articulation

a few haiku...

2009-07-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

click here to see some
recent haiku by me and
some Japanese greats

Two by my children...

2009-04-30T12:20:00.002-05:00

Today is National Poem-in-your-Pocket Day so I had my kids write a poem to share with the world. Here they are:

The Owl's Mouth
by Ben - age 7

The owl's mouth is an ugly sight,
it really is a scary fright,
because I am a mouse myself.

Words
by Chris - age 9

Words can be nice, words can be mean
words can be tiny or elephantine.

The Eternal Now

2009-03-23T21:25:00.001-05:00

The tide of breath:
Inhale—exhale—
A gravitational rhythm…

Suspicion

2009-01-29T07:01:00.001-06:00

Still—
The sequoia stand as silent soldiers
Sentries of history
As if waiting for a foretold arrival
Of a dignitary

It would seem Someone is coming—
Or maybe they are simply trees?

2009-01-24T22:08:00.001-06:00

It starts as a gas
Next forms into a liquid
Then solid haiku

A Wonder

2008-12-14T19:38:00.001-06:00

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwell in a land of deep sorrow,
on them has light shined.

Light—
proceeding as the dawn:
mourning burns away
to the fullness of day,
darkness done,
everlasting noon—
God with us, come,
has come…

The Fog

2008-11-12T21:56:00.001-06:00

The fog, as depression, has settled in the night—
Like the veil of a bride, obscuring beauty, it will be lifted.

Biker Man

2008-10-31T13:37:00.001-05:00

He wears his handlebar mustache like a Harley Davidson
He’s fired up—
Rolls down the street easy striding yet with thunder in his approach
His hair braided like the leather tassels of his vest
Painted with tattoos of apocalypse
The wheels of his mind spinning…
The headlights of his eyes penetrate through the crowd before him
Owning the pavement and all the on-looking stares

Fall Flight

2008-10-10T08:03:00.000-05:00

The birds on the trees
have scattered as leaves
on the wind they wind through the sky.

Yet not to descend
as an autumnal blend
but will rise to dazzle the eye.

Hard Pressed

2008-09-17T22:05:00.000-05:00

A stone sits on my desk
like an expectation—
well-rounded yet dense.

I pick it up—
weight,

wait.

A Haiku

2008-09-10T21:58:00.000-05:00

The moon. A friendly
visitor on the doorstep.
How they wax and wane.

The Well of Stories

2008-08-29T06:26:00.000-05:00

Come to the well of stories
Let your bucket down
Drawing up and out its weight
Refreshment will be found
Thirst is quenched
Drink is shared
The weary begin to flower
For in the garden where toil is known
There comes the harvest hour

Delay

2008-08-22T06:05:00.000-05:00

Is the landscape of a marsh—
Life collected in a seemingly stagnate pool
A slow purification of the run-off of time
Bogged down by the moss of life
A floating reality, quite uprooted

Suitcases

2008-08-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Each contain a folded story
Carried on the back
Or as a wheeled dolly
Loaded with the routine
Baggage of life in an attempt
To make it lighter—
Latched or zipped or buckled
Contents hidden from site

At The Airport

2008-08-08T06:52:00.000-05:00

People gather—
A flock of geese
Settled down
Into a lake of waiting
Then all together
They become airborne
Riding the instinct
Of migration

Memory

2008-08-01T07:06:00.002-05:00

Pinning the butterfly down
Means the butterfly will never fly
What I need is a net

Diagnosis

2008-07-25T07:03:00.002-05:00

Sickness is a larva that burrows into the soil of the body
Emerges seventeen years later as a creaking cicada
Burdening the mind with its annoyance

Sickness is a leech stuck to the skin like cancer
A slug loaded and aimed to kill

Sickness is the silverfish
Elusive and hidden in dark corners

Sickness is the fire ant and a bite that stings
Resulting in the heat of worry

Sickness is a spider softening the drum of the ear
Builds her web of confusion back and forth within the mind,
Hanging her thread on the worn down rafters of nerves

Sickness is the mosquito that hovers out of arms reach
As you lay in sleepless heat, itching

Sickness is the boll weevil that gets into the cereal of your life
And causes you to lose your appetite

Sickness is the cockroach,
An armored scuttle of fear

Sickness is the invasive species of a parasite
Who settles into the lake of the heart
And contaminates all its tributaries

Sickness is the walking stick that is right before your eyes
Yet unseen

Sickness is the tick that hooks on
and will not let go

Sickness is the caterpillar’s cocoon
And the long waiting of something unknown

The Redwoods

2008-07-18T07:02:00.000-05:00

“Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

Grandfather Time himself stood before me
Bearded evergreen and welcoming
The priest in this cathedral of history
The canopy a choir loft
The members of this congregation
A fraternal order of longevity
These sentinels of ancient creeds
Generals against gravity

To The Races

2008-07-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

Today I will harness distraction
Tame her with sugar cubes and apples
She will carry this tired body
She will rest at night in the stable
And she will be named Present Tense

The American Dream

2008-07-04T05:44:00.000-05:00

is a postcard—
a false, glossy reality;
our location airbrushed across the sky,
pressed from a woody pulp,
we convince ourselves of the memory
held fast to a thin card-stock existence.

O The Wonder Of A Bicycle

2008-07-01T07:31:00.000-05:00

O the wonder of a bicycle—
the closest thing a child has to becoming a robin.
Taken off perch with a spring in the step,
how the perspective changes,
in the zigzag of peddling freedom,
as the neighbor boy sees him whisk by
and whispers in a covetous tone—
“Man, he was flying!”

Trash Day

2008-06-28T08:04:00.000-05:00

The garbage can sits like an old man
at the psychologist’s office,
filled till brimming,
and that old trash collector of a doctor
lifts that man off his curb
with a question as defined
as Mr. Universe’s forearm;
shakes him up a bit
and leaves him lying listless—
a hollowed and humbled receptacle.

In The DuPage Medical Group Lobby

2008-06-23T23:21:00.000-05:00

she sits in a narrow pew,
a lady in waiting,
with questions plowed
into a furrowed brow,
wondering if this sanctuary
of sterility will supply a safe haven
or the long ordeal of faith.
She is ushered into discovery,
attendants at her side,
the weight of years before her
as she stands in the balance,
dressed in an open-backed gown
and veiled with possibility
of being wed to pain—
when at the alter, with hand extended,
she takes the vow of drawn blood
and commits to knowing.

Dad

2008-06-15T14:01:00.002-05:00

for Manfred Walter Kürt Haase

You wear loyalty like the lines you draw—
faithful to their intent,
long and linear through the years,
perspective always in place.

Set out on the drafting table of life,
one begins to see the blueprint of fatherhood:

A structure designed to handle the stress
of youthful winds and pressures,
rooms drawn for safety and provision,
the square footage marked for open dwelling
whose ceiling of paternal love is set high,
whose foundation is the indelible mark
of a graphite line becoming a chalk line
becoming the brick and mortar of a family line—

Lines carried from your brow to your hands
face me in the mirror as I shave
and in the topography of my children…

Economics

2008-04-22T06:49:00.001-05:00

Two boys come to the pond’s bank
ready to make a withdraw,
as the currency of childhood is spent quickly
and the interest of curiosity never matches
the value of water up to the knees —
the vault of a turtle between palms.