Nova Normandy 3044 - a science fiction haibun tribute to all World War veterans both past; current; and in future wars - haibun is prose with haiku

https://prunejuice.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/prune-juice-issue-21-now-available-httpsprunejuice-files-wordpress-com201704pj-21-pdf/

n.b. line breaks are intentional

Nova Normandy 3044

First there are the phantoms, wheeling around the up currents

in an early morning acid;

the sun shielded behind laser carved mountains.

Next the spray is smashed outward, and slides between cloud scraped

shards. The tones of cloud banks subdued, and I stink in all the guises of magnesium, and iron and chlorine gripped in Co2

it’s that persistence of sweetness and chalk leaping out and through me,

disturbing

and my water defined by the colour it takes from the

sky.

I'm just me, feeling stupid as usual, alone in detritus, at the dull edge

of debris, snapping in and out of reminiscences…

The fact is I have never felt part of anyone's landscape, and it's really

too late to do that now. I invent tricks, some allied to memory, some to

encase empathy; a familiar scent of nostalgia for times long past:

counting tadpoles

the six year old

saves the world

I try to stop the pareidolia, seeing faces in things, drag sea colours to

me, stroke manganese blue; save the once vibrant white around each rock;

and pull away from a wasted sky while it's

still flaming.

     gradually dimming the stars I adjust the astronaut in me

the dirty sheen of space suits

the smell of regolith as spent gunpowder

I'm being painted straight into the sun.

There is a case, when we return to Earth, that we need to bring vials like

planet-infused cologne from our distant outpost, or die of...

    other-homesickness.

escape velocity

the moons pull oceans

behind Apollo LXX

The simulation training, over at the slide of a hand, I know there is just hours to avert loss of life, not just on our side, but the others. 

I shudder that so many lives will be expended... 

...and select something from old records to sustain me, something to fight for later. 

In what can hardly be correctly termed as a ‘day’ any longer, or as night to be honest, despite the darkness outside and the intensity of lighting onboard...

        ...there is some messed up confused thing that denies twilight. But I calculate that dawn is happening somewhere back home…

war moon

the flickering of humans

at birdsong

Nova Normandy 3044 haibun©Alan Summers 2017

For information on the vast Invasion/Battle of Normandy during World War Two:

https://www.dday.org/history/d-day-the-invasion/overview.html

For more about haibun (prose+haiku): 

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/haibun-prose-with-haiku-writing-and.html

n.b. pareidolia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

War moon is a haiku that has previously been published:

war moon

the flickering of humans

at birdsong

First publication (Japanese newspaper):

Asahi Shimbun (Japan 2015)

the blood moon issue, Oct 2 for the eclipse of 9/28

Anthology Credit: 

Heart Breaths: Book of Contemporary Haiku 

ed. Jean LeBlanc ISBN: 9789385945038

Essay credit:

Haiku: The Art of Implication over Explication: http://livinghaikuanthology.com/poets-on-haiku/defining-haiku/2901-haiku-the-art-of-implication-over-explication-by-alan-summers.html

Under the Basho Poets' Personal Best (November 2015)

http://underthebasho.com/2015-issue/poets-personal-best/1595-alan-summers.html

Quote:

David McMurray:

“brilliant haiku”

escape velocity

the moon pulls oceans

behind Apollo 11

This haiku was part of the “Rocket Dreams” commission performed on U.K. National Poetry Day October 4th 2007 along with Space Historian Piers Bizony with selected NASA images, as part of World Space Week:

Below are a few of my standalone SFku that also featured in Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu, Kyoka, Haibun & Haiga Scifaiku feature Issue 21 (March, 2017) 

ed. Steve Hodge

sharkskin shoes

the whisper of nanobots

in his breath

gun-ship hues

the different spellings

in alphabet spaghetti

fifth kind encounter

humans replace crows

as an idiom of murder

n.b. Perhaps it’s time we stopped saying a "murder of crows":

http://www.audubon.org/news/no-its-not-actually-murder-crows

winding sheet

the slow egress

of android Fred

the smell of old white

everything is replicated

in me

microwave meals

the childbot spins itself

into rainbow splatter

sunflower forest

a half-human climbs

into van Gogh

Previously published but reproduced in Prune Juice thanks to editor Steve Hodge:

the narrow roads

in parallel universes

a butterfly sneezes

Television credit:

NHK World TV feature - 

Europe meets Japan - Alan's Haiku Journey

(September 2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VS36AGVI6s

http://area17.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/europe-meets-japan-alans-haiku-journey.html

Anthology Credit: 

Yanty’s Butterfly: Haiku Nook Anthology

ed. Jacob Salzer and the Nook Editorial Staff (March, 2016)

ISBN-10: 1329915410 ISBN-13: 978-1329915411

https://jsalzer.wixsite.com/yantysbutterfly

double thumbs

the supplicant’s throat opens up

its tattoos

Award credit: 2nd Prize, Presence SciFaiku Contest (1998)

***

Please enjoy the whole Prune Juice issue of both present time senryu and future senryu and an essay called The Dark Side of the Moon: The Art of Writing Scifaiku by Deborah P Kolodji 

https://prunejuice.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/prune-juice-issue-21-now-available-httpsprunejuice-files-wordpress-com201704pj-21-pdf/