Twenty Bucks and a Stone Haiku

the cemetery
a bag blowing past
says THANK YOU

*

visiting Van Gogh
feeling all the people
we didn't

*

as many cracks
as days
a doll’s face

*
autumn morning
somewhere you change color
without me

*

chipped glasses
plates with hairline cracks
not a bad marriage

*

something in you the way
autumn trees
pretend to shiver

*

cool autumn morning
awakened by small feet
racing away

*

children share secrets
clear sap
from an unseen center

*

old porcelain dolls
in the nursing home
every crack speaks

*

autumn leaves
the colors a warning
a celebration

*

autumn leaves
fall on the railroad tracks…
is this a joke?

*
autumn market
different gourds
with the same problems

*

autumn morning
something running fast over
my head wakes me


*

hometown years later
even the creek’s
changed beds

*

groundhog hibernates
our clocks slow down
then reverse

*

the vacant house's
welcome mat
snowflake by snowflake

*

autumn morning
cold finds
a tooth’s crack

*
ANTIQUES store window
autumn leaves reflect
over old metal

*

winter morning
a tree that killed its children
waves at me

*
October schoolbus
autumn leaves board
in a hurry

*

asking what number
snowstorm this is
no one knows

*
autumn morning
the carp turn
slower circles

*

under canal leaves
disgust a century old
wedding ring smolders

*

waking in cold
to write of coldness
warms me

*

autumn crickets
a tempo
tells a story

*

autumn crickets:
imagine dying
without loneliness

*

funeral champagne
tiny bubbles stroke
forgotten places

*
reading obits
an unseen jet rumbles
towards no one’s home

*
in time

the pleasures of time
replace the pleasures
of place

*
my old school
my stomach rumbles
on its stone

*

the kid eating stones
on the playground
is a bird

*
the only thing
weirder than words
what they replace

*

a leaf falls
in the cemetery
a sort of Thank You

*

Van Gogh
freezes the cornfield
before winter

*

Van Gogh's cornfields
just before winter
forever

*

Van Gogh's paintings
lose color every year…
the snakeskins no one finds


*

missing each other
by mere eons
you and God

*

museum room
full of paintings the feeling
we just missed God

*
weather report
from behind icy fingers
on her nipples

*
snowstorm
all the infidelities
need rescheduling

*
Indian summer
an affair that promised to end
shops for skis

*

we visit you
in a cemetery
to talk about debt

*

dead winter
on my dad’s grave a twenty
under a rock

*

winter morning
you wake and your lover
is years away

*

winter morning
all the lovers on this bus
look like boxers

*

winter morning
lost coffees left on buses
tell us their names

*
winter to spring
a bus kiosk’s plexiglas
scratched like home

*
a real home
even the diamond
has scratches

*

autumn light
the clock turns backwards
when we do

*
autumn leaves
I can’t decide
on a collage

*
winter night ocean
still growing colors
in abalone

*
buried love
the night ocean
colors abalone

*

buried love
the night ocean
mothers pearl

*

visiting Van Gogh
feeling all the purple
we aren't

Van Gogh's Long Drive Home Haiku

cops in darkness
drive and smile
at other cops

*

if a tree falls
in the forest…
fireflies

*

sunflowers…
all the faces
born to travel

*

night cops in cars
wait for darkness
to well up

*

complaining about
carbon footprints he swats
a bee with newspaper

*

slow down your walk
until it’s lovemaking
air your partner

*

watching waves
on the beach
in a cup

*

morning fog
the old zinc bucket
behind everything

*

spring rain
the graffiti of dead boys
looks new again

*

the funeral
only the dead man
knows everyone

*

night beach
ancient female
thunder

*

all night
dark waves crash saying
she  she  she

*

leaving the gym
still dark
inside my body

*

even your eyelids
taste her
crashing morning waves

*

3 a.m. gym
a few satyrs
frown at each other

*

August street
children and flies
bug a dead cat

*

Christmas snow
cats glower
at carolers

*

naked cop
without his gun
feels naked

*

making the best
of a bad century
Mae West

*

everyone sees
the rain fall but no one
sees it rise

*

no longer calling
the last crickets
listen

*

all the past days–
are they tight sardines
or gone clouds

*

sardine tin–
death makes
strange bedfellows

*

old man
staring at a tin of sardines
remembers an orgy

*

long drive home
headlights narrow
his feeling

*

an apple
so perfect
my hunger fades

*

dark river
chuckles on stone steps
all night long

*

old men piss
slow at racetrack urinals
dreaming of speed

*

night horsetrack
the odds of everything
hide in a fog

*

young soldiers dead…
on a battlefield crows jingle
their good luck charms

*

rehab clinic
at dawn the erections
dream of home

*

too tired to explain
he gets another tattoo
instead

*

in the bar
he lets his tattoos
do all the work

*

bar’s alpha
even his arm cast
collects phone numbers

*

breeze in night’s screen door:
he watches dark willows
change clothes like women

*

after the crash
his shoes stayed on the back porch
all winter

*

small wings
in the candle wax
summer night

*

summer night
the kitchen’s cricket
getting closer

*

kitchen-trapped cricket
pretends not to care
he’s dateless

*

some dates
just end badly   a cricket
in a kitchen

*

be gentle
with our kitchen’s cricket
the dateless wonder

*

summer crickets
under the stars
dateless wonders

*

night fishing
a cigarette glows
twice

*

the best part
of being a cricket
you’re never lost

*

horny crickets
all night tell
absolutely anyone

*

Sunday dawn
crickets who struck out
finally shut up

*

he sprays his mom’s
favorite perfume on her ashes
before guests

*

my dead mother
atomizing
in my memory

*

summer hookup
she makes love to his tattoos
not him

*

watching sparrows
not knowing
what i am

*

a tugboat
far below this hill
slowly pulls my mind

*

freezing night
a far dog barks
at lowness

*

a loon’s cry…
dead friends
listen through me

*

deep ocean
dreamless sharks
made of time

*

no one left
she talks
to the house

*

morning fog
freshens the graveyard
behind town

*

deer in the yard
a ninety-year-old
raps on the glass

*

a psych textbook
titled YOUR PROJECTIONS
ABOUT THE MOON

*

she comes home
from the library
younger with grass stains

*

a man jumps
from a bridge some birds
briefly join him

*

we talk
behind its back
the childless apple

*

dawn branches
a bunch of birds call bullshit
on night

*

night auction
more chairs
than his funeral

*

flea market
checking each link
in a stranger’s necklace

*

balloons trapped
in a hospital room
barely breathing

*

husband to husband–
all the picture frames
she gives away

*

rain on the roof
a story fainter
every year

*

polite smiles
people give milk glass
as they pass

*

deep under
the alphabet
the animals

*

the only one
children love in a graveyard
the snowman

*

we pass the cemetery
and think
no porch light

*

August cicadas
our ice cream
shedding its skin

*

after feeding pigeons
she feeds the coworkers
on Ambien

*
separate beds
separate checkbooks
same young lover

*

swimming in
the dead neighbor’s pool
her moonlight’s nicer

*

breaking up
still, they smile that their bed
has a limp

*

autumn sunlight
even the leaves know
they’re toast

*

in your sleep
you talk to years
without their skin

*

not a total loss:
Gettysburg
National Park

*

your death too
is the leaves
changing color

*

hating the world so
while he’s held in warm arms,
her lover the chihuahua

*

such angelic carving
a big bed goes traveling
divorce by divorce

*

ginkgo leaves
things won’t say
how old they are

*

after a week
of constant snow
expect mice

*

some words can squeeze
through holes much smaller
than themselves

*

the things
mice must think about holes
squeezing through!

*

two floors down
a murder
sounds like a dance

*

boy’s first time
and she’s pregnant…
deer taste moonlight

*

a touch
on the shoulder a leaf
in the graveyard

*

it’s raining outside
leaking inside
we’re making love

*

sniffing his shirt
left here years ago
a Golden Fleece is born

*

a swampy new love
she doesn’t check her mailbox
for days

*

animal eyes
in the zoo thinking man
this is a long visit

*

a breakup:
don’t click, call or visit
beloved emptiness

*

her mother’s hand
on the old man’s hand
that painted a rice grain

*

on his grave
we leave a geranium
armpit stank he loved

*

quiet house
cicadas louder
than the t.v. news

*

waking up
worried about bussing
my dream’s plates

*

abandoned orchard
deer thank no one
for cool moonlight

*

the sunflowers
nothing here
is old

*

Arles tour bus
sunflowers on the side
lost faces in windows

*
a small girl
is in love with sunflowers
half her age

*

brushing it off
an aroused firefly
lighting her breast

*

Arles
blue sky
begins to hiss

*

night sky
stars heat up
the sky boils

*

jar of fireflies
on a windowsill Vincent paints
Starry Night

*

U.S. puzzle toy
some wooden states
keep falling out

*

waking to no name
the cream rises
over the milk

*

fireflies
in a paper cup
still warm

*

after a late walk
your foliage
next to mine

*

frog’s splash
then endless commentary
of toads

*

how young they seem–
dust motes turning
in sunbeams

*

streetlight in fog
a bat passes by
dreaming hello

Stranger's Weight in Fireflies Haiku

 
dark street
someone’s weight in fireflies
suddenly takes off

*

before dawn
a stranger’s footprints
cold ocean fills

*

beach before dawn
in dark fragments
finding myself

*

before dawn
where waves break
my thoughts break

*

Descartes, a crow
seeing the world
seeing its beak

*

walk miles of sand
to get from ocean
dark wave energy

*

spring window
an aphid
draws in my breath

*

walking miles
next to waves breaking
everything I know

*

snowy vineyard
a fox and a crow
pretend they’re strangers

*

cherry blossoms
two crows chase
absolutely nothing

*

my little black cat
rubs her fangs on me
her strange pet

*

pencil on my desk
next to a few shark teeth
its ancient fang sharp

*

morning reaches
the far side of the river
before us

*

spring goddesses
the lady with 37 cats
disgusts and awes

*

streetlights twinkle
out in the dark river
a piece of you swims

*

a goose neck
in morning glories
we’re not ourselves

*

moving an aphid
from bathwater to plant
a born-again drunk

*

mother says
teeth marks 
on sea things

*

it’s not just
an aphid on my finger
it’s a “rescue-aphid”

*

sparrows take
milky splash baths
in potholes we curse

*

the mouse hole…
nature leaks in
a nuclear plant

*

a mouse hole…
nature checks out
our nuclear deal

*

dragonfly hovers
in a cooling tower’s
nuclear breath

*

sealed nuclear
power plant in the river
dragonflies visit

*

moonlight
like Brahms
for dragonflies

*

a thunderstorm
sweeps the flags
off all graves

*

hissing rain sheets
old woman who died years ago
again sweeps our street

*

long ago
in the wind
witches sang

*

the kiss
first draft
witchcraft

*

the bobcat
climbs and climbs
spring ideas

*

picking wildflowers
a field once our house
our dog guards below

*

raking leaves
my dead neighbor’s dead dog’s ball
rolls out

*

my old street
only familiar faces
the clouds

*

buried child
a plastic kickball
hides in the basement

*

he keeps keys
to houses and beds
long gone

*

moon shines
coldly on a ladder
apple pickers forgot

*

a stone thrown
into the dark river
makes good time

*

late night rain walk
the past’s umbrella
opens its arms

*

heavy rain
falling asleep
between sympathy cards

*

in a pinch
headlights in rain
for moonlight

*

humans
the future’s
unreadable format

*

that sunflowers climb
that sometimes people fall
naked from the sky

*

a field stone
for doorstoop
blunt speech of home

*

a crow’s cry
just beyond a windowsill’s
glass button jar

*

her clothes donated
her glass jar
of buttons stays

*

shaving
the old cedar box
for new scent

*

Stone Age ends
stones struggle
to find work

*

surf pebbles
toss-talk
in their sleep

*

dark country roads
trees much taller
than their houses

*

forest walk
the clock’s blood pressure
much lower

*

slow tortoise…
envying rust
on its elbows

*

hay-tumble verdict–
again please but something less
than Evermore Street

*

night earthquake
dress shop mannequins feel
their first orgasm

*

ancient crack
in a teacup
holding it together

*

men merely dead
or truly dead
her smile tells you

*

usually
skip prefaces
but this morning fog…

*

drowned school jock
dark river had all winter
pops up on prom night

*

deep down
on the river bottom
all the free things

*

funeral home
the caskets cracked open
faint cries of porn

*

dark deli
lobsters in a tank
fight over bubbles

*

coffin shopping
he chooses a finish
that goes with his car
















Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger for Pexels

A Magazine in the U.K. with a Great Poetry Archive

I was very gratified to learn I had some poems accepted for an upcoming issue of  Ink, Sweat & Tears, a U.K. based magazine.

Here's a brief synopsis of the journal's history from the website:  "IS&T was founded by Salt author Charles Christian in 2007 as a platform for new poetry and short prose, and experimental work in digital media. Charles ran the site single-handedly, publishing new work every day till 2010, when now sole editor, poet and artist Helen Ivory came on board as Deputy Editor."

Publisher Kate Birch and Editor/Poet Helen Ivory now pilot this vessel. And their cumulative acumen has crafted a  literary journal of ensorcelling wiles.

I really enjoyed the haiku in the magazine's archive. Here is a sample. And another one. And check out these wild haiku of Andrew Pidoux.

Here are some poems by Helen Ivory which I enjoyed. I particularly liked "What the House Said." Her poems have a deadly-serious playfulness and a brashness, qualities that remind me of Stevie Smith's blithe darkness. 

Some Poetry Acceptances

I'm very happy to have had work accepted this week for upcoming issues of Presence (U.K.) and Failed Haiku.

Presence is a print journal. I would highly recommend subscribing if you enjoy haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun and related forms of poetry. Ian Storr makes great selections, so I find myself returning to the journal for multiple readings. Each issue has the richness you'd expect of an anthology.

Failed Haiku (the title is a sly way to tell you the magazine publishes senryu) is consistently exciting and brash. I've never visited the site and not had a great time and had my mind expanded in the bargain. Mike Rehling does a wonderful job of editing that every month (yes, it comes at you roughly every thirty days!)

May's issue of FH is being edited by the wonderful Kala Ramesh. There's a metaphysical quality to many of her haiku, so I look forward to seeing how the issue shapes up. Here's a really interesting essay by Ramesh, "Silences as Seen in Indian Aesthetics.  

Floated-Outside-It Haiku

gentle rain
into the river
barely talking

*

meteor shower
somehow somehow
the promise

*

having died
long before this Monet
we’re evenly matched

*

distant night train
an egg’s armor
begins to crack

*

green peeling staircase
paint every year
greener in memory

*

invisible girl
orange peels
for a city block

*

finding purple shells
low tide babbling
in our purple prose

*

watch a snake…
imagine it with hands
smacking its rosary

*

a loving mother
eats her children’s
gnat clouds

*

t.v. news
moth’s searing love of the bulb–
forgotten safeword

*

before he jumps, his joy
knowing a dark river
feels nothing

*

antifreeze leaks
the moon’s reflection
in a cold puddle

*

you wake to a mirror
speaking an unknown dialect
of moonlight

*

distant gunshot
so far away the sound
a lid crawling off

*

soft shell crab night–
we hear someone
eating a coffin

*

bacon strip
you eat a pig’s burn
ape orgasm

*

high school years later
lab’s floating pig fetus
only face i recall

*

buying meal worms on credit
he realizes his children
are watching

*

dark parked car
playing Bizet for fireflies
no one else

*

Christmas morning
dark centuries
open their presence

*

walking home alone
leaving drunk fireflies clearly
trying too hard

*

waking at night
promising darkness
things, things

*

fireflies
just seem to want more
every year

*

night airport
tired moonlight
coming and going

*

bales of hay
the crow at morning
a preacher

*

crickets in frost
cross the same field as me
as zero

*

dark autumn pond
reflections misquoting
like the rest of us

*

night hires
standing at the door
more reptile jackets

*

shuttered GOLD’s gym
geese preen in the lot
clones stretching

*

summer pond
child asks a small fish:
“which one’s your mother?”

*

beery winds
through dark branches
of downtown trees

*

twenty minnows
swam into me tonight
then a huge moon

*

balcony slouching a woman slouching there on it smoking made of straw

*

desert winds
tree widows their branches
moaning Kama Sutra

*

two story trees
violet membranes
bottled-up in paint

*

abandoned merely
cuz she is a skeleton
poor tree

*

juicy plum
(the joke in stars)
anything waits

*

spring breeze
you suddenly realize
he’s older on top

*

charles schwab
downtown wall fakes
lower case airs

Poetry Forthcoming in Shamrock Haiku Journal

I'm grateful to have had work accepted for an upcoming issue of SHJ, an international journal of haiku, senryu and haibun.

Many thanks to editor Anatoly Kudryavitsky.

I'm a fan of this magazine.

Vacant Lot Haiku

vacant lot
wildflowers
holding someone’s mail



red balloon
in a cemetery
holding your breath


evening
shadows
night picks up


in the woods
a snake passes before me
before I pass myself


snake spotting
deep woods
time sheds its skins



deep woods
your time not mine
holds my hand


everything only
borrowed light
speaking



long after
the reflection
the light


which comes first
the light
or the reflection



Kato Shuson
the wildflowers
your soft grenades


garden we planted
then let go–
strange shapes entwine


raging sea
finds one soft spot
in a boulder



bubbles
in ancient glass
hand-me-down windows


empty coffee cup
one continent
pushes another


morning diner
the first one seated
keeps his coat on



her desk’s peeled orange–
a skyscraper
sways in wind



manhole steam
in the night things not words
gossip


bird’s snow trill
all the wasted flutes
in my bones


night coming
a period
grows a tail


a dragonfly
collects energy
from a hot tombstone


morning diner
the waitress pours coffee
from another lifetime


a Monarch unfurls–
as many ways to be born
as die


mushroom
if you touch her house
ghosts emerge


a country
a rain puddle
collects rain


the waitress’s smile
a pink packet
sugar substitute


morning diner
he tells a teen waitress
why suspenders matter


things are far
from their birth–
a worm in rain



frost window
my reflection
must be away


diner parking lot
sparrows kill time
until McDonald’s opens



his family dead
an old man finds new enemies
at a diner


mark on glass
from a dog’s nose
not sure which side


old men’s diner
all the coats
are too big



night’s stars
tell a story
breathless


morning diner
two octogenarians
plot a new country


the wind–
a child’s
half-finished drawing



winter diner
a waitress forgets
Proust’s name again


small diner
a truck with Trump stickers
takes up two spots



starfish–
a blind hand
shows you its teeth


starfish
all night dream
they are starfish



the morning
pretends to be an image
again again



orphaned train car
spring nestlings
sing of new hair


a stone
its starkness
fuzzy in my mind



one room schoolhouse
there’s a wasp trapped inside
local history


a peach’s fuzz
some are aroused
by armor


listening to trains
from a bathtub you say
you don’t say



winter diner
nobody young here
but the sparrows



trains and bird trills
morning’s metallic
in sound


birds then trains
morning sounds
met with silence



a houseplant grows
largely ignoring
nonessential input


funeral hands
people touching people
as autumn does


empty milk jug
in the fridge
as a memo


airplane overhead
sound waves in my body
want out










 Photo: Artem Saranin

Van Allen Belts-Friendly Haiku

zen retreat
can’t stop not talking
about it

spring day
an app for flying kites
is popular

immigrants trim
wildflowers
floating across a wall

untangling
my dead dad’s fishing line
for no reason

autumn walk–
a ghost app shows
half my neighbors are haunted

cherry blossoms
she deletes Tinder
for several hours

naked
watching sparrows dine
in formal dress

summer evening
we learn the app to fool mosquitoes
is a joke

spring hike
butterflies in my stomach
gender unknown

zen date
we watch stones slim down
in his garden

but do the fish
know they are fish–
we worry

steak plate left out
the cat hums
as she drinks blood

planetarium
a light pointer
touches a nipple

planetarium
kids only interested
in the dark

planetarium
in the darkness a boy
touches Venus

lifting a letter
its sunlight
stays in place

dinner argument
going outside to think
about other planets

book in sun–
light we use to read
part of the words

being young
the maple does it
every year

cat sits
in a rainy window
quietly reading

crow says something
it can’t take
anything back

winter therapy
running the pipes
to avert freezing

snowy night
watching time
it drifts

spring day–
newborn insects
don’t guess they’re orphans

water in my hands–
how old
are you, really?

the mellow cat
given a sibling
becomes Beyonce

sluggish fly
on February’s window–
early or late?

blue rainpot
three goldfish
know your shadow

what’s left
of this life–
a drip in a room

the seconds
listening to an airplane
without me

off-season funhouse
no one makes a face
at distortion

blue paint
chipped off shutters
wood drinks

moonlight–
a lover that won’t
tarnish

finding an old key–
jaywalking
a memory

handing you
a green sprig-top
the carrot below

three-hundred-year-old
floor cradle
diets on dolls

we thought the house ours–
carried out
we see we were its

old house
cracking its knuckles
in our sleep

two girls swimming
in a creek haunt a prison
long years

touching morning
wanting (peonies)
out from under skin

once a ranked diver
he flees to a bathtub–
the lonely mermaid

white noon wall
you know only
my shadow

freezing
on a winter windowsill
Pablo Neruda

summer clouds
the sky’s unreliable
narrators

secret gender
frozen onions
thawing

meteor shower–
cold headlights
on a hitchhiker

weed cutters
in a graveyard
battling presence

death whistles in snow–
groundhog below earth
dreams green things

graveyard wind whistles
a father
calls a child home

rainy day
memory
and its checkpoints

we drive past
blue chicory
I say the same thing

cuckoo nestling
dying amid
strange accents

winter friends–
more birds than people
know my face

spring dreams
a bear knocks the trail’s phone
off the hook again

loving your shawl
frayed edges
of you

winter stew
all we turned down
in a single pot

snow’s brightness
in Shaker windows–
chairs hung on walls

the secrets
cherries sweeten
all winter

on my porch
an iron pot
older than my country

rainy night
your pronunciation
changes

rainy night
dark promises
leak from everything

the railroad tracks
never touch the horizon
mono no aware

forest bathing–
pond bubbles
instead of thoughts

morning’s shells
on sand–
behind on reading

beachcombing,
we find a door from Japan–
where are the sides?

the oldest dad
waves the longest
at the school bus

you crush
a Dixie cup
on a certain word

my needless worry–
black gums
on a black cat

after
a meteor shower
a metaphor shower