Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Contentious Eggplant

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troublesome eggplant

hard to sketch and hard to grow

pumpkins are not so

~cie~

notes

So, the challenge was to rewrite a Haiku by Shiki using the Shasei style and then turn it into a Tanka. Please click the banner to learn more. If I try to explain, it will only end up becoming convoluted.

I am not sure I succeeded at Shasaei-ing, but I did learn that Shiki was a rebel, and this I succeed at. After re-imagining his Haiku about eggplant and pumpkins, I thought that adding the Ageku stanza would overshadow the perfect brevity (and sharp snarkitude) of the resulting Senryu, so I am leaving it Ageku-less.

Here is the Eggplant Haiku by Shiki.

Sketching from life —

eggplants are harder to do

than pumpkins

© Masaoka Shiki (Tr. Burton Watson)

Carpe Diem #1790: Sunset Flowers

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seen for a moment

in the last of the sunlight

sparkling wet flowers

~Cie~

Notes:

Here is the poem by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694) provided for inspiration.

in the twilight rain

these brilliant-hued hibiscus -

a lovely sunset.

Carpe Diem #1782: Devouring Haiku

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(spring)

light carried 

apple blossoms 

in my dreams

(summer)

apricots

fine nectar

fit for angels

(autumn)

broken 

the asters' fragrance rises

beauty in destruction

(winter)

colorless 

the cold

stills life

~Jane & Cie~

Notes:

The instructions were to take the four Haiku written by the late Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) and simplify them as much as possible. I kind of like the results.

Heeding Haiku With Carpe Diem: Senryu: Crystal Pond

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death falls to darkness

or does the soul perhaps leap

to a crystal pond

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's Carpe Diem prompt involved revising this well-known Haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694).

old pond

a frog jumps into

the sound of water

Today's Mindlovemisery's Menagerie prompt was crystals. We were asked to follow traditional Haiku rules, but, sorry, no can do when such a stellar Senryu using both prompts has hijacked my synapses!

I dreamed that my wonderful cat Trinity, whom I had to have put to sleep three years ago on November 9 due to brain and lung cancer, was here with me. November 9, 2016, was a garbage day in history. I lost my great friend on that day, and Lord Dampnut was elected "president." It was a terrible time to be alive.

She was such a special cat. I miss her big, chonky body, her big, chonky personality, and her big, loud purr.

Carpe Diem #1776: Arranging the Plum Flowers

Plum Blossoms: Chinese Painting

on a moonless night

I light the lamp in my dreams

among plum flowers

~Cie~

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #106: Turn Back Time: Flourishing Plum Blossoms in the Moonlight

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Here is the original poem for today's revision exercise.

arranging the plum-flowers,
I would enjoy them in the light of the lamp,
as if in the moonlight

© Taigi (1709-1771)

Here is my follow-up:

muse's promise leads to
lonely life of poverty
and head full of dreams

~Cie~

Notes:

I'm invoking the right to poetic expression here. My verse was inspired by this paragraph rather than directly by the featured poem.

"The original of the above haiku is even more difficult, literally: "arranging the plum, as if the moon, I would savour, lamp-light" (Wabiru translated 'enjoy', 'means' to live a life of poetry in poverty). The poet has arranged the flowers in a vase, and wishes to see them in the light of the moon, but there being no moon, he lights the lamp instead, and adds its light to the poetry and the beauty of the flowers."

I am sitting in a room which looks like a construction zone in a cold house with no working furnace, an old comforter wrapped around my legs and feet. I am wearing two pairs of socks. My hands are chafed and red from the cold. I have a space heater, which is cranked up to 90, but the little area I'm sitting in won't warm past 55, and it feels colder than that.

You know those damn Hallmark channel type movies about the romance writer living in genteel poverty, chipping devotedly away at her novel until G.Q. Cover Model Guy sweeps her away into a life of luxury and she becomes a best-selling author?

I have some bad news for you, Sunshine.

Those movies are bullshit.

Committed writers are more likely to be like me and my literary heroes H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.

We're committed to writing because otherwise, we'd be committed to the mental hospital, and ain't nobody wants to go there.

We're introverted, socially maladjusted, depressive, and will likely die in poverty, perhaps achieving posthumous fame at a later date.

The reality for our sort is much more likely to end like a Lovecraft or Poe story than a Hallmark Channel romance: poverty, death, and possibly delirium at the end of it all.

This has been your Spot of Cheer for this episode of "Cie is a Fucking Depressive Hag, Never Have Tea With the Gloomy Bitch."