January 8: More moon
by Melissa Allen
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these lights in the tunnel and then the moon
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I tried not to notice but under the moon
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this one will never be back the moon
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how hard it is to grow the moon
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alone something in common with the moon
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the way you always looked at me and the moon
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your face in my mind half a moon
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waiting to feel complete the moon
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______________________
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Can’t. Stop. Writing. About. The. Moon.
Somebody hide it from me, quick.
bwahahahaa – the moon was hidden almost entirely a night ago. now you’ll have to close your eyes, it’s slivering out again. your work so frequently triggers me on into ku:
night blossom
beyond this dark tunnel
the moon
frog blossom
ripples in the pond
leave a moon
more moon
through avocado leaves
a soft glow
(yeah, i liked those words “more moon” together in your post title)
oh. which reminds me… i commented on your “found potato” ku at one point and you had forgotten where it was. i meant to tell you and forgot. until now. it was in the post i commented on with a ramble that went off into freeze drying potatoes in the Andes. bwahahahaha. where was that?
oh. also. just fyi i havnt yet had time to read Haikuverse (i still want to say haikuniverse) this week. sheesh.
Okay, a few things:
– I really like these ku. Especially the “frog blossom” one … echoes of Basho there.
– This officially brings the total of ku you have left in the comments of this blog to 100. Yes, that’s right. You are officially insanely prolific. (That comes out to, like, 12 a month or something. You could blog three times a week!) I am still pondering what I am going to do about this. I might have a Rick Daddario Exclusive kind of post. I need to do two posts in one day sometime before Wednesday anyway to make the Wednesday post be my 400th post. What do you think?
– I searched my comments for “potato” and found the ku you were referring to on my Christmas post. Amazing. That was only two weeks ago and I’d completely forgotten it existed. Maybe I do write too many ku.
– Did I ever tell you the story of how when we were canoeing/camping this summer, we got to this campsite (on an island in a remote wilderness area in northern Minnesota) and a few hours later the kids discovered eighteen potatoes sitting in the shallow water just off shore? They were very fresh and we took them out and cooked them for dinner — delicious! — which was amazing because we were having to carry all our food and not much of it was fresh and we were running a little low on food anyway. We are still debating who left them there and why. Was someone just trying to discard heavy food? Did they fall overboard? Were they left there deliberately for someone else to find? Was it space aliens trying to seed their offspring into human digestive systems? Whatever. The world seems like a stranger and more wonderful place to me now.
– What? You don’t have a spare six hours to read my deathless (or do I mean breathless, as in you’ll run out of breath if you try to read it aloud) prose? For shame. I expect all my friends to put aside everything else they have to do and read everything I write the second I hit “post.” No matter how long and rambling it is.
(Actually, don’t worry, even if you never read it you won’t be missing much. These things keep getting longer and longer. I might have to put myself on a word diet to go along with the food diet I had to impose after I gained ten pounds in the last ten days of the year. No potatoes for a while …)
ha. yeah. definitely Basho echos.
and… what do i think… sure. if that suits you, i’m honored you’d consider posting the hundred. – and especially sure if it helps you with the 400th post timing. (i have a couple to send in, but i’m waiting to see if i get one i like better than these two. bwahahahaha). i’ve kept track of the ku i’ve written on WP. as i recall it’s about 16 pages with 11 to 13 ku on each page. the majority are here i’m sure. fun.
if you do post the 100, may be i could reciprocate and use something you’ve written in a future Ku On This post. would that interest you? if so let me know what you think, and might want to see on a Ku On This post (no hurry). heck, even if you dont post the 100 – i’d still be interested in using something you’ve written for a Ku On This post.
the potato ku-ing is way fun too. and funny. of course. you’ll have to take some credit on that you know, if not all of it. you are the finder. no i dont think it’s possible to write too many ku. i do think it’s possible for me to forget a ku from two weeks ago tho. bwahahahahaha. i know i’m good at that.
hahaha. no, i hadnt heard the 18 potato story. personally i might go with the alien possibility. …or a bag fell off a boat. or from the sky. or… oh. wait. regular potatoes, right? i forgot, i sent those potatoes over last summer. last summer, right? in minnesota? yeah. the Myth Wizard helped me with location, transpotatoation and presentation (the Myth Wizard can do almost anything). we thought the water would be a good place to leave them, just in case you guys were a little late in arriving. we thought your group might like a little treat and spuds are always great cooked around a campfire. i’m delighted to know you found and enjoyed them – thanks, i’ll let the Myth Wizard know. well. actually. the Myth Wizard probably already knows. the Myth Wizard is like that. yeah. that’s my story and i’m sticking to it. sorry, we didnt have multi-colored potatoes at hand, i hope the regular ones were okay?
yeah. i do understand about time. i dont do time well – i just need more of it. for a human made thing you’d think we’d make up a little more of it to go around, wouldnt you? . . . of course in the great words of a great space alien: “Time not matter, only people matter.” (from The Fifth Element – or as near as i can remember it).
Wow — you and the Myth Wizard — that was one possibility that never occurred to me! So glad to have that explanation!
I will do a Daddario post but I don’t think I have room for all 100 ku. It will probably be selected ku. But I can send you the 100 ku for your own records if you want.
And I definitely want to see your 400 post contribution!
I was trying to chose which I liked best in this batch of ku that when I started reading sounded like a vigorous popping in my head. But all sounded good to me! Is that when a haiku is a ku? When the interaction between the ku and the reader is good? I have more of these questions actually:
When does a ku ku a line?
Do nouns a sentence ku?
Do verbs defy lightness in the breath of a ku?
Why does a twig not let to cradle when it can a fallen wing in a ku?
Is the sun a face that stares or a pool but a mirror to the sun a ku?
Is all the flowers do sit on pots for ku?
And some such ramblings in my head when I can’t ku. And the other day, on a bus ride when no word in my writing brain made sense, I felt stabbing pains not of the body and I panicked over this stewing pot of unedible words in my mind.
Words, I think, have struck me as a malady! But when the moon shines like yours, the ‘boiling in the stew’ clears up and ahhh…
half moon
your droopy eye
flits to my breast
By the way, like Rick, I haven’t finished absorbing (because I’ve read it) your last greatly expanding kuverse as well the one before this! I missed to make a comment on the potato, too, as the potatoes that week couldn’t leap from the salad table to a ku as in
potato–
the baby’s small head
tilted waiting
… and it had. Thanks, Melissa!
I love your ku questions, Alegria! I think wonderful things always happen when we just let ourselves relax into the words. Both your ku here are wonderful too, wonderful wonderful. I think I need to go back and pull all your ku out of the comments too, I don’t know why I haven’t been doing that before.
bwahahaha. oh, yeah, i like those ku questions too, Alegria Imperial. and your potato ku – that’s a beauty. must be an idaho potato head. . .
spudfire cookout
punch holes in skin
nestle in embers
clearly i’ll have to work on potato ku.
Whoa . . . I liked the moon riffs, but I have to say the commentary section of this post–very stream-of-consciousness surreal. My head is spinning like a hot potato. Melissa, please do re-post Wrick’s potato ku . . . and yours, which I also missed. My appetite’s whetted. And, here’s something strange, your story about the found taters in the stream reminded me in this free association sort of way of a poem Frost did. . . the one where he’s out in the woods and finds the neatly piled rick of wood that’s now decaying and wonders who left it. (Can’t think of the name off-hand.) I’m glad your potatoes were not in that state. I want to write potato ku now. Crazy!
On another note, Wrick, your first two ku here . . . love the blossom images. Okay, signing off now, for fear of overactive prose.
Okay, I am going to make these comments a little more surreal by posting this great, but deeply surreal, video of a song by the Spongemonkeys called “We Like the Moon.” Michael Nickels-Wisdom shared it with me on Facebook after I posted a link to this post. It is awesome and very much in the spirit of these ku, except with more cartoon characters singing in slightly annoying voices. Watch at your own risk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY6insZjCfU
I’ll have to look up that Frost poem, it sounds vaguely familiar (which might just mean that it sounds like a Frost poem) but I don’t remember the details.
And the potato ku was mine, in response to a very stream-of-consciousness comment about Andean potatoes by Wrick (it’s attached to my “Nativity” post which is linked to under “Sequences” in the sidebar, if you want to read some more surreal commentary):
multicolored potatoes
lined up on the ground
frozen
Please do write some potato ku, I am dying to see some!
bwahahaaha, Margaret ty and… stream of consciousness spinning like a hot potato. …is that on a stick? …and when is Frost not out in the woods? actually i think i remember something along those lines too. may be you’ve just planted food for the spud aliens in our skulls?
spud aliens
found potatoes
in a stream
sheesh. okay, okay, it’s 4:15 AM that’s what i get at 4:14 AM spud-ku. aloha.
the way you always looked at me and the moon – gorgeous!
This would be great with kireji, too.
the way
you always looked at me
winter moon
I just popped the season in there. For cadence this style is nice, but your original version is still gorgeous. Do you renku? Stop on by.
willie
Yeah … I think most of these could probably be reworked into more traditional haiku. I do that sometimes when I write one-liners, frequently actually — if I’m trying to just get words onto paper when I’m writing haiku I often just write a whole stream of one-liners and then decide what to do with them: keep them one-liners, rework them into something else, let them molder on my hard drive (this latter option is what happens to most of them, of course — it’s the creative process, doncha know). For these … I just felt like leaving them the way they are, because that was the mood I was in. But I like your version too.
I do renku (not well, but I do it) and your “Green Tea” site looks great. At the moment though I’m finishing up one renku and may be taking on another soon, plus the rest of my schedule is packed … if I get more time to renku in the future I will definitely drop by and join you guys!
Up north, huh? i suspect
these potatoes
bely your intent
frost flowers
aloha Willie – i like the winter moon in that ku. and these potatoes – intriguing. fun. aloha.
Nice, Willie.
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Love these two especially, Mel – so effective!
these lights in the tunnel and then the moon
&
your face in my mind half a moon
Thanks, Ash.