gateway haiku

Gateways, Lakewood Cemetery near Lake Calhoun, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 2008. Spring blooms in Babyland, near the Chinese Community Memorial. Photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

white-belled bleeding hearts
spring sweeps through silent gateways
cemetery pause

-posted on red Ravine, Friday, May 9th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
 

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PRACTICE - Birth Order - 15min

Yes, I’m a firstborn. With all the flaws, rights, privileges, and responsibilities that go with being a firstborn. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Hmmm. JFK? No, it was Peter Benjamin Parker. Spider-Man.
Maybe it should read, “With great responsibility comes great power.” Either way, there is an ethical piece, a balance between burden and privilege.
Firstborns [...]

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Virgin Mary Sightings

Mother Mary as in a Dream, Raton, NM, photos © 2008 by
ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Last Wednesday afternoon I found myself in one of the best spots I could imagine, with my parents and oldest sister, and in the company of my beloved grandparents and best-ever uncle. We were in the cemetery in Raton, New Mexico, [...]

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pray for gas haiku

Pray for Gas, religious statues inside the stone pillar for the gas price sign at a gas station in northern NM, photos © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

stop the wind, please stop
war, drought, hunger, judgment
drop the price of gas

nuestra señora
santo niño atocha
break us free from oil

exxon, conoco
profit from the rest of us
prisoners of war

4-plus [...]

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Beginnings — April Mandalas

       

 

April draws to a close in a few hours. Though it snowed last Saturday, the light of April’s last day is clear and blue. The front yard is bursting with new life:  erratic shoots of thick, green grass, day lilies skyrocketing out of tender wet ground, red-stemmed dogwood buds, one purple bloom in the [...]

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Goodbye, Big Bear, Little Sky

In Bloom, wisteria blooming in the mid-April spring before
the hard freeze, photos © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

My Uncle Bear died yesterday. I was at my daughter’s horse show when I got the call from Mom. Dad was crying too much to tell me himself.
I wonder what it’s like to lose a younger sibling. [...]

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The 1970’s — What Was America Reading?

          
Minerva, 1889 - 1890, Roman goddess of poetry, music, wisdom, and warriors (Greek, Athena), bronze sculpture by Norwegian American artist, Jakob H. F. Fjelde, downtown Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
 
 
The first black hole was discovered in the same decade that Star Wars was released (and not by Columbo, [...]

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PRACTICE: The 7 Deadly Sins - 15min

All day long I put off writing about sin. I wonder, would I think more about sin if I were sinning? I’m not kidding. I believe that if I were plotting to murder, sin and sin’s consequences would be on my mind.
I wonder if murderers really do confess to priests. And if they do, if [...]

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PRACTICE – The 7 Deadly Sins – 10min

Of the 7 Deadly Sins, I find Lust and Wrath to be the most harmful to humanity. That may say more about me, than it does humanity. Lust to excess leads to unseemly, crass actions. I am stunned by news programs where a bait is placed on the Internet and some guy shows up at [...]

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Pablo Neruda’s Love Of Things

Oda a las cosas
by Pablo Neruda

Amo las cosas loca,
locamente.
Me gustan las tenazas,
las tijeras,
adoro las tazas,
las argollas,
las soperas,
sin hablar, por supuesto,
del sombrero.
Amo todas las cosas,
no sólo
las supremas,
sino
las
infinita-
mente
chicas,
el dedal,
las espuelas,
los platos,
los floreros.

Ay, alma mía,
hermoso
es el planeta,
lleno
de pipas
por la mano
conducidas
en el humo,
de llaves,
de saleros,
en fin,
todo
lo que se hizo
por la mano del hombre, toda cosa:
las curvas del zapato,
el tejido,
el [...]

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Three Teenage Girls: 1956

American Life in Poetry: Column 160
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I’ve mentioned how important close observation is in composing a vivid poem. In this scene by Arizona poet, Steve Orlen, the details not only help us to see the girls clearly, but the last detail is loaded with suggestion. The poem closes with the [...]

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morada haiku

Morada Walk, Taos Mountain in the background, white
cross Georgia O’Keeffe painted, Taos, New Mexico,
January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo ©
2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

gusty April winds
ruffle brambled shoots of green
Spring bounds from behind

anniversaries
separate fiction from fact
squeeze light from the dark

photosynthesis
through veins of a single leaf
gives life to the world

-posted on red Ravine, [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - THE 7 DEADLY SINS

7, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Can you list the 7 Deadly Sins? I usually get to number 6 and fade out. I can never remember all 7. The 7 Deadly Sins began with Evagrius Ponticus as a list of 8 capital vices. A condensed version of the list [...]

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Sunday

Industrial Strength Clean, pen and ink on graph paper,
doodle © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

I went to a laundromat today
14 quarters per load
white towel with colors
it was my only white

Like the mom
and the boy
who likes to put the quarters
into the machine

They’re the only
whites in the place
Two women speaking
Spanish
sound like they’re
cussing out
the spin cycle

A black [...]

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The Art Of Ice (Art Shanty Projects)

The Face Of Winter, Medicine Lake, Minnesota, February 2008, photo
© 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

When photographer Peter Haakon Thompson came up with the Art Shanty Projects in 2003, he never meant for it to become a huge event. The original plan was to take a break from work, build his own ice shack, and [...]

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Labyrinth — March Mandalas

  

 

 

I’m cutting it close on the March mandalas! In a few hours, it will be April. Though you would not know it by the 9 inches of blizzard outside the window. The Great Round: Stage Three mandalas follow one of my favorite forms — the labyrinth.
These have been the most fun for [...]

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PRACTICE - Wind Moon — 20min

All is quiet in my home. I am staring out at wind rocking the trees. Mr. StripeyPants curls up on the wool blanket beside me. I connect to something wild in him. I’m reminded of my March practices – mandalas and writing about the moon. Where has she been hiding? I don’t remember seeing her this [...]

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A 40-Year Love Affair

By Teri Blair

Parkway Marquee, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

In 1989 the Academy-Award winning Cinema Paradiso was released. The Italian film takes place in a post-World War II Sicilian village, and chronicles the friendship of a young boy, Toto, and the town’s gruff but lovable movie projectionist, Alfredo. Toto [...]

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PRACTICE - Mess - 25min

The world is a messy place. My home? It is messy in spots, little corners, under the living room table, around the computer desk. It finds order when we clean. And returns to chaos again. I usually recognize an order to the chaos. I manage to find what I need. I’m staring out the window [...]

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The Name Game (What’s In A Name?)

I continue to pore through photographs and tapes of my trip to Georgia and South Carolina last summer.
“What’s taking you so long?” Monkey Mind yells from the wings (grabbing every opportunity to scratch his haunches).
“It’s a slow process, excavating the past,” I soberly reply. “Don’t rush me.”

Family history rises from the rich, black compost - memories, stories, [...]

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PRACTICE: Tattoos - 20min

What I know about tattoos I learned from D___. His entire right leg was tattooed, and most of his left leg. Both shoulders, all around his neck, most of both arms. His tattoos were serpents and Japanese letters and blues and purples, some red, beautiful tattoos, and I would examine them, lifting his leg while [...]

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PRACTICE - Tattoos - 20min

I thought about getting a tattoo. In my 40’s. I changed my mind at the last minute. It was going to be a lynx. Yeah, the puffy jowls that look like Kiev’s. When you brush her hair back, her face is thin and pointy like Chaco’s. But naturally, it’s wider at the edges than it [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - TATTOOS

 
 

Do you have a tattoo? Otzi the IceMan has 57 of them. His 5000-year-old body was discovered in 1991, on a mountain between Austria and Italy, by German tourists trekking the Oetz Valley. The IceMan is one of the best preserved Neolithic corpses ever found.
He was still wearing goatskin leggings and a grass [...]

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PRACTICE – Snow Moon (Total Lunar Eclipse) – 20min

The Full Snow Moon was bright, then blood red, the last Total Lunar Eclipse until 2012. There are many names for February’s Moon: Sleet Moon, Goose Moon, Coyote Moon. I even found a reference from the Sioux, Raccoon Moon. I thought of our resident raccoon. I bundled wool over exposed skin, stood outside in no [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - LIGHT AS A FEATHER

 

Let’s talk feathers. Light as a feather, feather in your cap, feathered pillows, feathered hair. I’ve been collecting bird feathers since 1984. I find them on long walks through the woods; I find them in the sidewalk cracks along city roads.
Feathers have been used in every culture since the beginning of time. In South American [...]

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Why It Won’t Matter To You That I’m Voting For Obama

  
Obama on stage, February 1, 2008, Kiva Auditorium, Albuquerque
Convention Center, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

I got a call yesterday from Mom. She wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama.
“He was good,” I told her. I went to see him speak on the economy, in an auditorium where I’ve seen George Winston, Joan [...]

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The Politics Of Primary Season 2008 (A Presidential Primer)

New Mexico To Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I’m not a very political person. I don’t follow politics, and haven’t since my more radical days in the 1970’s. But this year has been different. I’ve been energized and inspired by the candidates on both sides of the fence. [...]

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PRACTICE: Hair - 15min

I have brown curly hair. I am the only one in my family with curls. Not just waves, but corkscrew curls. People asked throughout my childhood: Who has curls in the family? The answer to strangers was: Her grandmother had wavy hair. To friends and one another, we joked: Her father was Zorro.
Zorro is what [...]

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PRACTICE - Hair - 15min

I can’t stand loose, grubby hair on the bottom of my socks. I either go barefoot, or wear slippers around the house. But I rarely go barefoot (tender feet). So we’re back to the slippers. My slippers are (were) Minnetonka Moccasins I had for the last, oh, probably, 20 years. They finally wore through at [...]

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PRACTICE: Martin Luther King - 15min

I don’t remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., not like Jim remembers. Jim was in 4th grade when Martin Luther King was assassinated. He says he remembers Walter Cronkite cackling over a black-and-white TV tube. I can picture the television, set in a blond wood console with long spindly legs. I can picture Jim’s dad [...]

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PRACTICE - Martin Luther King - 15min

I don’t remember Martin Luther King in 1962 or ‘63 when I was 8 or 9 or 10. I don’t remember him when I lived in the South. I must have been sheltered from all the strife and unrest that was going on during those years. I would not have understood.
I do remember him in [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - MARTIN LUTHER KING

Planting The Seed, Lightpainting Series, stained glass window, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

When I walked out into the sub-zero temperatures yesterday to warm up my car, a piece by NPR’s Enrique Rivera poured out of the Alpine radio speakers. Rubbing my hands together, and pulling the end of [...]

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What Is Your Totem Animal?

Baby Back, Baby the Snake active one day in mid-November 2007, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Last night at a friend’s birthday dinner, after we’d finished off the Nuts & Birds, curry chicken, wasabi shrimp, and several scoops of green tea ice cream, the question came up. What is your totem animal?
One person’s [...]

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PRACTICE: Circles - 15min

A part of me wants to draw this topic, doodle it in big loops and spirals. One of my favorite doodling games as a kid was to draw an organic shape, like an amoeba or a paramecium. Then I’d scoot my notebook to Carmen Chavez and she’d have to draw a face inside my shape. [...]

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PRACTICE - Circles - 15min

Circles, I’m popping circles into my mouth. I’m addicted to Trader Joe’s bucket of miniature chocolate chip cookies. I couldn’t figure out why they tasted so good. It was Liz who piped up, “Oh, it’s the butter…” when she read the label after dinner.
Circles in cubes, the rubber bottom of a stainless steel coffee cup, [...]

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