And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.
...
``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,
``Distance all value enhances!
``When a man's busy, why, leisure
...
(PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.)
``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,
``Distance all value enhances!
...
I starred that night, I shone:
I was footwork and firework in one,
a rocket that wriggled up and shot
...
All was quiet in the Garden of Eden
and not a fig-leaf stirred...
but after the Fall of Man
...
By walking days
Tirelessly on the months' cycle
Yet completing another year circle
For another run ready to come
...
Sometimes house or straw- heap catch a fire,
Due to children's fire play or firework without care.
Within a twinkle of eye fire plays with fuel,
It spreads flame wide and high and does cruel.
...
The days, invariably, quickly pass.
Natures care not to amend tiresome hours
Hiding, lurking, sleeping. Casting away
From mortal shores. Trespassing. Always gray.
...
The sound of guns
Could be heard everywhere
There was no immediate hope of peace
Neither for the young nor for the old
...
Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar
...
Outside it rains
Sitting in my porch I watch,
The elements mix and mingle
Kneading the pulverized dust
...
What are these women up to? They’ve gone and strung
Drapes over the windows, cutting out light
...
Gazing through the window at the rain
I wondered from where the rain came.
Then a voice said to me ‘It’s sucked up from the sea,
or do you believe that old wives tale that it is angels wee.
...
Flintlike, her feet struck
Such a racket of echoes from the steely street,
Tacking in moon-blued crooks from the black
Stone-built town, that she heard the quick air ignite
Its tinder and shake
...
A moonless night, and in mid-air flight
The pilot dimmed plane's internal light
To see, unseen cosmic sight.
.............................
...
At Kent State the flea-market-cruising roommate girls
Discovered the retro charm of 1930's jackets
Square-shouldered seriousness dissolved in giggles
Adornment rituals for young female bonding
...
Who are you?
I am the whirlwind
which stirs on this earth,
my eyes keep watching
...
She wandered through a landscape,
Full of pretty little builds,
Not really knowing where she was,
Not really did she care,
...
We have loved,
with an uncorrupted certainty
of a raw heart.
We have dreamt,
...
Human heart-beats
beating
with the cosmic constellations;
fire ramifying
...
We arrived here after four o'clock in the afternoon
The beach was very crowded with so many people
Bright amber light shone under the blue sky
Swim suits of all colors surrounded mushroomed beach umbrellas.
...
The snarled monogamy
needs a firework.
A solitary moon walks on a lake
nonchalantly.
...
Above the earth, below the sky,
I can hear the joyful cry,
They hug and love under my light,
as I display my colours bright.
...
I was thinking through my nose
For I breathed your fragrance but couldn't find you close,
Maybe it was only a sweet reverie
Which took me closer to you, albeit briefly.
...
Is it that time gets away from me
Or that every second has its own story to tell
And that my circuits get overloaded at times?
In truth, some seconds are astounding:
...
Here are 100 things I can't stand...
Taking out garbage
Paper-cuts
...
The leaves swayed, first like a drunkard at midnight
on a moon swept path that seemed unstable beneath his feet
and then more gently as the wind abated and they, in unison,
slowly rocked as though a host of babies soothed to sleep
...
I remember, I remember
Every year in November.
The night I saw a young boy die.
Every year I wonder why..
...
Back in the day,
When I was a little whipper snapper in Leeds,
We would go "chumping", as we called it, for firewood,
For weeks and weeks.
...
Don't speak to me, Ive heard enough
All the pain, I've gained from just one lie.
Inside my feelings explode like fireworks and
the shattered remains of my soul,
...
it was a lightning bug summer
we danced in blackberry water that mirrored the stars
spanish moss leaping with the breeze
jagged lighting piercing the sky with fleeting scars
...
The wind blows her hair,
Over her baby blue eyes
And this will be the moment that I
dare,
...
We met in evening's gray twilight,
our bodies clasped in sweet delight,
to share the shawl of sultry warmth
as lovers often do.
...
A lot of people don't know this,
But Writers' Block helps you write.
You're so flustered at first that you're
Primed and ready to write anything,
...
Alma: I give you this again, this beauty mark, or this
Scar:
And it is funny that I sat in the car with you and kissed your
Mouth even though you said you didn’t want to;
...
Found in a grotto of cash- bound to make money
While the dogs howl-
The moon is round but sharp, and she is stealing things from
The supermarket:
...
The cat shot over the sleeping dog
And caught it with his paw
The cat shot over the table
Dog chased him through the door
...
Jumping jacks, bangers
Sparkling candles
Some for the ground
Others with handles
...
A poet who is without a pen,
Is like a lion that has no den.
Like a hotdog with no mustard,
Or like jelly with no custard.
...
Falling in the morning
the bright sun rays;
penetrate the clouds
to make its way.
...
Days begotten of firework chiefs:
Mighty good days, where tomahawks chew
Scalps red under unfiltered sunlight:
Then we knew who we were, what was going on,
...
Golgotha is a special place with new fonts
Spuming ink;
I skip out from the horse-flies, and dally in
My thirty year old truancies,
...
I’ve even been up in the fanfare of markets
Above the tree lines of your beauty and of your
Flea markets:
I’ve sauntered up in the mineral ways, while cursing
...
Nubile poem on the cleft of an orb—
Silence slips over the curves of a river-
And the strange jewelry that decorates the housewives
Without a sound—
...
Rockets streaming in the night sky,
bursting from a single spark;
Laughing fountains reaching high,
fleeing from the dusty dark.
...
You burned into my heart, from the moment we met
From the moment you danced upon the page
You see, you made me whole, my heart you stole
And from that moment on, I changed...
...
A begging hungry boy
sobbing in a cry
while watching the firework display
as the New year was hailed.
...
No ending of the story. The loose thread hangs.
Journey again starts at the termination.
The smell is something of enigma.
I am again dissecting the body of a stale corpse.
...
BEHIND the bold lines
of black and the
alternating yellow fabric
is your body,
...
He was sitting off fireworks from a boat
in the lake for his children, nieces and nephews.
He let 2 of he oldest children
into the boat with him. The firework
...
I am fizzy like soda pop,
And I don't like to stop,
I dance all night,
Stay up until morning light,
...
1. Cleaning the Apostle Spoons
Once a year, the apostle spoons were cleaned
In Springtime when the heavy dining table
Lay under its fleece blanket like an altar
...
this is your life without parades.
at least not the parades you were thinking of;
with only one kind of ice cream.
...
[to Gerard Manley Hopkins]
to the Living God...
on the day I heard of Your fire opals
I cried: where is a fire opal language
...
I have slipped the marigold stitch
of heart murmuring autumn and
come to tell you this: that memory persists beyond words
the scent of chrysanthemum and leaf mold denoting
...
October's Fairs are whirling in the dark
snapdragon colours firework sped
...
october's Fairs are whirling in the dark
snapdragon colours firework sped
...
The Uniform
When I grew up if you came from a poor or austere home,
the joining of the merchant navy could be a rescue,
if you kept your nose clean and went to a navy academy
...
Wishing your well
I woke up early thinking it was New Yearday
and marvelled how mild it was.
...
Midday sun from bluest sky sets ablaze
In diamond surface river's silver haze.
As tidal beach sucks gently at the edge,
I sit and stare at sparkles from a ledge
...
As, from our local rail station, we made our way,
We were treated to an impromptu firework display.
Upon spying this spectacle, our journey, we briefly stopped,
As fireworks whizzed and whistled and banged and popped.
...
Past the firework
Is reached the silent zone,
Deadly barren and dark
There you are all alone.
...
The revaluation stalled at the gates
I guess the momentum was never enough
or the drive to the end was not there
people came to shout and cheer in the beginning
...
I'm a firework
I'm gunpowder
shoot me into unknowns
haven't I also fallen?
...
As summer ends autumn begins
Sycamore seeds Twizzle in spins.
As squirrels gather ground acorns
...
I've got my prom dress taken in
But how did I forgot my shoes
I'd like my hair-up with a pin:
Simple elegance with roughhews
...
Let's suppose I am '200 billion pixels of a memory. '
On a digital highway bound into a digital collage
Now let us suppose I am a 'Kaleidoscope of atoms. '
Going slightly somehow mysteriously at large.
...
We spent all our days
Questioning reality
Defying stereotypes
Leaving true love in the dust…
...
Maybe flying too close to the sun just had something to do with
needing the light,
chasing the dawn
...
I'm the wind that keeps haunting
a breeze that can hold you
a gust that can tear you apart.
...
There was a definite chill in the night air,
As a veil of wood-smoke filled our Square.
In the air, its rich aroma hauntingly hung;
I inhaled deeply, drawing it in to my lungs.
...
The darkness of the night is rent
By lightning bolts that burn blue/white
The power of Nature apparent.
It is a truly awesome sight.
...
I’ve even been up in the fanfare of markets
Above the tree lines of your beauty and of your
Flea markets:
I’ve sauntered up in the mineral ways, while cursing
...
I want your children inside me, Alma;
I want all of this flesh to wilt, and all of the motor boats
And speed boats to go their own way
And I want nothing else for you, Alma.
...
The moonlight silhouettes
two lovers in the park
as they walk arm in arm
within their wonderland.
...
The moon slips across the sky
on a cloudless night
as the stars wink at one another
saying everything is all right.
...
Dawn breaks,
Awaking me to our universe:
Ever expanding,
Into infinite space.
...
Spindles of golden hooks happening in the bows of the
Treeless hills,
Or the voids that can never be cleaved; and if it rains
From her eyes, at least it is miles away,
...
A thief and then a liar pass over the two dueling overpasses
Who are fighting their ways into the jungle of heaven:
Words break down about them, and are disregarded and fed to
The toothless lions looking with uneager vanity into
...
If my body is here now; it will soon be a
Cenotaph, it will soon be a firework spent:
And even while I still have my bicycle, even it will not be
Able to move after I am gone-
...
Emptied bottles of otherwise genii wishes,
And lifting my lips to the heavens all fretted by the
Passing of airplanes:
The leaping of scams above that suburbia where
...
If you know that the nights fall hard on
The spikenard monuments, then you know nothing but
Your letters and of footballs
That the balls are round, the oranges orange:
...
Every night has a church, and begins this way,
As a dismissal for pilgrims, the long voyages of a zoetrope
Through the junked pornographies of the trees
That the butterflies climb out of like feral infants from
...
Breathing heavily through a night of
Busted dreams,
Asking questions that no one has the answers
For, so right getting lies
...
Breathing heavily through a night of
Busted dreams,
Asking questions that no one has the answers
For, so right getting lies
...
Alma, I spent my day away from you:
You called me three times, it seems- and would have called me once
More, except your man had both of your cars,
And he was picking you up from work: so you couldn’t call me:
...
Pains of practices of death- flaunts of metamorphosis:
And now this:
Overeager, green- debased tenements, spending their fires away until
She is covered with goose bumps:
...
How deeply can I explore the dungeons
Residing in my children:
The battlements manned by mice
that coronate their exuberent, tiny minds:
...
Muse maze amusing seems to spring
from creativity that night
brings into fractal firework focus fling.
Here flames, there names, door to delight
...
All haiku senryu are copyright Jonathan Robin. Where quoting kindly reproduce source attribution
Provisional list 27 January 2008 N.B. versions extant 2008 subject to revisions currently unincorporated into list
A Beam of Light
...
Fourteenth of July,
African famine, men die:
France, firework sky.
...
SUNSET SONNET VIBRATIONS
Flamingo flames flare fitfully, restore
fey fanfare firework vistas sparkling West.
...
All day long in a cloud of dynamite
Rattle teeth as
Golden as the armpits of the moon, until finally
Released
...
All day long in a cloud of dynamite
Rattle teeth as
Golden as the armpits of the moon, until finally
Released
...
Welcoming her brown skin into my room:
She lingers here even though she doesn’t call all weekend:
Mia bienamada cannot see my scars,
And I remember how she almost slipped away after fireworks:
...
My cousin came
but once a year,
to visit and to sleep in
'twas all the same
...