More Haikus and Tankas

NB. All of these have appeared on my facebook feed over the past week or so.

A HAIKU AND A TANKA ABOUT CATS AND KITTENS

(I)

Reflected in love
Love shines beyond words in us
Looking at the rain.

(II)

Counting the raindrops
The Kitten taps the window
In a soft flurry
Following your piano
Duetting by the soft rain

SAILING THE STORMS HOME 

Restless on the sea
The storms rage higher, higher
And with it your hopes.

A FREAK OF NATURE 

skipping over roofs
the rain misses our garden
and only soaks theirs

INVISIBLE LOVE 

Even at midnight
The waves climb the barriers
Reaching to the stars

LOST IN A FOREST IN PITCH DARKNESS AT MIDNIGHT

slowed down to silence
at midnight in the forest
even the birds sleep

MOVING FROM ONE FORM TO THE OTHER 

counting syllables
if you add a few more words
a haiku could be
easily be a tanka
or possibly a sonnet

MOVING ONE TO A NEW CHALLENGE 

When closing one door
another always opens
until it doesn’t.

CHILDHOOD

Like a old bus tick-
et my childhood is lost
in another life.

SUFFERING IN THE HEAT 

Fumbling for change
an elderly man tuts im-
patient in the heat.

THE MORE YOU WAIT 

Trembling under
the bridge, your arms get heav-
ier the more you wait.

TANKA FOR NATIONAL EXPRESS 

Leaving us stranded
We take refuge in the bus
Station no where near home
When national express lets us
Down for the second time today.

HAIKU FOR NATIONAL EXPRESS

Translucent, your mood
gets worse the more late you
are told your coach is.

CHANGING SCENES

Yesterday the light-
ening was in the east but now
Is instead the west
Devoured by the horizons
And the plum scented breeze.

Michael John Holme - I am

How does a writer confirm? There is a argument I’ve read somewhere that the beginning of all writing in whatever form is a attempt not to confirm with everything else they have read as well as a homage to their favourite writers. Certainly in my case when I started writing poetry properly say 10 or 11 years ago, I was obsessed with Hugo Williams’s haunting poetry book about affairs ‘Hugo’s Rain’ or any number of Paul Auster’s books which I’ve read listed somewhere else as “In many cases by the names of characters who appear in more than one novel, but above all by their abstraction and ambiguity and by their intertwining themes: the role of chance and coincidence and the unstable nature of identity”

Michael John Holme’s new book ‘I am / Conforming by nonconformity’ is of course nothing like Paul Auster or Hugo Williams but I think does in its own way talk about unstable nature of identity. In this book, Michael as a author argues that unique differences, ironically iron us which talks about identity in a somewhat difference way.

In this all too short little collection of a little over 40 pages, Michael talks about choices or as his wife says at the end of this book there are too many choices nowadays which I think back to the 1980s when I was growing up back at school everybody used to get the same seven inch single, listen to the same music, and as the late 1980s beckoned the dreaded flares (Thankfully there is no pictures left now of those horrible days – lol). 

It would be wrong of me to say to rush out and buy this book as I rarely write reviews to tell you to go and do such things, but Michael’s book is a book is almost a expectation to the rule as it almost like he wants to look at life in a different way to the fragmented nature of the way society is nowadays and reject getting what he calls Achilles Heels slowing you down with your life. 

I certainly didn’t agree with all of what he said, but it made me think and therefore in my own may will keep encouraging me to keep confirming by nonconformity. 

Fascinating stuff. 

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/michael-holme/i-am/paperback/product-4jnqzn.html

Amanda Steel - Ghost of Me (Review)

Amanda (my partner) has had a great review published on his recent book 'the ghost of me' on youtube above. Have a look, it's excellent

Haikus, haikus, haikus

(Picture by Victoria Mironenko)

Recently, I have been writing haikus on a daily basis, here are the first 8 or so, each done as a reaction to the day really.

Near Sunset

Clenching the fence

The clouds look nearer and nearer

When the sun goes down.

The Storm

Fading into the light

The scream of the wind pushes

You over then your car.

Cover the flooding

Shrouded by the mist

River sounds rise on the breeze

Beside a cold stream.

Step into the past in dreams

Mistaking shadows for then

I went past your flat again today

Translating images for tears.

Drinking water by the coastline

Quenching my thirst on

The coastline, I knew if I dare

I would soon regret it.

A Metaphor for leaving

Leaving summer again

Leaves lift themselves skyward

Like birds flying south.

Long distance love affair on the beach

Love sprouts slowly

Between the sun and the moon

As a opaque clock.

A haiku about returning to the beaches

When it is safe there again

Picking up pebbles

You wonder how long before the dream

Becomes reality again.

Close the Door

Leaving your sadness behind

Your emotions mirror in the clouds

Until you close the front door.

Ocean in a Bottle - From Uranus to Neptune (New Album release)

From Uranus to Neptune is the new album from Ocean in a Bottle (aka me of course) carrying on with its epic journeys across Space and our Solar System itself.

Comprised of two epic, ambient drone tracks the album is a imaginative active journey on the outskirts of our solar system building new meanings to the coldness in its drone the further you fall into it.

Drawing comparisons with Tangerine meets Zoviet France at their most dissonant, this new album is not as much a study of two planets, but the loneliness in space the further you travel away from the sun and the sounds that drag onto what-ever comes next.

Can be streamed / downloaded from: https://xylemrecords.bandcamp.com/album/from-uranus-to-neptune

New album from Herk Harvey

A few years back, I did an album under the name of Herk Harvey called 'Land of Souls' in conjunction with my friend Carlos Felipe Parana, now after a slight delay our scond album 'This is our Guiding Voice' is now out and I love it mixing elements of my spoken word, my solo Ocean in a Bottle elements with post rock / noise rock taking you off in all kinds of directions.

Free download / stream available at:

https://herkharvey.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-your-guiding-voice