Friday, June 29, 2012

covered bridges


Echoing passage
Green moss shuddered quietude
Carriage scented past

Across the bridge leads to
recuerda mi corazon,
exclusive home of
Haiku My Heart


Covered Bridge
~Bing photo search

Sunday, June 24, 2012

noir bridge



"You owe me money"!
"I don't owe you nothing, fat man".
His luck ran out the moment he shut up right there at the slab edge of the obtuse reflecting lit bridge. The dead guys already sunk underneath with flooded bullet holes might've sighed and rolled their eye sockets knowing the boss hated being called fat. True to form the big man pistol-whipped Charlie's temple and he collapse. Still conscious, he felt the sting of an open wound. And he felt he'd better kill the fat man if he could manage to lift his numbing right arm inside his coat for his 25 caliber blue steel pea shooter. He tried to talk but service was temporarily down, try again later please.

"George said you was no good, and now you're gonna be no good dead", the huge man bellowed, his tiny eyes squinting beneath sunken layers of mash potato fat, the rim of his hat full of lard sweat. He kicked Charlie hard as a car sped past them over the bridge. The kick brought the bleeding man back from the edge of vertigo.

"I can give you two sticks of butter", Charlie's brain ordered his mouth to say as he pulled the little trigger at the big man's chest but misfired and pricked a hole in the shiny forehead, the monster wiping and seeing red on his hand, his eyes gradually becoming white heat spotlights of sheer terror, his mouth a silent scream cavern big enough for two sticks of butter. He back peddled and fell, rolling down the cement edge slow enough to gather moss, and he rested under the bridge over rancid water only dry in a span from his expensive black shoes up to the knees.

Mr. Welles smiled and re-lit his cigar, pleased at the continuous shot he imagined would look beautiful from the ten thousand dollar crane above.


film capture:
Orson Welles in Touch Of Evil

Saturday, June 23, 2012

to hearts of haiku two


Orphaned travelers
Stamped destination: Haiku!
Dear Postmistress Brooks


Celebrating two years of
Haiku My Heart
come as you are to
recuerda mi corazon

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

solstice

Summer and maximum tilt, we bow to King Orb. Vagabonds, invisible orphans, avoiding the heat in the shade under the bridge, bare feet dipped in receding coolness. Commerce rumbling like thunder above on the overpass, truckers with over the limit loads, heavy eyelids, on the lookout for radar men, thinking towards home. And the lonely on the longest day. On the creaking porch, thunder in the distance, a cool breeze signalling much needed rain. Reading and re-reading love letters from far away, her axis tilts at the speed of a slow waltz only for him, imagining closed curtains from the nosy Sun, bareness sprawled north by northwest on clean cool white linen.

Monday, June 18, 2012

I Know Where I'm Going



Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey.
A Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film.
From 1945.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

puddle



Merry pneumonia
Intoxicating downpour
Puddle stomping dance

Puddle(1952)
M. C. Escher


Saturday, June 16, 2012

the wayward wind

Sung by Zooey Deschanel


Friday, June 15, 2012

summer canyon


Graceful carved chasm
Untouched abandoned flowers
Narrow bending trails

Follow the dusty trail to
recuerda mi corazon,
exclusive home of
Haiku My Heart


The Grand Canyon
~Bing photo search


Monday, June 11, 2012

hidden treasures



He describes everything to her recovered from behind the false wall in the blue light beam of a flashlight, all breathless discoveries. They both look up as the staircase in another part of the house creaks under one confident heavy step, followed by a dragging foot. It's the latter that makes her shudder. 'I thought we were alone', she says aloud, her voice breaking. The creaking stops momentarily.

In the beam of the light:

Chosen first, an unsent love letter, skimmed with predictable prose and childish poetry, dry as a sand-baked brook petrified with cobweb roots. 'No wonder he hid it', he laughs nervously.

'And look here', he says admirably. 'The promise of a music composition, lovingly detailed, similar to a schematic for a machine that will set men aloft without wings'.

Next, and handled delicately: A long lost Will and Testament, crest in wax with a generation's coat of arms. 'Let's open it', she whispers. He shines the light across her profile, high cheekbone beauty from an age gone by. She smiles at him, and he promises himself he will kiss her hard some other time. 'It's only one sentence', his voice serious and low, in the unemotional tone of a coroner holding and inspecting a diseased heart:

In sound mind and body, I proclaim complete possession of mansion, stable, and all burdens herewith to my beloved.


And lastly: A dilapidated pocket diary with ponderous, dog-chewed pencil. The uneven footsteps begin again, louder, much closer, from the heights. She grasps his arm tight. He darkens the light and can hear her breathing hard. 'I'm not breathing hard', she whispers. 'We'll read this later then. Let's get out of here'.

Still Life (1670)
~Jean François de Le Motte

Sunday, June 3, 2012

salad undressed


It was a delightful evening - at first. I was seated between the local constable's niece, and the great-grandmother of the hostess. The dining room was sparsely lit only by candle with a soft reflecting glow from the candlelit burnt-crimson table cloth appropriate for the occasion with just enough dim light for me to see that the constable's niece was not pretty, the great-grandmother, adorned with a never-ending tiara with Salvador Dali-like figurines, was most likely near death (although she did whisper a zinger out of the dark about the servers should at least have miner's lights attached to their foreheads),and that my fork was to left of my green salad plate.

It was quiet mostly, the food was exquisite no matter the lighting, but at intervals there seemed to be sharp rebuts coming from the opposite end of the table. I must tell you there were people seated late at the other end that I did not meet upon arrival to Willow Manor - one individual under a felt black-hooded cloak was swiftly admitted as brief and vanishing thunder arose, the Hostess shutting windows with all her might as violent wind rolled the Manor curtains, his maladjusted shadow was all I could see if I squinted - so I cannot account for the pithy rebuts that floated our way, some that made the constable's niece either hiccup, choke back tears, or interrupted her battle with a stubborn hunk of gristle.

Here is what I heard in that dark manor, Dear Reader, and it is for you to form your own conclusions, as I can neither make heads, serrated edges, or tails:

"...toupee like brown cabbage..."
"...perhaps the vegetable gentleman would honor us..."
"...now what are you doing with those purple grapes?.."

And the most forceful that made the old woman shudder...
"...Heavens! stop playing with your food!.."

Three days later I encountered the gracious Manor Hostess at a roadside vegetable stand with canopy sprung up across the street from the boarded-up filling station that used to sell the only yellow Moon Pies within a four hundred mile radius. The roadside stand had no Moon Pies. Turning to go, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the Hostess standing over an old wheeled carriage with a cinder block foundation, finger-tips of her right hand to lips, a Tiffany egg tomato in her left, inspecting the finely misted local vegetables, a third more swollen than store-bought, with the undecided air of a lover of books reading and re-reading a passage over and over as though interrupted by a loud talker. I quietly touched her arm. She turned and we embraced for a moment, the tomato oozing juice between us. And then she laughed as she exclaimed apologetically that she did not know who I was. When I told her I was at the opposite end between the beautiful niece of the constable and her charming great-grandmother, she began a most remarkable story about ten bottles of salad dressing that disappeared from her kitchen with the constable diligently on the case.


work of art by Klaus Enrique Gerdes

Friday, June 1, 2012

Marilyn on her birthday


"I restore myself when I'm alone."
~Marilyn Monroe
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