Three Miscellaneous Haiku by Dennis Lange

Image via Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

Call the Marines

Things exist,
That aren’t for sissies –
Like old age.

——————————

 

 

 

 

 

Early, Slow Evolution

No clotting –
I’m bleeding to death;
Need QUICK change!

——————————–

Likewise, The Human

The blood leech
Taking, as if due.
Never gives.

——————————–

* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/

——————————–

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2011.

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

If You Were Coming In The Fall by Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I’d count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

Read Full Post »

For Ang (Angie) by Dennis Lange

        For Ang (Angie)

If I write of orange, the fruit,
   And know there are no rhymes
For that cursed word, the poet’s bane,
   I know frustration’s times.

When of color orange I write,
   The problem still occurs.
It’s irritating to a bard,
   Like sitting on some burrs.

And so you’ll notice my neat trick
   Above, I put the orange
Within the line, not at the end –
   Except when it’s for Ang.

——————————————

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2011.

Read Full Post »

The Man With The Hoe by Edwin Markham

          The Man With The Hoe

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this –
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed –
More filled with signs and portents for the soul –
More packt with danger to the universe.

What gulfs between him and seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Thru this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Thru this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings –
With those who shaped him to the thing he is –
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

Read Full Post »

Three Miscellaneous Haiku by Dennis Lange

 

A Losing Proposition

Las Vegas,
What happens there, stays –
Your money.

———————————–

I’ll Not Watch

Unafraid
To watch Fear Factor –
But, too gross.

———————————–

The Organized Man

Wife’s insists,
Grocery, bucket:
List of lists.

———————————–

The picture is by lasvegaslover via Wikipedia.

———————————–

* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/

———————————–

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2011.

 

Read Full Post »

Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

           Love’s Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
   And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
   With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
   All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle,
   Why not I with thine? –

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
   And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
   If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
   And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
   If thou kiss not me?

——————————————

The picture is mine, taken at the Rose Garden in Tyler, Texas.
http://www.cityoftyler.org/Visitors/RoseGardenCenter/tabid/168/Default.aspx

Read Full Post »

The Creek Below by Dennis Lange

          The Creek Below

On hill I perch, and look across –
A creek runs down below.
It’s hidden by the houses built,
By trees that upward grow.

This morning I heard sirens howl
Like wolves that move to prey,
But these had savior hopes at heart –
All four that came my way.

They did not come as far as where
The creek runs down below
On high, I watched them disappear,
Between some houses go

Two police and one fire truck
An ambulance – lights glow.
I wondered in my heart of hearts:
What creek runs down below?

Does it run red with someone’s blood?
Is it by anger fed?
Does it run wild with fear and woe
Is anguish at its head?

We realize, of sirens, lights,
That they with sorrow go.
And on this day, in unknown way,
Its creek runs down below.

——————————————-

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2011.

Read Full Post »

The Sonnet by Richard Watson Gilder

What is a sonnet?  ‘T is the pearly shell
   That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
   A precious jewel carved most curiously;
   It is a little picture painted well.
What is a sonnet?  ‘T is the tear that fell
   From a great poet’s hidden ecstasy;
   A two-edged sword, a star, a song – ah me!
   Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.
This was the flame that shook with Dante’s breath;
   The solemn organ whereon Milton played,
   And the clear glass where Shakespeare’s shadow falls:
A sea this is – beware who ventureth!
   For like a fjord the narrow floor is laid
   Deep as mid-ocean to the sheer mountain walls.

Read Full Post »

Three Bird Haiku by Dennis Lange

Image via Wikipedia

 

Roadrunner

Brazen bird
Seems so unafraid –
Knows his speed.

—————————-

Eating at Sonic

A grackle
Dipping a morsel,
Rain puddle.

—————————-

The Necessary Lesson

Who taught birds
To lay eggs in nests –
Not flying?

—————————-

* The haiku I write are lines of 3-5-3 syllables instead of 5-7-5.

See Haiku article here for explanation, if needed: https://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/haiku/

—————————-

© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2011.

Read Full Post »

When I Am Dead, My Dearest by Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,
   Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
   Nor shady cypress tree;
Be the green grass above me
   With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
   And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
   I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
   Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
   That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
   And haply may forget.

Read Full Post »