The Travelers

Well, due to exam madness the week before last, come Sunday, I only had one or two haiku, which simply weren't worth posting. This week wasn't looking any better until we went on a little trip to the state's capitol. True to form, the creative juices were stimulated, and I now present to you this week's harvest. Enjoy!
..........
summer sunrise
over fields
of dew
..........
when I stand,
the cat
steals my chair
..........
incense drifts
in lazy coils
upwards
.........
tall grass.
abandoned railway
...........
old notebook dying,
I search
for its replacement
..........
waiting...
watching...
the ice-cream melts
.........
a play about the moon.
walking home,
we don't see it
.......

The Travelers

The train leaves the station. Shuddering, it grumbles forward, moving along iron rails. Newspapers flutter in the wind of its passing.

The world passes by the window. Freight cars, left to the ravages of weather and graffiti, slowly rust to nothing. Stations, once brightly painted, are now relics, not even held together by hope.

Hope. This voyage confirms it existed once. Houses, stations, streets. All erected with hope and pride, sometimes only held together by one person's dreams. No longer. Ramshackle houses succumb to rot. Untended windows are only holes ringed with shards of glass. Old paint blisters and boils, exposing poured cement underneath. These dreams, deferred, have withered, and are no more. Not a sudden demise, but a slow one, that leaves you at the other end wondering how things got to be the way they are now.

Death.
slow rain
this city's shroud

There are other tracks. They led somewhere once. No longer. Grass, flowers, and trees grow between their rusted rails, that curve away to an abrupt end. The road once taken, but no more.
All is clockwork. Not smooth, but mechanical. There need be no hope on such a forsaken journey. The trains will move, regardless of despair, so long as there is a driver. People move. Not a hedonistic rush to better things, but the grim motions of inertia, a routine unbreakable, once settled into. No poetic journey of hope, this; rather the grim march of quiet death.

Bonus Post!

It's the Modern Haiku rejection issue! I sent ten of my favorite haiku (which have not appeared in this blog) in to Modern Haiku. Alas! they took none. The bright side is that now I can publish them here. I'm not that distraught. It's as the Go adage says: Lose your first fifty games as quickly as possible.
..........
pinecones
litter the ground
in the summer shade
.........
after summer break,
last year's posters
paper the bulletin boards
..........
idly scratching
the first mosquito bite
of summer
..........
sunrise...
mist
covers the azaleas
..........
this Spring morning,
the whole world's
a picture postcard!
..........
he trips on the door jamb.
the school gets another
coffee stain
..........
growing old,
the tree
splits the sidewalk
..........
cracked paint
on the stop sign
gathers dew
..........
old chopstick...
still the smell
of soy sauce
...........
in profound contemplation,
the cat sits
in the litterbox
...........

The Dying Gasp

The dying gasp of school is upon us! Which means, basically, that every class is reaching fever pitch in preparation for exam week. This in the rather mundane excuse for last week's lack of entry. That's okay, though, because I've been far too busy to write as much poetry as I should like. There's a haibun percolating somewhere out of sight that I'd really like to write out; unfortunately, it refuses to congeal into anything concrete. Ah well. Only four more days.
.........
when it doesn't fly away,
I realize the fly
is an ant
..........
post-its
litter my floor
like fallen leaves
..........
bloated moon,
shrouded in fog,
comes and goes
..........
summer snowstorm:
poplar seeds
engulf the world
..........
during the storm,
I hear the sea....
in Oklahoma
..........
the butterfly tries to land on an oil slick
..........