the full moon
caught in the
child’s eyes
Tag: senryu
she’s coming home
she’s coming home-
how slow the moon moves
across the sky
the old prostitute
the old prostitute
filled with remorse
at my front door
tonight’s moon
tonight’s moon
showing off
two lover casting shadow
waist deep
waist deep
I call to her
from the dark
inside the church
inside the church
the parishioners miss
the Robin’s sermon
cooing baby
cooing baby –
how melancholy
the old bachelor
What a mess
What a mess-
The furniture rearranged
In our hearts
an angel
an angel
finds a dead bird –
“we are of the same meaning.”
“Blue” a video poem by Chris Leibow
for Brooke Marie
Vodpod videos no longer available.
One Moon
Morning Coffee
American Haiku & Senryu
About my Poems
These poems are haiku or senryu in a broad sense. They come close to the definition given by the Haiku Society America,
Haiku: a poem recording the essence of a moment keen perceived, in which nature is linked to human nature. Usually a haiku in English is written in three unrhymed lines of seventeen or fewer syllables.
Here is another explaination by Jack Keroauc:
“The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different I don’t think American Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again…bursting to pop. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.” Jack Kerouac
Free Verse Haiku had its begining at the turn of the century in Japa. A leading haiku reformist Ogiwara Seisensui[6]. Seisensui (1884-1976) could be regarded as the originator of the free-form haiku movement, though fellow writers Masaoka Shiki and Kawahigashi Hekigoto also deserve recognition.[7] Writers following the early-twentieth century movement known as free-form or free-style haiku (shinkeikō) composed haiku lacking both the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic rule and the requisite seasonal word (kigo).
Let the scholars debate. I will let you be the judge”
Reviews of In Praise of Small Things.
“Your poems are like lessons in loving. Perhaps they ought to be required for all would be ‘lovers’ Iin love or loving; if you are not then what fools your words make of us all, jealous fools we be of this love real or ideal.”
Buffalo47
“A haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi pastorale”, wrote Jack Kerouac and that is exactly what c.a. leibow accomplishes with his refreshingly simple and accessible poems that jog the imagination. His poems are simple, sweet, and accomplish exactly what Kerouac theorized-paint a tiny picture in one’s psyche.”Hattie MacLeod, City Weekly, Salt Lake City
“Your work leaves me breathless, truly.”
Nicole Hyde
distant thunder
distant thunder
brings hope
midsummer heat
running so hard
running so hard…
but I am already there
namu amida butsu
summer playground
summer playground
some earthquakes
don’t like themselves
learning to let go
from a hill
from a hill I watch
the tall grass sway
but what of the dragonflies?
Billowing clouds
little boy points up-
billowing clouds;
rabbit & cat
or
little boy points up-
billowing clouds;
each an animal
holding her
holding her pillow
the scent
giving me an erection
afterglow
afterglow
both of us
sweating
two lovers
wind slacks-
two lovers tangled
new paper kite.
mid-day heat
mid-day heat
a small cloud
finds the old woman
a kite fluttering
paper kite fluttering in the wind-the sound, the sound.
a meditation on love.
At times love feels like a demolition but in reality it is a beautiful renovation[1], if you are willing to let it be. It’s not love, but our responses to love that makes us giddy or suffer, it’s our myriad of projections of what is right and what is wrong, what should be and what should not be, how long it should last. But that is not love itself that is us. Love is simply a beautiful brilliant light from the other world, life seeking life, beauty seeking beauty it God’s first essence, “I love”[2] that fills everything, and it is up to us to make the beautiful shadow play with that light by being fearless and seeing “the other”[3] not as we would have them but as they are, and by being ok when the curtain falls. Or we can take that light and make a frightening shadow play by being fearful, and by strutting and fretting and weeping because eventually the curtain will go down.
No matter what, the curtain will always come down; in month, in a year in 10. At the end of our lives, the curtain always comes down. We can’t escape that. The question is then, when the curtain comes down, do we applaud with eyes filled with tears at the beauty of it all or do we complain that our seats were uncomfortable or that our role was too insignificant. Ultimately it is up to us.
We must always remember that love is the light and not the shadow. Dance in the light, The light! The light! Dance!
Thank God for love,
Namu amida butsu.
1. Rumi
2. Li Young Lee. “The Virtues of a Boring Husband.”
3. Rilke
lovers part
.
.
.
.
.
.
.watching the light fade out my bedroom window, drinking some tea. I took this photo with my cell phone and knew it would work for a senryu. How things change so quickly, like the fading of the light every evening and those small things we do with our lovers like quietly drinking a cup of tea.
drinking coffee
drinking coffee
just friends now
remembering her wetness.
Marja Afghanistan
the marine
slowly releases the safety-
wind in the poppies
my lover gone home
my lover gone
my small apartment
now somehow smaller
making love
making love
under a bright moon
sound of waterfall
or
making love
on the old porch
-rain sounds