*This library is in no way connected to the HSA
Robert D. Wilson's
Robert D. Wilson's
Over 3 decades of
Haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, haiga, and free verse Performance Poetry unlike anything you've read before.
Uplift Svetlana Marislov
as she battles an aggressive
brain cancer.
Her name means LIGHT
and we need more light in
this world.
the softness
of petals treading
dreams
robert d. wilson
nature, the dance
of echoes . . .
the song of silence
painting canyons
share with me
a breath speaking
petals
where to sit
in a storefront window
housing
mannequins on
leave from their senses
stupid duck . . .
sitting on a tree limb
with wrens
tomorrow,
a tree sculpted
with words . . .
waiting for leaves
placed between pages
a hard rain . . .
the hollow song of
bamboo flutes
is this the
song the wind sings
when waves crash . . .
and dreams fill a
young girl's pail?
and you . . .
painting umbrellas
with noah
rise child,
from mother's womb;
breathe deeply . . .
grasp the light reaching
into your heart
from a small
hut, a loom spinning
moonlight
cement blocks . . .
a spring i'm not
quite sure of
I too
have lived alone,
speaking to
the inanimate
like good friends
red moon . . .
sharing my walk
with a dragon
morning walk . . .
i look for snipers
in a world
lit by candles
always burning
my wife's
afraid of you, mouse . . .
mid-winter
for hours
she stared at a
grave stone
talking to bones
that whispered
i look for
her outside my head . . .
sipping spring
this morning
a gravestone asked
me to find
its rightful place
in a daydream
floating trash . . .
push bubbles under
a vendor's store
i felt safe this
morning walking
past gravestones . . .
the morning sky
half gray, half blue
mother, was
that you last night,
patching clouds?
like the wine
i can't drink, your
breath speeds past
me, leaving words
i reach out for
my wife sleeps,
swimming in the
echo of water
long journey . . .
ashes of the
burning hut
clasp hands with those
who lived there before
upside down,
star gazing between
your legs
the smell of
a dead mouse in
our room; the
faerie tale i
dreamt in 3-d
the dirt on
my feet write haiku . . .
spring dreams
the flat sound
of a bargirl cursing . . .
in the
echoes caught between
heavy traffic
take me, leaf,
above the wheat grass
smile of autumn
i forgot
the leaves floating
past me
are only dreams
painting memories
bright fish?
am i too only
a winter dream?
like a wren
beating dawn with
her wings . . .
your song an odd
one smoothing stones
the scent of
darkness between a
wintry dream
she sees spring
weave itself through
gray clouds . . .
pink baby rats waiting
for the lizard's tongue
watching
rose petals struggle . . .
sunday morning
is it time
for me to give back
to the earth
the clouds in my chest
dancing with words?
can spring paint dreams
on a young boy's chest?
muddied feet
how can it
be, darkness sculpting
dreams into
into tin dragons
dipped in sewage?
like human
candles, the stars scraping
darkness
robert d. wilson
©2011
cherry blossoms . . .
their little ones!
their little ones!
When I was in Vietnam in 1968, widows of fallen soldiers came into Saigon to
work as bargirls.
and extended family a good life.
Boating upriver
into a dream saved
for nights like this,
when alice sets
fire to wonderland
All of us stationed in Dong Tam at some time or another were assigned to river patrol. This entailed navigating narrow, brown water river ways in Vietnamʼs Mekong Delta through dense vegetation, partially obscured villages, and blind turns. We knew we being watched. If we passed it was impossible to ascertain if the villagers we were for or against us. The enemy didnʼt wear uniforms. Most of the time, these forays were uneventful. Sometimes, when we least expected it to, all hell would break loose, tossing us into the bowels of a dragon mirroring Danteʼs Inferno. Flame throwers belching fire; flashes of light; tracers; automatic gunfire, mortars; shrapnel; blood; out-of-control heartbeats, interwoven with the scent of death. While some of my friends in America were living the good life: cruising the boulevard, surfing, attending concerts, dancing, dating, and working towards goals, was in a jungle on the other side of the planet dancing with Alice
in the Wonderland Amusement Park.
elephant grass . . .
a gnat whispering,
“youʼre next”
I remember the wisps of air shooting past me
like gnats as if it were yesterday. Only it was
38 years ago and I was an 18 year old sailor
serving my country on a small base in the
Mekong Delta region of the former Republic of
South Vietnam in a war that would change my
life forever.
endless summer
a shadow pretending
to be a god
We fought a war in a country we knew
little to nothing about. South Vietnam
was not in our high school textbooks.
And there was no Discovery Channel
my peers and I to exotic cultures. We
were, in essence, the personification
of Robert Hienleinʼs A Stranger in A
Strange Land, introducing a poor
country ravaged by a thousand years
of war, corruption, and military
dictatorships, the people of this
Southeast Asian country wanted to
be saved and delivered to the promise
land theyʼd heard abouts in the news
and entertainment media.
American soldiers were looked upon
as saviors by many Vietnamese people.
were the embodiment of the life theyʼd
dreamed of. Many naively thought
weʼd win the war and turn their country
into a miniature United States. We
were not saviors, however, and we
did not transform their countryʼs
economy into one like ours. And we did not
win the war.
Bowing to political pressure in America,
our Armed Forces deserted the South
Vietnamese people, leaving in their
wake a bloodbath for those who
supported our country and the
dictatorship weʼd helped place into
power and supported.
We returned
home from the dragon to
a new war . . .
students killed by men
trained for vietnam
How can i forget the day I disembarked from an airliner at Travis Air Force Base, seeing the U.S.A. for the first time in almost a year. Vietnam was behind me now, or so I thought. My buddies and I were given 48 hours of shore leave before we had to return to Treasure Island Naval Base below the Oakland Bay Bridge.
We went to the cheapest hotel we could find in one of the roughest neighborhoods in San Francisco. We headed for a bar
that was darker than hell, or perhaps, it was the regurgitation of Dante who'd had his filled of hell. A man was beating a woman on the floor and I was advised
tomind my own business or risked being stabbed, It was a Black bar and I was the only White guy. I didn't drink back then, which was an embarrassment to my buddies, and ordered a soda. Eyes rolled. If they'd sold opium, hash,or weed, I would have partaken in a microsecond.
That night we checked into our rooms. Rated triple ZZZ. The rooms smelled of urine and a cheap ammonia spray. We smoked a joint (we'd pirated some home) and fell asleep for 25 hours.
We rarely slept a full night in Nam, and when we did, it was a light sleep, never knowing when we'd be attacked. Unless you've been in a war, you have no idea what a soldier experiences even if you watch every was movie made. War is reality. Screens face seats and boxes of popcorn smothered with butter.
Later that night, we went to the Fillmore Auditorium, where we heard was the place to for good music and a hip time.
Before I shipped over to the Mekong Delta, Nancy Sinatra was singing, These Boots Are Made For Walking.
The Fillmore was Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, a circus of this and that
emceed by the Phantom of the Opera.
Walls were melting, people were melting,
a thousand silent movies draped over Janis Joplin and Big Brother and The Holding Company, jugs of red mountain wine passed from hand to hand laced liberally with LSD, weaving through a
crowd that looked like toons trying on outfits in a movie studio costume room on speed.
Girls were dancing ecstatically, some without tops, Dali's brush dripping like a young stud's wet dream, in and out of the chards of lights going this way and that, undulating satyrs in an asylum, the cha cha cha of Hidy Hidy Hi, Hidy Hidy Ho,
and the cops stood by, enhaling the thick cloud of cannabis.
America had changed. It'd be a couple of days before we discovered how much.
Pray for Svetlana, Lisa, and Kirsten
*This library is in no way affiliated with the Haiku Society of America
