FIVE HAIKU BASED ON A QUOTE by Paulo Coelho Quote

FIVE HAIKU BASED ON A QUOTE

by Paulo Coelho Quote:

“We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.”  

1

Jackals leave their young

To pursue the scent of birds—

Greedy overkill.

2

Moon, you waste your time

Dreaming the impossible—

Be yourself and shine.

3

Flowers never fight

Color wars; instead they don

Their raiment like kings.

4

Fish and fowl live

Simple lives in sea and sky—

They know their places.

5

Toads on the lilies

Croak tower clocks to silence—

Time flies unnoticed.

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EASY PREY

EASY PREY

This is the simple way most view life,

their notions compartmentalized

either black or white, haunched behind

glass panes, deceptively final,

as if selecting one, negates

the other, a trade-off between

What-you-see-is-what-you-get

and Look-deeply-into-my-eyes.

We think we see the pebbled rain

in the clarity of assumed truth.

Questions abound in the spinning

orbs of niggling uncertainty.

Too often we opt for beauty,

the strains of the joy horns,

something to see and grasp in hand,

the misguided sense we live here

Forever. Or we give ourselves

back to where we began:

Repentant, exchanging black

and white for God’s Light.

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Five 17-SYLLABLE BARE ROOM POEMS

Five 17-SYLLABLE

BARE ROOM POEMS

1

You assured me

I was safe in the dark.

The room was bare.

Now, you’re gone.

2

Why the four walls?

Without them, sorrow

and pain would abscond

with the wind.

3

The photos down

from the wall, a patina

of memories linger.

4

If tears fall in a bare room

and no one sees them,

do they still fall?

5

Life is an exercise in clutter.

We cram bare rooms

we leave behind.                          

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PEACEFUL REFLECTIONS

PEACEFUL REFLECTIONS

Months after your passing, I hid

clandestine notes under a brick

behind a statue of Jesus.

I imagined the words skipping

free, delving beneath the gravesite,

and you, dousing the crimson pyre

Of past pain with my smudging tears.

All quiet here. Peaceful reflections

flutter skyward like summer doves.

In sadder graves imps gnash their teeth

in other-worldly cacophony.

I watch the children kicking

a soccer ball across the green.

I shudder at sneakered feet

walking across my someday grave.

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SHADOW POEM

SHADOW POEM

Pared down to the crucified bone, paired

arms that blessed and never fired arms,

pane slashed with downpour mimics pain.

Herd of listeners never really heard

his message, so distracted by the hiss

bred from Satan against the Living Bread.

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THERE ARE NO BEGGARS IN HEAVEN

THERE ARE NO BEGGARS IN HEAVEN

There are no supplicants in Heaven.

For what might they ask? They have it all.

Only in this life do they wait

on breadlines, make wishes, pray

away disastrous outcomes.

This is the life of worry

and illusion. At every bend

we face, unpreparedly alone,

clever demons whose playthings

we squander, those ecru trinkets

that neither polish nor magic

can whiten to seraphic purity.

Here, we blindly live out our days,

unalarmed by inevitable

endings, tickled by success,

neutral to what happens next

when the open-palmed hand is still.

In Heaven, there are no supplicants,

No need to pray for one’s salvation.

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SOMETIMES SIMPLE IS BEST

SOMETIMES SIMPLE IS BEST

we all know about the road paved

with good intentions,

corporate meetings spouting

egotistic offerings that lack

practical sense, feet to stand upright

and carry the weight from theory to fact.

Sometimes simple is best:

a wheel, a pulley,

the simple machines of push and pull

waiting by the shed, in the rain,

unnoticed

except by the fearfully close-mouthed.

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based on 

The Red Wheelbarrow 

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

so much depends 

upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white 

chickens

FIVE 17-SYLLABLED MORE THAN BLUE POEMS

FIVE 17-SYLLABLED

MORE THAN BLUE POEMS

1

sky, sea,

the backdrop of fifty beaming stars—

true blue the lot of them!

2

If only I could swim

in the blue pools

of your eyes—

bask forever!

3

When hearts break,

victims say they are more than blue,

their pain beyond color.

4

Blue could sniff a rabbit

better than most.

He seldom barked;

he loved kids.

5

I pray I can far exceed the blue,

dazzling in my faith,

loving God.

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THE LITTLE RED ROWBOAT

THE LITTLE RED ROWBOAT

Maybe not too often a red wagon

but a rowboat appears in poems of

idea-faring poets. I painted mine

vermilion-lipstick red to link with the eye

of the oppressive sun, a vexatious

goose-neck lamp beaming angst at the poet’s heart.

Poetic inspiration is an empty

milk bottle, the proverbial monkey wrench

that jimmies the cogs through which dust bunnies

transform smoke screens into poetry.

Sometimes the red rowboat spouts hairline leaks

to panic the jejune poet so he stands

wobbly-kneed, quasi-demented, afraid to create.

But all at once the clouds mask the sun and

the poet retrieves his pen from the floor.

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Five 17-Syllable Leaves on Water Poems

Five 17-Syllable

Leaves on Water Poems

1

From a distance

Leaves resemble hands

Comforting bodies of water.

2

When winter comes to kill,

Straggling fall leaves

Dive to ride the lake’s currents.

3

Leaves on water—

What stories to tell!

Autumn cleanups?

Gretel leaf crumbs?

4

Jack leaves on water

The floating after-dinner plates.

Football’s calling.

5

In the storm’s aftermath,

Leaves coursing the waterways

Sing, “We’ll be back.”

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WHO I AM

WHO I AM

On a slide, under the microscope,

tissue says I am bone and flesh and blood.

My swift life propelled by a pulsing heart,

legs to walk me down paths that lead somewhere;

two eyes that see and too long had been blind

to what really matters in this meantime world.

Both of my faces played out accordingly:

opportune smiles, the look of malcontent.

A seeker of truth rummaging the wrong

treasures, I sought silver and gold, bright stones,

all false measures that mislead pilgrim souls.

One day in prayer I heard His voice reveal

to me how to live a life a child of God,

repent of sin, amend the wrongs I’d done,

love the Creator, Redeemer, Giver of life,

wear the armor, battle the demons.

The new road I walk leads to Heaven.

One day I’ll lay aside this shell for glory.

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I'VE SEEN THEM

I’VE SEEN THEM

“They live in the mirrors.”

My brother Justin and I looked at each other, made our eyes roll, lips curl the way bystanders do when they see or hear what hints of madness or at least a loose screw or two loose in the head.

“I know,” George went on. “I’ve seen them!”

Though both of us were linemen for Pensacola Light, we took on the role of psychiatrists as we repeated, “Continue, George. Describe what you saw.”

George Fillmore hesitated. His right hand visibly shook. A tic pulsed away in his left green eye. Had we not known him well, we would have said George was experiencing the DT’s, but Fillmore was a devotee of H2O. He never drank the bubbly sodas Justin and I lived on nor did he ever demonstrate the slightest leanings toward an imbalance in the upper story.

Then George waved his hand toward his bathroom and we led the way until we were standing before the mirror. “Look!” he said. “Those three men!”

"Those three men are us, Georgie Porgie,” said Justin, but when the three men in the mirror turned around to face us, we clearly saw they weren’t us at all. Their distorted bodies, their faces expressing features not our own. “George,” I said, like a man who finally sees the light, but is hard-pressed to know what to do with it.

Justin made the horrid mistake of touching the glass. The screams that followed were his as reluctantly he dove into the mirror. We saw now that he had transformed one of the three into himself. The screaming stopped. Justin seemed content inside the mirror, beckoning us to follow. “Just dive in,” he said.

I turned around toward George. He had left the bathroom and returned with a hammer. “It’s the devil’s work,” he said as he raised the hammer. “We need to destroy the mirror before it drags us both into whatever Hell is in there.”

“What about my brother?” I asked. “We destroy the mirror and Justin’s gone forever.”

But George was not going to reconsider. He swung the hammer. The mirror shattered into shards of glass.

The two of us heard Justin calling us from a sharp sliver of broken glass. George again raised the hammer and smashed the mirror jigsaw piece into shiny grains. Justin was gone.  

The investigation was brief. Without my brother’s body, there was no case. He was somewhere out there, which was true enough, but I was convinced there was no way I’d see him again.

After burning down his house, George disappeared as well.

I wrote all this down. Why I don’t know. Who would believe it?

They say if you break a mirror you’re in for seven bad-luck years. What is there to say about me? I destroyed the mirrors in my apartment. I avoid gazing into one, though I suspect one day, accidentally, I will. Justin, maybe even George, will stare back at me with that come-on look and I will succumb.  

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NOT MY CUP OF TEA

NOT MY CUP OF TEA

Well, I didn’t want tea anyway.

I asked for Chianti wine,

but she shook her head and pointed

to the cup. “This will do just fine.”

I did not want to offend her,

she seemed the fragile kind,

so, I took the tea and drank some,

told her I did not mind.

Oh, the British tea was steaming,

it burned my upper lip.

I spit it out like a whale’s spout

spraying passing ships.

Well, I didn’t want tea anyway,

I ventured once again.

In Sicily, it’s Chianti wine

and we drink it quite plain:

No crumpets or flaky scones,

no biscuits dunked to swim.

Sicilian boys grow tough and brave

with glasses filled to brim.

And by the way, I said once more:

I didn’t want the tea.

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