Sunday, July 20, 2008


seconds, minutes
hours, days
years
a lifetime

voluntary confinement

i chose this?

to what end?

---

Tsuyuu ake ni,
Hanakin no yoru to,
Atono matsuri

Ending of the rainy season.
Friday nighttime,
after the partying

---

This one drank too much
That one did not bathe today
I forgot my book!

---

Sardines in a can
Trapped without an opener
Longing to be free

---

Peer through the window.
Throw a kiss for you to catch.
Hold tight till next time.

---

combine your chemistry
merge your cells
oil and water
perpetual duality
in the heart grid

17 comments:

kikz said...

seconds, minutes
hours, days
years
a lifetime

voluntary confinement

i chose this?

to what end?

nobody said...

Our minds crushed, turn in
to ponder the world we've made.
Steel, glass and concrete

Our minds free, go out
to a place without straight lines.
Earth and sea and sky

kikz said...

beautiful noby :)

Unknown said...

This one drank too much
That one did not bathe today
I forgot my book!

Unknown said...

Natsuko sends this one...

Tsuyuu ake ni,
Hanakin no yoru to,
Atono matsuri

Ending of the rainy season.
Friday nighttime,
after the partying

Ending of the rainy season symbolizes the hot steamy summer season in Tokyo, and of course DFriday night is when we all go out to party, and then there is the last train!

nobody said...

Oh, that last train...

Hi Na! Thanks for popping in. It would have been pretty if you'd written it in Japanese. Can you do that?  だけどう やっぱり ロマジ まだ いりますね Look at me aren't I clever! Bloody showoff. Actually no one should be impressed. What I just wrote is primary school stuff.

And thanks kikz, and sorry folks if it seems like old home week. It is, ha ha!

---

Otherwise this is instructive. You can see how the Japanese syllable count differs from the English. English is much more flexible on what is and isn't a syllable. Take 'every' for instance. It can be two or three syllables depending on how it's pronounced. In haiku Japanese doesn't work that way.

Also in translation, certain things get lost. 'Matsuri' also means 'festival' as well as a time of year and it's fraught with delicious meaning. God, I miss matsuri! And 'tsuyuu' is similar now that I think about it. Believe it or not I miss that too. Mind you, memories of being stuck with no umbrella come flooding back...

---

Hey Na, come back again, write more haiku! たのしいよ!

Magdelena said...

Sardines in a can
Trapped without an opener
Longing to be free

:)

Buffy (NC - shortened for brevity)

Oh, and Nobody it was Nazi F'n C*** that the lovely MASH called me - and I didn't even say anything about you know who!

But I'll keep the NC - for posterity! ;)

Penny said...

I am the passenger
And I ride and I ride
I ride through the citys backside
I see the stars come out of the sky
Yeah, they're bright in a hollow sky
You know it looks so good tonight
I am the passenger
I stay under glass
I look through my window so bright
I see the stars come out tonight
I see the bright and hollow sky
Over the citys a rip in the sky
And everything looks good tonight
Singin la la la la la-la-la la
La la la la la-la-la la
La la la la la-la-la la la-la


sorry nobody, but, as soon as I saw this picture Iggy, just popped in my head.
It's such a great song!
I think I am going to go listen to it now.

anyway, I'll be back with a haiku.
forgive this discretion :(

Unknown said...

Side issue about Haiku!

So you know I am an old jazz freak and spend a lot of time learning old jazz songs.
THe other day I was playing "Moonlight in Vermont" a true classic. And not easy to play at all!
THe vocalist was singing it and suddenly it hit me. The whole song is haiku!
To wit:

Pennies in a stream
Falling leaves a sycamore
Moonlight in vermont

Gentle finger waves
Ski trails down a mountain side
Snowlight in vermont

And absolutely perfect haiku at taht! Alluding to but not mentioning the seasons, absolute pefect syllabic count, good imagery and a subtext that include romance.

Evening summer breeze
warblings of the meadowlark
Moonlight in vermont

kikz said...

waving to schutter:)
love most jazz too :)

noby, glad yer homies could come to visit :)

geez penn, whatta fanclub! i mozey'd by.. but had to guess at the hurled shite as you'd already hozed the place out :)

i hava fanclub too, apparently on maynard's rag..
some ditz recently toss'd frm les site.. 'the last braincell left' and 'it' who rumblez around a cave there, mumbling to itself gollumesque and shall not be named, just cuz it pissez 'it' off. >:)

nobody said...

Yay. To be honest, this is my favourite 'blog'.

As for the dreaded aforementioned (from over on the church blog) isn't it funny how a 'voldemort, he who must not be named', vibe is the rule. Him and the pretend Muslims over at Penny's are all of a piece. Which is to say hateful.

Otherwise Pen, The Passenger might just be my favourite song of all time, ha ha. I think it just pips 'Hey' from the Pixies Dolittle. And yep, I'm off to have a listen to it too.

And Moonlight in Vermont eh? Cool. Can you send it to me? To flesh things out, schutter is a dyed-in-the-wool muso. He does all manner of Jazz from the 20's and 30's with lots of Django Reinhardt thrown in. And plays a mean mandolin, amongst other things. His gigs invariably leave the audience delirious, sweaty and exhausted.

And, nice one Buffy. I toyed with something like that for a bit and couldn't pull it off.

Now all we need is the mysterious Lua.

Penny said...

hey kikz & nobody: I cleaned up as best I could, but they are still lurking, turning up on the hit counter, even today!
no comments, but then I am moderating and I would just delete them.
I knew they were watching because, sometimes within 5 minutes of a post, or even less, they were responding.

I'll keep watching the hit counter.

Magdelena said...

Thanks nobody!!

It's all I could think of - sardines! LOL My sis visited Hong Kong years ago and told me of the people pushers - folks who kinda push others so they fit into the subways... yikes!

Penny said...

Weird how haikus sort of morph, into something other then what you had started out with.


Peer through the window.
Throw a kiss for you to catch.
Hold tight till next time.

nobody said...

Most excellent. That everyone here has had a different take on this is precisely what I had in mind. Wonderful.

Unknown said...

combine your chemistry
merge your cells
oil and water
perpetual duality
in the heart grid

nobody said...

Hey folks,

If anyone has been over at smokingmirrors you might have noticed some worthy contributions by Nina. I checked out her blog and definitely grooved on it. And I grooved on her art which features heavily there.

I asked if I might use one of her pix and she popped in here and got bounced out when she tried to post it. But never mind, she went back to her blog and wrote some interesting things about haiku and the nature of rules and restrictions. You might want to check it out. Oh, and she wrote some nice haiku too.

http://artlifewest.blogspot.com/