Your Garden

Your garden
had roses,
some orchids,
white jasmines
and thick shrubs
of santan.

My childhood
spent time there --
plucked some buds,
played with bees,
bathed in
lighter rains,
suntanned in
gentler heats.

Days have aged
quite too soon;
Years have passed
quite uncouth.

Now, grasses
squatted on
bare patches.
The flowers,
they're all gone.

And you, sir
of poor sight,
thinner skin,
weaker knees,
tend the earth
growing rocks.

Three-syllable poems

While I was reading a snippet of Takuboku Ishikawa's bio, the Japanese tanka master, I was amused at the idea of how his poems expressed their emotions and ideas as precise as the poet intended them to be in only three lines.  Much like its predecessor, the 5-7-5 syllabically arranged haiku, tanka attempts to capture that unique, universal human experience as concise as it possibly can.  Based on my observation (and anyone can school me on this), tanka appears to be the free verse form of haiku because it doesn't follow the 5-7-5 pattern that  haiku is well known for.

Inspired by the Japanese, I toyed with the idea of applying restrictions to some of my poems too.  Maybe I would publish a book if there's a sizeable amount of these beginning to loiter on my desk or in this blog for your entertainment and scrutiny.  And so in the manner of Gwendolyn Brooks' "we real cool" poem (Selected Poems: 1963), I came up with these three-syllable poems. 

Mind you, I actually wrote the first poem ten years ago where Mother Nature plays a very big role as the source of my inspiration.  I did some revision in order to fit the structure I wanted for it.    As for my second poem, it's something I wrote just recently.  I did not apply rhyming schemes as of yet because I'm not that much of an expert in doing it. So pardon if they're not quite musical sounding as I'd want them to be.  :-)


Stream

Clear water,
calm water,
flow silent
and smoothly
by the banks
around stones
under soles
of my shoes.

Cool water,
hushed water,
sing to me
your secrets
as shadows
of this world
flow in space
without sound.





   ....




Twenty-two

Twenty-two,
gun tucked well
in his old
underwear.
Quite a job,
scum career
learned with friends
since age twelve.

Dark, his friend,
true comrade,
covers him
pretty well  --
eyes hunting
leather bags,
gold bracelets,
new smartphones,
back pockets
bulging with
thick wallets.

Very hungry
hyena
on the prowl,
looking for
quick money,
waiting at
corner streets
in this city
where lampposts
for a long,
long, long time
never lit.