A Wee Fairytale / Et bitte eventyr - haibun

A Wee Fairytale

it's a leaky boat made from the web of starlight that light that is the loneliest kind in the universe in that boat a king sets out to conquer the world hoping to gain power over a multitude of creatures none of which he has made (or could ever make) he suffers the vain hope it'll make him happy happier than he is at the moment that's in the nature of men: ever searching for something that'll make them a bit more happy than he is and that's why staircases are endless

wet as it falls rain

he doesn't question his urge nor does he question whether he has the right to rule over other creatures living by their life-force for him his quest for fulfilment – be it ever so temporary and volatile – is what inhabits his dreams at night fills his heart every day and makes his spaghetti taste like mud his yearning and unhappiness is the core of the cosmos and he doesn't lift his eyes to look out the window

with good will that silhouette is a peregrine falcon

but of course the boat sinks at some point and of course the king don't get to rule the endless universe it's always all or nothing with kings like that and at the bottom of the World Ocean he gets to practice folding a jellyfish into a hat

bouncing off photons a tree is eight minutes older

Et bitte eventyr

det er en lækkende båd lavet at stjernelys det lys der er af den mest ensomme slags i universet i den båd sætter en konge ud for at erobre verden i håbet om at opnå magt over en mangfoldighed af skabninger hvoraf ingen er skabt af ham selv (som om han kunne skabe nogen) han har den vage formodning at det vil gøre ham lykkelig i hvert fald lykkeligere end han er for tiden det er i menneskers natur: altid at lede efter noget der vil gøre dem en smule gladere end de er og det er derfor trapper er endeløse

våd som den falder regn

han sætter ikke spørgsmålstegn ved sin trang ej heller spørger han sig selv om hvorvidt han har ret til at bestemme over skabninger der lever ved sin egen livskraft for er hans søgen efter at opnå sit mål – det være sig nok så midlertidigt og flygtigt – det der fylder hans drømme fylder hans hjerte hver dag og får hans spaghetti til at smage som mudder hans længsel og ulykkelighed er kernen i kosmosset og han løfter ikke sine øjne for at se ud af vinduet

med lidt god vilje er silhuetten en vandrefalk

men selvfølgelig synker båden på et tidspunkt og kongen opnår ikke at herske over det uendelige univers det er altid alt eller intet med sådanne konger og på bunden af Verdenshavet får han tid til at øve sig i at folde vandmænd til hatte

reflekterende fotoner et træ er otte minutter ældre

Samsara - haibun

the rope I climb I have taken from the spinal cord of a stoned homeless man slowly merging with the flow of acid rain heading for the ocean via the sewers at times it's a snake or a ladder for dwarfs and ambitious ants at times it's a newsstand selling old papers “we can only examine processes which are already in the past” the black rider says gulping down the homeless man's dissolving tattoos

flat-out broke

I sell my reflection

for dust

I will never die I will die continuously that's the deal of being and being again at some point I will have collected enough coupons to get the holes for the flute I carved from my right femur I give a pizza a sky funeral pigeons and gulls descend from the cake in the sky while I hum Psalm 23 “I shall not want” but I do I do want and it keeps me going

Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah …

somewhere there's a koi

with my name on it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Mantra

In Japanese, koi is a homophone for another word that means "affection" or "love"

blur

smudged

by dirty

windows

the moon's

there

barely

full

:

no

pretending

the knee

that hurts

the moon

there

:

no

drama

blur

red

moon

:

not

even

a distant

car

just

a cat

in

heat

this

cold

night

:

what

attitude

needed

that

bare rock

hanging

:

a year

since

I polished

these

windows

the moon's

older

3 "haiga" w poemwords

 

 

On a Station - haibun

On a Station

a young woman whose body and its language says she wants to be invisible more than anything else empties her bag on the bench and sorts her things after size with the biggest nearest to her she puts them back one after one from her skinniness I assume she's starving herself she has the complexion of yellow moonlight

maelstrom
the step before oblivion
is a matchstick girl



a young man dressed in new clothes following the fashion of his peers walks around in tiny measured steps following paths only he himself can see he seems uncomfortable as if he really doesn't know what kind of behaviour and gait goes with the image he tries to convey he walks as if he's afraid to touch the ground

all grey the rain the eyes in the wall in the crowd



they've recently converted to Islam these two Danish women in their early twenties they exchange experiences with living in a male dominated sub culture of quasi fundamentalists from their facial expressions it's hard I can see though they confirm to each other that it's exciting they adjust the scarf covering their hair one putting a stray strand back under the other's scarf they're sitting behind me on a double bench forgetful of how loud their voices are Ali does this Muhammed does that it's very hush hush

rushing from light to light (on time) our pilgrimage on Earth

Bones - haibun

Bones

The turning point in crime shows was when we began seeing the detective as a person. No longer was it the crime -> case solved straight line but we got to know a little about how the (imaginative) hero was as a person. Depths were added to the supposed reality of the genre. Nowadays it's standard.

What do you do, then, when you think the hero or heroes of a crime show are utterly uninteresting and superficial persons?

first snowdrops

the road goes on

unimpressed

(“You stop watching those shows, don't you?”

“I'm not watching. They're just there, aren't they?”

“Well, you turned on the TV ... I rest my case.”

“Bloody know-it-all!”)

Japanese? - a haibun

”What's with the chop sticks and the miso soup? You're not Japanese.”

”You sure? I could be.”

”No, you're not. You're born in Denmark and it takes more than flirting with a culture to actually be a part of it.”

”I can try, can't I? I mean, I'm taking lessons in language, brush painting, cooking and what have you. I'm thinking of going there as soon as I can.”

”When will that be? You haven't got the money and you're afraid of flying.”

”Man, you're always so negative! Can't you just be glad I have something that excites me?”

”Of course I can, but you won't become Japanese no matter how many courses you take. And besides, they would never accept you as one of theirs if you ever get to go. You'll be a foreigner for 10 generations or more.”

”Says you. What do you know?!.”

“I know they work very long hours and you haven't held on to even a part time job for more than 2 weeks. You couldn't survive in Japan. Not on the same terms the Japanese live.”

“Shut it! Have you seen the band-aids? These damn straw sandals give me blisters.”

cold fondue

what's left of the frog

the cat eats

170 syllables

something to the left of me about to end the world in H-minor

by my right foot's halo a beetle that should have died before winter

in my left nostril a prophet talking of a blooming red desert

lifting my arm to draw a circle of air for the last bird looping

in my right ear I make a bed for nomadic penguins and planets

from my navel I extract a galaxy of rubber stars in May

signing the sky on it's far side like YK now he's doing reds

IKB and a faulty fall into the tank with sleeping fish and weed

between the chairs a caravan of souls heading for Dwarka to rest

folding shadows into cranes a hundred times or more like time beasts

ear yummy

primitive stereo

McCartney's bass rolls potatoes

on Lucy

it's getting better?

warm milk and honey

will fix the hole

perpetual dusk

she's leaving home

with Pepper's crew

4000 black holes

with a little help my mind

can fill a car

changing lights

I record a recorder

in a wlarus

goodmorning goo

within you without you flies

Mr. Kite

foolless hill

Henry the Horse runs off

with the meter maid

My Favourite Things - ku sequence

My Favorite Things

spiraling off incense sticks My Favorite Things Coltraneian

left one shoe in a raga in Harlem

Lady Morphine in A-Minor this sleep in longing

what the hell's with these birds? my left head turns

the falling upwards of feet not mine and a half-smoked cigarette

not fair the song doesn't exist unless I hear it

between the bricks a view to another dance

tuck me in with a needle in your eye

dressed in flames she merges with organs

singular plurality music bound by time and trouble

carving a shenai from a bone once in God's thought

no snakes to tame the untameable a basket of rotting grapes

household fairies in ampuls barely glass

the lark's nest

December light?

I remind myself

there's a first

for everything

long before I began to wake up my brain was singing a song. it was a song for children one every school boy and girl have been singing since the 1920's I guess (the composer died in 1931) and one I have sung hundreds of times as a boy. but it (my brain) could remember the first verse only. I was rather annoyed by those missing words and by the song that interrupted a warm and intimate situation just beginning to be very hot between me and a girlfriend I had in my teens but her face turned into an ipad on which I began to look for the missing words of the song. it was a song about a girl finding a lark's nest and keeping it a secret for the fox and the boy.

ground coffee 3900 light years from Canis Majoris

the parcel

"What's in it?"
"What's in what?"
"WHAT is in it?"
"You're repeating yourself. I haven't got the faintest idea of what you're talking about."
"What is in that box there?" he said and pointed to a small parcel lying by the window.
"I don't know. I haven't seen it before."
He walked over to the window and looked at it curiously and a bit distrusting. He bowed down to study it. The parcel did nothing.
"Go on then. Take a look."
"HA! Funny man, eh?"
I knew very well he couldn't touch it, couldn't examine it. As a rather fleeting and etherial being he couldn't interact with that world which is physical to me, to us.

the-whole-in-the water test
an uncaring moon
plops

"You open it and show me what it is".
"Why? I'm busy doing other things and besides if it was important I'm sure whoever put it there would have said something".
"Busy!? That'll be a first. Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes isn't exactly "busy"". Come on, pleeeease".
"I'm reading a book too" I said licking my thumb and forefinger to turn over a page demonstratively loud. He wouldn't be able to.
"Pf" he said and raised his head. He stood with his hands behind his back, swaying back and forth on his feet and began to whistle "Le Marseillaise" very loud.
I said nothing. I rather - and not very kindly - enjoyed his frustrated state. He was getting more and more tense but that's how it is when you really really want something you can't get anyway near and it's just under your nose.

under the cloud of unknowing I don't open my umbrella

"If you don't behave I'll turn out the light and then you what will happen"
"Wanker" he said but he knew that would mean he'd just merge with the other shadows.

3 haiga

 

 

days of being wild (in moderation) - haibun

and I hear this faint rhythm in a sharp note just about to me out of my range of hearing like someone throwing small small stones on the floor which is why it's not that precise or even and I mute the tv and close the window so I won't be disturbed by the neighbour's goldfish pond it must be leaking a hose spits water into it day and night

too weird I've been watching 3 films by the Hong-Kong director Wong Kar-Wai or Kai-War Wong whatever and typically me I watched the 3rd of this (unintended?) trilogy last and I got sorta annoyed by the main character and his arrogance lack of empathy eating and throwing away women and so on which probably was part of the director's intentions that guy just hung around all day in a humid Honk-Kong getting money from his adoptive mother and obviously not being capable of appreciating other feelings than his own ennui … well what the heck

and I manage to locate the sound it's from the computer in the other room playing a tabla solo by Zakir Hussein I was reorganizing music on the mp3-player and must have clicked on something and no the rain in Denmark doesn't fall in teentaal

it's title days of being wild suggested something other than this slow lazy film with wonderful camera work and long scenes full of rain and a decadent young man hanging indifferent on a sofa lying on a bed or combing his greasy hair while a scorned girl was screaming somewhere in the tiny apartment as dirty as … but I guess it's a cultural difference or a bit of irony it's a great flick and it wasn't the last time I watched it

as usual I can't decide what to leave on and what to replace I go for jazz fusion and Indian music that's what I listen to after all and next time I sit on a train listening I'll probably think it's a totally boring selection if I know me (which I'm gradually getting better at)

so I went to the low-prize supermarket just around sundown to get a few things I forgot the first time and there behind the counter the spitting image of the actor the spitting image I tell you I was just about to say Hey fantastic movie but I didn't

gravitational pull

a photon sticks

to my cornea

red eye

Betelgeuse is never

on stand-by

a bite of heaven

abide a bite of heaven in a toothless mouth

you don't have to answer but have you ever thought about that what we're doing when we do stuff is filling out the time of waiting before enlightenment and moksha and seeing that we were born and now we have to got through all kinds of motions and moods and heartbreaking or toe-wringing events like holding a girl in the hand though all your pals think girls are stupid

abiding a biting off the far corner of paradise

but you find out you really like girls of almost all varieties but you still haven't the biology to know 'what to do' with them (there it is again: DO! DODODODODO) and you a vague feeling that this could be something that would make the wait bearable and years later you know you were right

yellowing lacewing Chagall's goat plays off key

and you end up seeing through things and that what you do between birth and death is just making time pass in the least inconvenient way but that takes some practise and you're a slow learner you didn't die young though you had all the chances to so you decide not to be in a waiting position/mode any more but do something worthwhile life is more than waiting it's also grabbing hold of it ceasing the day and so on

low sun cars pull up for the Friday dance

and you grab the phone to let your nearest and dearest know but they're not picking up it's 3.30 AM and you dig out a cigar you bought last Christmas the one where you didn't snow in and smoke in peace

half a moon the folks downstairs fight over the dog