Haiku on Saturday #19

Shadow’s passage past
the window, marks the footsteps
of another day.

Haiku on Saturday #18

History brushes
Past them, while they are busy
Shopping, minds shut tight.

Haiku on Saturday #17

Blinded houses, with
Their broken panes, the sad waste
In their brick faces.

Haiku on Saturday #16

A silence, sucked dry
Of living sounds, dust-quiet,
the empty old house.

Haiku on Saturday #15

Children’s dangling lives,
like charms on boredom’s wrist, dance
all holiday long.

Haiku on Saturday #14

Three-legged dog runs,
lollops its way home, as if 
Defying its loss.

Haiku on Saturday #13

Pulverised fragments
Of a car window, where peace
Of mind was stolen.

Haiku on Saturday #12

Drowned trolley, beck-mired,
A few yards from its fellows,
Suburban shipwreck.

Haiku on Saturday #11

Graffiti-clad fence,
Notepaper for today’s youth,
Seems tired of the words.

Haiku on Saturday #10

The past few haikus have tried to observe one of the rules of the form, namely that they should deal with some aspect of nature. However, the urban environment, with its man-made parameters, is a fruitful source of short images which, like snapshots, freeze the experience into seventeen syllables.


Worn, broken tarmac.
As nature fights back, it slips
off hard, cruel shackles.

Haiku on Saturday #9

It’s a comforting,
damp, living kind of silence
deep amidst the trees.

Haiku on Saturday #8

Tricksy season, spring
With its rainy moods and sun
Equally spread out.

Haiku on Saturday #7

Wind toys with branches.
Shrubs dance to a silent tune.
Wild spring stays awhile.

Haiku on Saturday #6

Autumn geese in grey
skies, the summer flees southward
as the days shrivel.

Haiku on Saturday #5

Black cat unfolds and
becomes a sinuous shape,
a sketch of languor

Haiku on Saturday #4

Snowflakes on the wind.
The lake is slowly freezing.
Windows mist at dusk.

Haiku on Saturday #3

Crow follows the plough.
Hungry crow, wolf of the fields;
Torn scrap of blackness.

Haiku on Saturday #2

What is left of a
lifetime’s dreams? All that remains
is seen in his face.

Haiku on Saturday #1

Frost on the fields makes
an old man of the landscape.
The year is ancient.

Haikus are great; little bite-sized nuggets of poetry, tightly packed and quick to read. I've got quite a few tucked away and I'll be posting one every Saturday.

Too much coffee and not enough sleep #2

Another poem that arrived in my head following a caffeine and insomnia party. I've given up caffeine now. I wonder if I'll still write weird stuff like this.


SMOKE DOLLY

On that page, I saw her standing, a piece of shadow
shaped like her,

                        as if the daylight were afraid of her
                        and shied away;

and as she turned, I closed the book again.

I did not wish to hear that story. No-one ever knew
that I had been there.

I felt warmed by the smile she gave as the smoke
wrapped itself around her like a bridal veil.
She held out her hands and the book fell open
again, a different page of our history.

                                                       Crows laughed,
as if they were privy to our elaborate joke.
But each time we tried to touch, there was something
in the way. I pushed but it was too thick; it felt like
clotted dreams.

                       How many had I pulled from
her head before her soul was empty?

My coat is heavy on my shoulders and feels like
the skin of an old man, worn out and threadbare.
I pinch myself to stop from dreaming

                                                         and the
glass of every window shattered. Black smoke
poured out. The fireman shook me hard to wake
me from drowning in my screams;
                                                   something else was there
too, mummified grief and a tree bereft of leaves.
I choked on the size of my defiance and ran.