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:
For more about haibun (prose+haiku):
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)
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":
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)
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
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
