Joan McNerney
A Selection of Haiku: "Winter Notes"
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The sun rose
another golden flower. Winter enchanted of iced lakes nude trees fierce winds I am a witness. More starling than that windowpane red with sun are your ice blue eyes. Deep winterset night. Sleepless stars glide through heaven in aerial ballet. ❦ |
Straining twisted arms trees stretch to trap me in their bare branches. Thick snowflakes tonguefulls we lap laughing as sparks pinch my face. Crystal seamstresses trim rooftops in snowy lace. Even Goya's portraits are less intriguing than faces of frost on my window. ❦ |
A snowflake
falls in my surprised eye ...all is black. In our frail world, even meteors, the eyes of heaven fall like dust from God’s hands. The three I love now silent cool darkness. Will it be so when I die? Hushed cool mindless snow innocently spread smiles up. |
Blown Away
I'm gonna have lunch with
the sky. It's been way too long since we got together. I'll run downstairs through hallways into bursts of blue. Perhaps never return to work, words, paper clips, bookshelves. Who needs cash when there's so much green grass to hoard? Forget about food. I’ll drink up sunshine, nibbling juicy clouds. O sky, you are my solar mate. We will be faithful always. Come home now...I will never look at another. Lost Landscape
I am driving down a hill
without name on an unnumbered highway. This road transforms into a snake winding around coiled on hair pin turns. See how it hisses though this long night. Why am I alone? At bottom of the incline lies a dark village strangely hushed with secrets. How black it is. How difficult to find what I must discover. My fingers are tingling cool, smoke combs the air, static fills night. I continue to cross gas lit streets encountering dim intersections. Another maze. One line leads to another. Dead ends become beginnings. Listening to lisp of the road. My slur of thoughts sink as snake rasps grow louder. See how the road slithers. What can be explored? Where can it be? All is in question. |
Jazz
the kitchen sits
in fruit soup... steamed apricot mango shadow down thru spinning smoke into hot light blink beat body ends dangle lead eye skin cement high on tongue night pasted among buildings Styrofoam clouds moon hung beneath billboard rolling pass wet rocked streets soul tramp diamond panhandlers watch paper birds slices of the daily news drift in air comes cool ether whispers up door climbing dusty corridor tree windows lapping lisp door slams again noise again then none void nothing syncopates noise again door slams tree bare frozen caught in the image of 7 candles within 7 candles flames of air 7 light bulbs growing out of each other 7 silver circles coined from 7 silver rings clear as blazing sheets of glass yet vague as dust an ice cube on wood table in front of crushed velvet melt poured peeled when this sky now boiling with stars is strapped black in pinched air thru sucked mind swimming pass spaced time will be one silent note up.
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"A" train
brassy blue
electric close eyes watch points like stars think now how insignificant compared to train speaking for itself stars known in no language burn shoot thru tiger's eyes brain in constant action reaction to what we do not know plans of distant stars galaxies floating as "A" train silver worm slides under big belly of city An Accountant
grabbled with
white ledgers & tight rows of numbers. He could calculate the secrets of ciphers. Who else would appreciate the eloquence of one? This fat place maker known as zero? Why mystics marveled at the holy seven? While he slept his dreams multiplied. Suddenly long division subtracted an unknown quantity yet sums still added up. Where had his equations wandered? |
