No season quite does for poets what autumn and October and the anticipation of a few days of wandering spirits, of fear, of tangible dying in the trees and air, seem to do. Perhaps that’s just my bias. Come spring, I might once again cycle back to the inspiration of rebirth and the flood of green that distracts me by then.
But for now, I’m once again caught up in how pleasantly sensual October always feels, smells, looks, sounds, and tastes. It is a season of death and creative inspiration. The paradox drives me, as I’m sure it does so many of you, into mad forays of mostly silent, poetic manias. It is an enthusing melancholy. A time of abandoned gathered beauty. Of missing warmth and dreading our unique hardships of winter.
I’ll emerge soon enough, after the sound of scurrying leaves cease and the wind makes up its mind to freeze us into that helpless aching permanence of waiting and of fleeting memories of fall.
This October Special of RKzJ called for Flash Faction and Alternative Haikus. For this edition’s purposes, we’re defining “Flash Faction” as personal historical fiction based in true experiences stranger than the usual fiction and expressed in 500 words or less. We also wanted to challenge you to show some seasonal Haiku flexibility. No one sent a 2012 Haiku, however. I’m still hoping.
Kudzu as Accomplice
Kudzu vine conspired
with murder, blanketing a
body overnight
{Standing on a hill
{My sight flees a thousand arms
{Feet begging to run
{Eyes solidified
{On the memory, stunned here
{With failing last gasps
Bloodstain feeding it,
the vine exhales cascades of
green meditation
“Kudzu as Accomplice” is my Haiku contribution. It is a boiled down attempt at expressing a larger personal story of permanently lost roots, revisitation, anger, fear and morbid curiosity. Another contributer comments recently on how, as he was struggling with the disappointment of destruction, the Haiku approach pleasantly forced him to get to the real emotion of the life event.
Contributing poets and writers for this edition brought back a few familiar names along with a new friends. Kenneth Pobo, Lucille Gang Shulklapper, Larry Blazek, and Lee Evans are back for more Roadkill. David Williams, Cheryl Boutin, and K.L. Storkson are just starting to feed on what the road offers. Now it’s your turn to feast off these word-forgers’ visions. RKz
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David Williams
Ephemeral art
My high school portfolio
Covered in mold spores
Why, God? Now ruined
Rarely recalled achievements
Kept for my unborn
Ephemeral art
The monk who paints with sand
Knows it blows away
Bio: The Ultra-Talented Dave Williams (teacher, musician, linguist, artist, veteran, lifetime student, and globetrotting diversionist) offers this autobiographical Haiku. Visit his space at: http://www.myspace.com/lonesumdave
Kenneth Pobo
Well, it’s like this, see—
our four o’clocks open at
7:00. Such liars!
My dahlia casket
holds one blossom, her red dress
barely visible.
Some say that graveyards
make them nervous. Footsteps make
the dead nervous.
Cremate me: I want
to be the last cigarette
relished, forgotten.
When October kills,
balsams say, “You’ll never take
me alive.” They’re right.
Poet’s Comment: I don’t believe in explaining my poems. They are what they are. The garden is a central metaphor for me, not just in haiku, but in many of my poems. I’m not sure, but I think these haiku came about after reading Tu Fu. There is something in his voice, his finding of the image that resonates—for centuries—that draws me back to his work. The dahlia poem has a touch of the singer Bobbie Gentry in it as she has a song from 1968 called “Casket Vignette.” Since your slant is on October this time, I’d say it is one of my favorite months, though it is laced with melancholy. I prefer April and May, but seeing the garden wind down—yet the party-in-purple asters and rock star mums give the needed joy boost. I have a white mum now open, quite petite, and I think of Marc Bolan who sang, “I know I’m small, but I enjoy living anyway.”
Bio: Kenneth Pobo has lived in Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania (and one month in Germany). In July 2008, his new book of poems, Glass Garden, was published by WordTech Press. A new online chapbook, Crazy Cakes, can be accessed at http://scars.tv. Catch Ken’s radio show, “Obscure Oldies,” on Saturdays from 6-8pm EST at WDNR.com. He enjoys gardening, 60s music, and writing.
Lucille Gang Shulklapper
“Mother Speaks Her Stroke To Me”
I am a… skelton…noooo…skel…a…tin… sitting in a no lights movie theater. A large moovie Mooveme moovME place … all the walls re…mooved and one screen…so big, …yessss…giant. The screen whiter than my… teeeth. I should be frigh…tind by my skelton, no… skel… a… tin, no… skin…fa..lesh? and… spear…it, spirit, that’s the word, my bones sitting in… comfort. I am not! O…ver my head… white, circle clouds… you see…never change size shape, move across black sky roof sky. I wait… for the movie to start…, for people to sit…menny, menny emp…ty seats. Am… am I con…fuzed? What if the moovie is over? A white light flasherflickers… flickerflashes from the projec …projection …projectionist’s booth.
I wait. Who izthat calling my name? Iz it…re…mem…ber …do you member we saw Charlton Heston playing Moses, or izit who played Jesus Christ, Superstar, maybe Marlon Brando in the apopolips, apocolips, apoxonlips, maybe it’s mommee with a deep voice, a ven..tril…oquist she wuz, ha, Charlee Maccarthy, no…Edgrrr? Whoo izthat calling me? maybe it’s a him, a her, ahymm, ahmen, amen, it, what? who, why, whiii, whyme?
I burrrow into that … hole? in my bed, you know that place?…burrrrow…nice word…I love words…you know that… I lie sooo still, lisssen for voices. Sooo dark here. Bli blindness, falling… gradjewellee , the way dusk…yesss…dusk… deepens… deep end until night burrries it. What izthat word?… Betty Macorson, Smackhersum, you remember her? … that college show off, told me there’s no such word as ersates, ersatz? her sake, and I beat her in “Scrambble” all the time. Jeopardy, jeperdy, jepretty, jeparty, jeperdme. One old whirred word… contest… still ready to fight. Mean, meaning, meanest, meant.
What do you call them? These cheese filling things? I ordered two… ba..litz…blintz. They are burrrnt. They have a hell of a nerve giving me such… crap. Where’s that drink I like? The … you know, what do you call it? Fizzzzy coal…no… coa…coke. Stuuupid. My hand’s all numb…I hafto schlap it. I wish it were Tuesday. On Tuesday, I clip the alzees. No, stupid, not alzees, it starts with a…azal… Pleeze make the mooveme garden screen green for alzees.
Thank you. I am polite like Motherrr told me. I want my motherrr. Pleeze. She knows whoiz calling me…she’ll make it light, won’t she? …pleeze make it light…I had an oil lamp…so pritty…remember? Someone iz coming. Her boddee ra..dee…ates light, see that Betty Mackershon… radeeate…a big whirred. Could I have some alzees too? yesss… pleeze…oh thank you…whyiiiiii…
I… always loved red red red alzees… and you.
Bio: A workshop leader for the Florida Center for the Book, Lucille Gang Shulklapper writes fiction and poetry. Her work has been anthologized and appears in many publications as well as her four poetry chapbooks, What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight, Godd, It’s Not Hollywood, and In the Tunnel Living.
Cheryl Boutin
“If you are waiting for a miracle”
An empty glass only echoes
silence.
What fills emptiness
becomes
(even if it is sour milk)
miraculous,
invading neurons and creating
sense
so celebrate the full glass
within
because we need to contain life
until
the substance within us overflows,
spilling,
or the vessel that we are cracks,
shattering,
and we are holy relics of spent
being.
Writerly Info: http://www.myspace.com/cherylboutin
Larry Blazek
“Cecilia’s Cabin”
Cecilia had been making the old barn into a cabin. Insulation was nailed to the walls.
She had been sleeping there. A little black television was propped up on one of the old stalls.
Just outside, one of the dogs had spilled his water in his excitement at seeing someone.
You pick up the dish to take to the house to refill it. Cecilia is in the driveway, sitting in a car with her little dog.
You play with the little dog. She barks playfully. You had forgotten about the little dog and mention that you thought it had died. Cecilia smiles smugly; everyone there but you has died.
Lee Evans
My Soul at your door
Terrifies you all year long—
For it wears no mask.
My death in the leaves
Lies withered on the cold ground
My life passes on
My love, the desire
Of the dead to be reborn
Stirs within our loins
Bio: Lee Evans was born in Maryland, spent most of his life in that state, and is currently living in Bath, Maine. After graduating from college he held a variety of jobs, including those of landscape laborer, floral delivery man, collection attendant for Goodwill Industries, clerk at the Maryland State Archives, and his current job on the assembly line in a candle factory. He has published poems in Contemporary Rhyme, The Golden Lantern, and the Anthology Rhyme and Reason. He has recently produced a poetry collection called Maryland Weather.
K.L. Storkson
Humanity is
Just a blade of grass. Haiku
Sins of simplicity.
Doppelganger friends
Met lightyears away yet still sit
Everywhere I go.
Water elementals
Chase thirst down my throat like wild
Renegade cowboys.
The hookah sun burns
God takes a hoot and blows out
Misty Chinook winds.
Bio: K.L.’s bio is one of a lover and a cowboy, where existence is dipped in honey, semen and horse piss in Red Deer, Alberta. Where flies land on purple flowers on the thistles and we both struggle to remain above the obsolete and the oil quicksands.