Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: The Cold Night

Image by aalmeidah from Pixabay

spring snow

purifies earth and heaven

the cold night

spring snow

covering flowers and trees

a threatening frost

covering flowers and trees

a spring freeze will destroy buds

a hard summer comes

the cold night

emerging from the dream world

the people awake

~cie~

notes

We were charged with creating a fusion-ku from the following two Haiku and a Troiku from the fusion-ku.

spring snow

purifies earth and heaven

our enemies perish

© Mizuhara Shûôshi

the cold night

comes out of the stones

all morning

© Jim Kacian

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Renga With: Waiting for the Full Moon

Image by Chikai Du from Pixabay

the autumn wind:

thickets and fields also,

Fuha Barrier

© Basho

I look at the turning leaves

see future snow in the clouds

a dandelion

now and then interrupting

the butterfly's dream

© Chiyo-Ni

when I am a butterfly

will I ever dream of you

the thunderstorm having cleared up

the evening sun shines on a tree

where a cicada is chirping 

© Shiki

is there a cool night ahead

or restless humidity

simply trust:

do not also the petals flutter down,

just like that?

© Issa

I have never been the kind

to simply go with the flow

in nooks and corners

cold remains:

flowers of the plum

© Buson

promise of warmer weather

pleasant till scorching heat comes

ancient warriors ghosts

mists over the foreign highlands -

waiting for the full moon

© Chèvrefeuille

will your troubled soul drift in

for another lifelong fight

~cie~

notes

All the Ageku are belong to me.

Everything else has been credited.

WordPress users, I've been having more trouble than usual commenting on some of your blogs. I won't go into all the reasons why cie hates WordPress here, but they are many.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Heart of Stone

Image by Frank Winkler from Pixabay

a stone for a pillow

me, just another cicada ...

so shrill, like crying

how this fits my current mood

sitting broken in the dark

~Bosha & cie~

notes

The Hokku was created by Kawabata Bosha (1897-1941). I am responsible for the Ageku.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Renga with Friends

I

beach diamonds

a new day crystallized

in sunny surf foam

the taste of salt in the breeze

the smell of salt in the air

~Jane & cie~

II

cold spring breeze

makes the cherry blossom shiver

one heartbeat long

I am thinking of spring rain

the sky opening above

~Chèvrefeuille & cie~

III

The wind from Mt. Fuji

I put it on the fan.

Here, a souvenir from Edo

remembering my childhood

when I learned of Japan

~Basho & cie~

IV

watch birth and death:

the lotus has already

opened its flower.

it waits for me to come home

back to a place without time

~Soseki Natsume & cie~

V

dervishes whirling

- seeking a higher consciousness

third eye opens

I am unsure if I want

to know the enlightenment

~Chèvrefeuille & cie~

VI

flute melodies

across green ocean waves

spring meadows

do you remember our dream

floating away on spring breeze

~Jane & cie~

notes

All of the Hokku were written by the authors indicated.

All of the Ageku were written by me.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Troiku Hineri: At Dawn

Image by Johannes Plenio from Pixabay

These round hay bales are a common sight where I live

I

at dawn

I wash my feet with dew

the longest day

at dawn

the sun comes through the window

too bright to look at

I wash my feet with dew

perhaps I am still dreaming

I walk to the yard

the longest day

the too-warm sun of summer

I retreat indoors

II
at dawn
the sun comes through the window
too bright to look at

at dawn
much of the world awakens
though some hide away

the sun comes through the window
too bright to remain asleep
burning fiery orb

too bright to look at
I attempt to ignore it
I begin my day

III
I wash my feet with dew
perhaps I am still dreaming
I walk to the yard

I wash my feet with dew
before the sun burns it off
on grass blades still damp

perhaps I am still dreaming
I would be afraid to walk
unshod on this ground

I walk to the yard
trying to plan the future
what will I grow here?

IV
the longest day
the too-warm sun of summer
I retreat indoors

the longest day
I have many things to do
always stay busy

the too-warm sun of summer
makes me hide inside the house
sun scorching the earth

I retreat indoors
maybe when the evening falls
venture out again

~cie~

Visit the Artist

Visit the Artist

Ghost town Grover and Cactus Clem have a poem they want to share too.

A cactus man like Cactus Clem

Thinks the heat just can't be beat

He don't mind when it gets toasty

He even walks around in bare feet

A ghost like Ghost Town Grover

Tends to prefer the shade

He likes to sit underneath the old tree

Just sippin' lemonade

Visit Good Stuff from Grover for more from Grover, Cactus Clem, and the Ornery Old Lady

Visit the Ornery Poetry Blog

notes

The original Haiku for the Troiku Army was written by © Yozakura (1640-1716).

at dawn

I wash my feet with dew

the longest day

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation: Contentious Eggplant

Image Source

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 Weekend Meditation #111 Troiku ... New Beginnings ... Lotus starts to bloom

image source

in deep prayer

eyes closed in devotion -

Lotus starts to bloom

in deep prayer

I can't trust what my mind says

it plays tricks on me

eyes closed in devotion -

trying to change my focus

away from my pain

lotus starts to bloom

is the lotus in my mind

real or illusion?

~truth seeker~

notes

The sleigh of the Troiku was created By Chèvrefeuille. The horses were gingerly handled by someone.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #110: Bush Warbler

Bush Warbler

A spring warbler casts

A dropping on the rice cakes —

The veranda edge.

I feed rice cakes to the birds

The earth drinking up my tea.

~Cie~

Visit the Artist

Ghost Town Grover Sez:

"I shore don't blame you, Ornery. I wouldn't wanna drink no tea that a bird pooped in neither."

Visit the Artist

Cactus Clem sez:

"Say, Ornery, you know that sun tea you was brewin' on the front porch? Well, I was kinda thirsty after my stroll on the Lone Prairie, and I done drank it all down. I don't think it had no bird poop in it, though, 'cause it had a cover on it and everything.

Visit Ghost Town Grover, Cactus Clem, and the Ornery Old Lady at the Grover Hotel

Read more Ornery Poetry

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #109 Renga with Basho ... life's journey

Mount Fuji

spring rain

trickling into the wasp's nest

a leaky roof

the roof has been repaired

the wasps eradicated

blooming wildly

among the peach trees

first cherry blossoms

it is my dream to one day

have a few fruit trees growing

butterflies and birds

restlessly they rise up

a cloud of flowers

these are the best things in spring

not so a mind painted black

coming to the eye

especially at this time

May's Mount Fuji

I hoped to visit sometime

must be content with pictures

life's journey

plowing the patch of rice field

back and forth

sometimes best to look forward

to simple things in our lives

the lettuce

leaves are just as green

eggplant soup

I must remember to try

vegetables for cooking

~Basho & Cie~

Notes:

The Hokku stanzas of these Renga were written by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). The Ageku stanzas were whipped up by me.

The Ageku of the third verse references the fact that I experience my worst depressive states in the spring. When the hearts of normal people turn to lurrrrve and all that happy crappy, my psyche turns to a dark tomb while the flowers bloom and the birds sing and I just want to sleep forever but usually don't sleep very well. I tend to get the side-eye from people when I try to talk about spring depression. "What do you mean you get depressed in the spring? Springtime is happy time! Normal depressed people get depressed in the WINTER!"

You see, I don't even know how to do depression right, even though I've been doing it my entire life!

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #108 + OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 26: What Is Unspoken (Choka)

Image Source

what is unspoken

in the silence of autumn

is what I'm feeling

"speak your truth," the leaves whisper

but what can I say?

I'm biting my tongue

because what I want to say

is I still love you

wish you hadn't gone away

please come back to me

walk alongside me again

the crunching of leaves

sweeter walking together

For Team Netherworld's sadly ignored WIP, Fetch

From Pepper to Gerry

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #107: Soliloquy No Renga: One Starry Night

Starry Night by Alex Ruiz

one starry night

to make that one painting -

the rustling leaves

as summer draws to a close

and the green leaves turn to gold

on one starry night
so many years in the past
years rushed by so fast
a foolish girl made a wish
that could never come to pass

she would never be
Venus Anadyomene
more Pickman's model
never seen through eyes of love
always used and tossed aside

the rustling of leaves
as they crunch beneath the shoes
of a broken crone
step hobbled and hair of gray
dead dreams lie within her heart

summer draws to close
life's flame is growing dimmer
she hides in the dark
tortured by the memory
of a girl who wanted more

green leaves turn to gold
golden strands of hair to gray
no matter the shade
she was never beautiful
her heart is cold as winter

~Chèvrefeuille & Cie~

Notes:

The first Hokku was created by Chèvrefeuille. The rest of this mess you can blame on me.

Shout-outs to Sandro Botticelli and H.P. Lovecraft. Can you spot their influence?

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

Image Source

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."

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #105 + Haiku My Heart: Lost In Time: A Senryu

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay

when my time has come

will my words be remembered

or fade as i do

~cie~

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #104: Photoshopping Haiku + Haiku My Heart: Camellia

Image by Beverly Buckley from Pixabay

Unfolding before

the eyes of a little bird

a bright camellia

~Cie~

Here is the original Haiku by Yosa Buson (1716 - 1784)

Unfolding at the

hand of the glass polisher:

a camellia!

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #103: Start of Autumn

Image Source

in autumn I find

a friend who brings new stories

as leaves change and fall

~Cie~

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #102 Renga With Basho ... ancient times

Japanese morning glory

flood waters

stars too will go to sleep

on top of a rock

the flood which came in that year

followed by a falling star

still summer

the harvest moon too hot

to enjoy the coolness

we never minded so much

when the moon looked upon us

morning glories

in the daytime a lock lowered

on the gate

if a flower could escape

where do you think it would go?

chrysanthemum flowers

bloom at the stonemason's

between stones

flowers are adaptable

I wish it was my nature

warriors

the bitterness of pickles

in the talk

warmongers talk a good game

when far from the battlefield

plum blossom scent

since ancient times the word

has been sorrowful

yet every day people say

cheer up, everything is good

~Basho & Cie~

Notes:

The Hokku (three-line) stanzas of these poems were written by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). The Akegu (two-line) stanzas were created by me.

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #101: Photoshopping Haiku: Cricket Silence and Thunder Strikes

Image copyright Geralt

cricket silence

between scraping sounds

autumn begins

my son says prairie thunder

sounds like the sky coming down

~Jane & Cie~

Notes:

Want to just read the poem?

Then hop off the bus, Gus.

Because now I'm gonna discuss much!

First, I went with a Tan Renga for this one. The Haiku stanza was written by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) and the Ageku stanza was created by me. I liked the contrast between the quiet of the chirping crickets and the powerful sound of prairie thunder.

I have not heard the sound of prairie thunder yet. My son told me that it sounds like the sky is coming down.

This is my son. This picture was taken around his 28th birthday at the Denver Botanic Garden. 

He is the reason we are moving to the Grover Hotel, although, in fairness, I'm the one who found the listing.

And now for our moving horror story. There will be more bitching to come.

My son had the idea that we should move him and the cats to the new place a day before the scheduled move. That way I could be in the townhome to direct the movers and he would be at the new place when they arrived.

Good plan, except these clowns slagged us off.

I suppose I ought to tell the sorry tale from the start.

I filled out a form on one of those "find a contractor" sites describing the work we needed done and was contacted by All My Sons moving company. I'd seen their trucks around. I think they are only in the U.S. but they might be in Canada too. So people in North America, I warn you, do not arrange to have All My Sons do your move. It is one fiasco after another, and if I had only looked on Yelp beforehand, I would have kept looking. Most of their reviews are one star.

First, they arranged for an evaluator to meet with us. I even confirmed the appointment with her. 

She never showed up. I called the office. They apologized and said somehow I had been removed from her schedule. Okay, shit happens, it seemed minor, and she did show up to the rearranged appointment and was pleasant enough. 

I called the office to arrange a date. I was told we were on for the sixth.

My son remembered the evaluator had mentioned a deposit. I called to ask about the deposit and was told we didn't have a date down. 

I said "WHAT???"

The man apologized profusely, put us back down for the sixth, took my deposit via debit card.

I should have known to call these clowns BEFORE we had driven for three hours with meowing cats.

I called when we got to the place and was told that the "BIG BOSS" had taken us off the schedule and had tried to call me several times about this.

I received no calls or voice mails from anyone. I was livid.

My son said that he thought it would be fine to stay there and get the cats settled in. But just a sleeping bag turned out to be too little padding. Fortunately, he found some comforters in one of the storage cases. 

When I got back to Grover in the morning I saw that some of the fields had become temporary lakes. Colorado has notoriously bad soil (bentonite.) The water doesn't absorb well, it just sits on the top.

My son described the thunderstorm. He said he'd never experienced anything like it. He described it as sounding like the sky was coming down on top of the house. He said that normally he would have loved it, but trying to sleep on that floor left him in such pain that he actually felt nauseous.

This room is on the second floor of the building. It will be really grand one day. For the moment, it looks like this. The floor is patently awful to sleep on. My son used to go camping when he was in Boy Scouts. He says that he imagines the only place he will ever camp in the future is in a cabin with a bed and running water, which happens to be my kind of camping.

The cats were very unhappy too. We ended up bringing them back to the townhouse. One of them is asleep in his carrier right now. He loves the carrier as a cat bed, not so much as a carrier.

This is Bart. This photo does not show his giant feet.

The move is rescheduled for this coming Thursday with a different company, who have already provided an email confirmation and will confirm again 48 hours and 24 hours before the move. They are called Homegrown Moving and are only in Colorado. So far, so good.

I really don't feel all that great at the moment. Stress--it's a killer!

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #100: Indian Summer

I

after a warm day

a thin layer of fresh fallen snow

covers the garden

after a warm day

sweat slick on the back of neck

I dream of autumn

a thin layer of fresh fallen snow

on some faraway mountains

elsewhere but not here

covers the garden

there are not that many trees

a few fallen leaves

II

Indian Summer

inbetween seasons

roses bloom again

Indian summer

this was never his color

he was always pale

inbetween seasons

he exists between the worlds

observing sorrow

roses bloom again

another life lies ahead

the thought is tiresome

For Gem from Cie 

and 

Gerry from Pepper

Notes:

The "sleighs" of these Troiku were created by Chèvrefeuille. The horses of the apocalypse were wrangled into a story poem or collective of disjointed and depressive thoughts by me. Happy Pumpkin Spice Senryu to you.