Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
The latest videohaiku combines footage shot this morning through a half-open upstairs window with an observation made yesterday through the downstairs window. I was kind of pleased with the way the footage looks like a mash-up of Impressionism and Cubism.
I've heard that some people leave
the porch light on for three days
after someone has died, so the soul
might not feel the shock of having
to be pushed out of the human nest
too soon or forever. Or maybe
it's so the dead might feel they're
still connected to their former lives.
After we returned home from burying
my grandmother, an aunt stood
at the door, waiting to collect
the candles we'd brought back
from the service. She broke each
in half before we entered
so the dead, newly bereaved of us,
might not come looking for
a companion. Afterwards we ate
a special sweet made with black
rice and coconut milk, still warm
and sticky on a banana leaf
wrapper. It's been a while since I
did what we also did that day:
put a little food on a plate,
tell the dead beloved they may eat
along with us. Is it any wonder
some souls get lost in passage.
Up, and to the office all the morning. At noon Sir W. Batten told me Sir Richard Ford would accept of one-third of my profit of our private man-of-war, and bear one-third of the charge, and be bound in the Admiralty, so I shall be excused being bound, which I like mightily of, and did draw up a writing, as well as I could, to that purpose and signed and sealed it, and so he and Sir R. Ford are to go to enter into bond this afternoon.
Home to dinner, and after dinner, it being late, I down by water to Shadwell, to see Betty Michell, the first time I was ever at their new dwelling since the fire, and there find her in the house all alone. I find her mighty modest. But had her lips as much as I would, and indeed she is mighty pretty, that I love her exceedingly. I paid her 10l. 1s. that I received upon a ticket for her husband, which is a great kindness I have done them, and having kissed her as much as I would, I away, poor wretch, and down to Deptford to see Sir J. Minnes ordering of the pay of some ships there, which he do most miserably, and so home. Bagwell’s wife, seeing me come the fields way, did get over her pales to come after and talk with me, which she did for a good way, and so parted, and I home, and to the office, very busy, and so to supper and to bed.
our private war
like dwelling in fire
lips that I have kissed
as much as some ales
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 23 October 1666.
A videohaiku shot yesterday on Hampstead Heath, where various autumn mushrooms are appearing in the leaf duff and meadows. I’ll admit, though, I had eyes mainly for the trees, as usual, and came home empty-handed except for some pretty images.
The vignetting effect is beginning to feel a bit cheesy to me, but I used it without hesitation here, perhaps because the subject of the second half of the video is the essence of cheesiness. The same thinking guided my choice of font. But it’s fine, because as I’ve said before, haiku are supposed to be somewhat light-hearted.
of a certain age raise
eyebrows when she says things
like That's dope, or This carousel
of life would be so much more fun
to ride if they gave you the dark-
maned stallion and not the sparkly
little pony. I mean I have nothing
against sparkly. But aren't you too
just a little bit tired of how every
store that hasn't renewed its lease
at the mall has been turned into
a selfie wall? Giant wings, a painted
swing under a fake bower, rainbow
umbrellas with glow-in-the-dark
raindrops. My hero is Yayoi
Kusama, who has always been
a woman of a certain age
even from the time she was ten,
when she obliterated the image
of her mother in a kimono
with her signature army of
hallucinatory dots. Or
the Bakunawa, typically
misunderstood in all the tales
that describe how it swallowed
the seven moons and would not
give them back. So much
brilliance, one for every
day of the week— who
wouldn't be enamored?
How is anyone to endure
eternity without a store
of heat and light, a steed
with muscled flanks?
A seam down the middle
of each season, an outline
around every gesture
in the now. And there are
no mountains here, only
the silhouettes of boats
docked at the harbor; this
blue-gold shift searing
everything at the margins
before it disappears.
I own just one brass hawk
bell now. When it dangles
from a chain at my hip,
its toothed voice rises:
winged animal familiar
to any field. But I,
I am the one still laboring
to separate stone from seed.
Up, and by coach to Westminster Hall, there thinking to have met Betty Michell, who I heard yesterday staid all night at her father’s, but she was gone. So I staid a little and then down to the bridge by water, and there overtook her and her father. So saluted her and walked over London Bridge with them and there parted, the weather being very foul, and so to the Tower by water, and so home, where I find Mr. Caesar playing the treble to my boy upon the Theorbo, the first time I heard him, which pleases me mightily. After dinner I carried him and my wife towards Westminster, by coach, myself ‘lighting at the Temple, and there, being a little too soon, walked in the Temple Church, looking with pleasure on the monuments and epitaphs, and then to my Lord Belasses, where Creed and Povy by appointment met to discourse of some of their Tangier accounts between my Lord and Vernatty, who will prove a very knave. That being done I away with Povy to White Hall, and thence I to Unthanke’s, and there take up my wife, and so home, it being very foule and darke. Being there come, I to the settling of some of my money matters in my chests, and evening some accounts, which I was at late, to my extraordinary content, and especially to see all things hit so even and right and with an apparent profit and advantage since my last accounting, but how much I cannot particularly yet come to adjudge.
a bridge over the bridge
I walk with my accounts
settling in my chest
Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 22 October 1666.
The latest videohaiku stars the neighborhood ash tree and a flock of starlings, shot from the patio while I was drinking coffee. The text is a bit wordier than usual for me, shaped in part by the need to fit into a pseudo-concrete poem.
In stories we were told, the theme
was always obedience— or else its opposite,
faithlessness. The girl who lazed in bed,
luxuriating in the gauzy envelope of mosquito
netting that made it feel like she could set
herself apart for just a little while
from the world: how, not rising quick
enough to the summons of her mother,
she was turned into a plant
stagnating in a pool of water. Hollow
stems, the damp carrying through her limbs
as constant reminder of callousness.
In parables, intention doesn't count:
there is only what's done, and the penalty
that follows after. No one cares about
nuance or motivation. And in this lifetime,
will we ever be allowed to tend to that
first house of the self without incurring
the wrath of the ancestors? The alarm clock
rings in the early dark. You want to stay there,
but the morning beckons like an ancient curse.
(Lord’s day). Up, and with my wife to church, and her new woman Barker with her the first time. The girle will, I think, do very well.
Here a lazy sermon, and so home to dinner, and took in my Lady Pen and Peg (Sir William being below with the fleete), and mighty merry we were, and then after dinner presently (it being a mighty cool day) I by coach to White Hall, and there attended the Cabinet, and was called in before the King and them to give an account of our want of money for Tangier, which troubles me that it should be my place so often and so soon after one another to come to speak there of their wants — the thing of the world that they love least to hear of, and that which is no welcome thing to be the solicitor for — and to see how like an image the King sat and could not speak one word when I had delivered myself was very strange; only my Lord Chancellor did ask me, whether I thought it was in nature at this time to help us to anything. So I was referred to another meeting of the Lords Commissioners for Tangier and my Lord Treasurer, and so went away, and by coach home, where I spent the evening in reading Stillingfleet’s defence of the Archbishopp, the part about Purgatory, a point I had never considered before, what was said for it or against it, and though I do believe we are in the right, yet I do not see any great matter in this book.
So to supper; and my people being gone, most of them, to bed, my boy and Jane and I did get two of my iron chests out of the cellar into my closett, and the money to my great satisfaction to see it there again, and the rather because the damp cellar spoils all my chests. This being done, and I weary, to bed.
This afternoon walking with Sir H. Cholmly long in the gallery, he told me, among many other things, how Harry Killigrew is banished the Court lately, for saying that my Lady Castlemayne was a little lecherous girle when she was young and used to rub her thing with her fingers, or against the end of forms, and that she must be rubbed with something else. This she complained to the King of, and he sent to the Duke of York, whose servant he is, to turn him away. The Duke of York hath done it, but takes it ill of my Lady that he was not complained to first. She attended him to excute it, but ill blood is made by it.
He told me how Mr. Williamson stood in a little place to have come into the House of Commons, and they would not choose him; they said, “No courtier.” And which is worse, Bab May went down in great state to Winchelsea with the Duke of York’s letters, not doubting to be chosen; and there the people chose a private gentleman in spite of him, and cried out they would have no Court pimp to be their burgesse; which are things that bode very ill. This afternoon I went to see and sat a good while with Mrs. Martin, and there was her sister Doll, with whom, contrary to all expectation, I did what I would, and might have done anything else.
a new home
below the present one
wants the world
that they love least
like nature gone
to iron and money
in the damp cellar
long things grew
little fingers that must
be rubbed with blood
and would not eat
and cried to be a doll
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 21 October 1666.