Robert D. Wilson's
LOUSY MIRROR
A depository for Wilson's haiku, tanka,
haiga, haibun, and longer free verse
performance poetry.
a cluster
of vendors with
rotting teeth
wait out the rain . . .
snagging syllables
a short day . . .
a bald headed boy
raking stars
i look up
from my bed at
the stars
that are not there,
a rat in the rafters
deep morning . . .
arched backs eat
broken rice
the morning
the walls turned purple
God told me
to come back before
it was too late
stagnant water . . .
a bargirl drinks herself
to sleep
even here
in the rat's lair
a clump of
light to ride on
later in a dream
morning commute . . .
a woman cutting
fish heads
patches of
moss where rain water
flowed into
the homes of squatters
eating broken rice
nearing spring
the cries of fish in
the wet market
a warm day
she walks under an
umbrella
like the princess she
thought she'd become
the ulam
vendor on her day off . . .
cooking ulam
squatters stand
in mud buying
carrots for
tonight's topping
over broken rice
late afternoon . . .
and still no sun to
stay my dreams
it's like a
part of me took
LSD
and refused to
come out and play
listening to
a miles davis tape . . .
autumn moon
forty years
later in asia
i still hear
quiet feet wading
across rice fields
late night . . .
a momo dressed
in fatigues
laundry girls
drinking water
in dreams . . .
old woman have
between winters
brother paper . . .
fold me into
an egret
sentinels
of the dead, trees
bow to those
under candles
dancing with words
salient
night . . . a million
mute stars
is it right
for a male cat to
eat his young
in a back alley lit
with christmas lights?
refusing to be
a kigo, this spring . . .
flower in autumn
on the
river bottom,
fish fan
their eggs like sushi
chefs cooling rice
typhoon!
umbrellas slither
between vendors
the jeepney
driver buys a
cigarette
from a spectre
with missing teeth
autumn rain . . .
in his sleep he
sells peanuts
my wife
washes my body
carefully . . .
the moon tightening
her beaded belt
harvest moon . . .
lola buys two eggs
from a vendor
men walk down
the street with towels
on their heads
like zombies in
a bad movie
i talk to my
stuffed animals at the
moon's behest
if you knew
i talk to stuffed
animals
would you hang me
in an art gallery?
poor snail,
inching home to
be eaten
calm now
that her belly is
swollen, she
asks the stars to walk with
her across the rope bridge
northeast wind . . .
boys skip stones into
the carp's mouth
it rains
again like it does
every day . . .
your reflection
mixed with sewage
a bowl of
soup stirred with
autumn rain
if only you
were there to share
it with me . . .
the rain sculpting
clouds into egrets
clumps of clouds .. .
inside them, a man
sculpting blossoms
on my way
to the u.s. embassy,
i think of you
sleeping under a
table, chasing rabbits
old woman . . .
on your head, the path
of color
a new year
running from the
dragon . . .
my wife thinks
doesn't exist
a good friend . . .
quiet, reading
yam leaves
snakes peer
through dirty glass windows
at children . . .
borrowed from the
path of color
elm trees . . .
and youth turning
pages
it's as if
we'd never met . . .
and breast milk
was a cocktail
saved for circus clowns
my landlord
for the night,walls
that can't speak
across the
sea, my daughter
writes to
me about the
wind she set free
fresh mangos . . .
beside them, a woman
passed out
invisible,
this street beggar
whose eyes stare
past me into the
fullness of nowhere
anima . . .
a change in
the wind
there is no
room for anima
when the moon
sells peanuts on a
crowded street corner
moonless night . . .
the christmas they'll
never have
i stepped out
of a keinholtz painting
that laughed at
reality thinking
i could save the world
craving batchoy . . .
in a neighborhood
of none
i cannot
imagine buddha
using
kung fu to slaughter
jasmine petals
carry me
into a cloud dripping . . .
with dreams
i look up
at an eternity
painted with
stars, sprouting wings . . .
sensing a moth's lust
a butterfly . . .
the blossom
inside me
what to do
with the blossom
inside my
head, fluttering
like a butterfly
midnight slumber . . .
sowing stars that leave
no footprints
candles are
lit for me when
i long to
hear their voices . . .
amanogawa
sunrise?
typhoons are
light sleepers!
will loved ones
light candles and
talk to me . . .
when i'm out of breath
on a starless night?
swallowed by the
dragon in a dream
that wasnʼt a dream
One day I was cruising the boulevard, doing what other
American teenage boys do on weekend nights, my libido
on overdrive, listening to Jefferson Airplane, no thought
for tomorrow; cool and invulnerable; living a life far removed
from the nightly news.
The next day, I am disembarking from an airliner in Saigon,
the capitol of South Vietnam, dressed in fatigues, surrounded
by soldiers holding M-16 assault rifl es, the air unbearably hot
and humid, a world unlike anything Iʼd experienced. I was in
hell. The dragonʼs belly. A nightmare that would haunt me
for the rest of my life.
robert d. wilson
©2003
A haibun from my e-book, Vietnam Ruminations
*Anyone wanting a free e-book copy
of this book can contact me via
foamfish@gmail.com
FREE VERSE PERFORMANCE POETRY
"Powerful!"
For decades, I, Terry Busch, and several others belonged to a group called The Wordsmiths. We published The Mindprint Review, and performed our poetry monthly on stage, at universities, in saloons, bars, coffee houses, bookstores, on radio, and cable access television. It was a wonderful time in my life. I'd go on stage, and literally become the poems I read, sometimes accompanying myself paying the blues harp, sometimes with Jazz, and once, my late wife, Ileta, sang Angel Baby in the background. We were hot, we were cool and we had a blast! I feel that we were as were other performing poets of that time, the forerunners of the Poetry Slams.
Guernica
:Picasso's horse
writhes in agony
prophet of paint
cries
for an end to war
an end
to women crying in
the streets
children dead or dying
soldiers dying
husbands stilled
forever with plowshare in hand
the innocent always
die
Guernica's horse
war torn prophet
of
Picasso's breast
warns of
fascist minotaurs
socialist minotaurs
mythological "American Express" minotaurs
sitting comfortably
in
Corona Del Mar luxury suites
watching on TV
the dead warrior
the woman in flight/her house in flames
the woman with a dead child in her
arms
cry out in unmuted
terror and agony
Guernica
Picasso's prophet
on
loan to the museum of modern art
cries out
to
New York
The
State of Liberty
faded and chaffed
blind from too many flashbulbs
Rockefeller's New York
Chase Manhattan's New York
Bank of America's New York
televised New York
Time/Life's New York
WAKE UP!
heed Guernica's cry
the quivering cries of a thousand Nagasaki
mothers
holding their lifeless
children
the frightened cry of
Auschwitz
My Lai
Lebanon
the timeless cry
your heart cries if
you have one
dismembered children drained of life
float in your harbor on
cobalt telephone poles
of
apathy's making
robert d. wilson
©1984
"A strong poem!" Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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