light

that stirs up dust in the corridors
of home.

Fables to which imaginations hold fast,
and broken desires,
and the lightness of your palm,

a song without end,
the harp's
stream.

~ ~ Irina Moga

Translated by  Conrad  DiDiodato.

An Old Timer

selling his tools on the lawn --
what pains him the most is

seeing them laid out that way
doing nothing

~ ~ Bob Arnold

 Yokel: A Long Green Mountain Poem, Longhouse Publishers, 2011.

 
mind elsewhere,
                      surprised
            by a mannequin

 ~ ~ Philip Rowland

Tai Chi -  Artist: Lila Lewis Irving

Le Chant de la Tortue

Tu es seul et stupéfait - est-ce l'ombre d'un peuplier qui se détache

devant toi ou bien un séisme a-t-il lézardé ton sommeil?

Les blessures en ce monde ne se remplissent pas de terre,

tu l'as compris; et déjà tu sais où est le temps disparu.

Dans les montagnes sauvages d'Orphée,

le coucher du soleil est un cadavre nu

dépecé... Et le soleil dans le noir murmure

avec la bouche du poète: La vie, toujours la vie!

Es-tu heureux? La vie continue; simple et familière

elle ne t'inquiète pas. Et la cruelle question -

celle du temps! - ne te préoccupe point ...

La terre saigne encore, elle saigne de partout.

C'est elle le maudit tonneau mythique

et nous - les Danaïdes, hélas!

~ ~ Kiril Kadiiski

 From: Alter Ego: Poems, Editions Nov Zlatorog, 2009.




The Song of the Tortoise

You are alone in a stupor - has the poplar ahead of you
lost its shadow or did an earthquake shatter your snooze?
The cracks in this world are not filled with earth;
you understand that, and also you know where time vanishes.

In the wild Orpheus mountains
the setting sun is a naked, dismembered
corpse... and in the dark, the sun murmurs
in the poet's own voice:  Life, always life!

Are you happy?  Life moves on, straightforward and familiar.
It doesn't worry you.  That cruel question
of time - never crosses your mind ...

The earth still bleeds from  every pore.
She, the damned, mythical barrel,
and we, alas, the Danaides!

~ ~ Kiril Kadiiski

Translated by Ann Diamond
From: Alter Ego: Poems, Editions Nov Zlatorog, 2009.

 

the branch continues to interview the fruit

a Q & A of line and color

a rounded statement following and bending down

the wooden request for a response

                    

                              my second nature seconding nature

 ~ ~   John Levy

"Wall Shadow"  -  Photographer:   John Levy

I CANT LIVE WITHOUT YOU.
OK.  I WILL SURVIVE.
An oddly low-key resolve
To state publicly, though perhaps
Not to have carved with a knife.

~ ~ Philip Rowland 

From Pinstripe Fedora #9, 201l.