peculations
and price of tomatoes
in the papers—
the evening fills out
with the croaks of frogs
on the street
two boys elbowing
each other
raising the steam
inside one raincoat
Shrikaanth Krishnamurthy
shrikaanth
I am a doctor from India living in England. A trained vocalist and a composer in Indian Classical Music, I write in several languages. My haikai writings appear regularly in reputed journals and anthologies, and have won prizes. A former editor of Cattails (senryu), and former proofreader for journals Cattails and Skylark, I am now the Editor of Blithe Spirit, journal of the British Haiku Society.
Hour 13- a haibun
Dream Come True
I am growing younger by the minute. So is everyone else; everything else. Whoa! Time is in reverse gear. The sun sets first and then rises. But no one notices it after the first day as they alternate anyway. Like repeating “maraa maraa maraa” endlessly. After a while, it just sounds like Raama. Or maraa, if you prefer.
prayer beads
the merry go round
of a prayer
Everyone is tickled silly, congratulating each other. The woman next door can hardly wait for the day she will be twenty. Twenty years to go back in time, if you were to believe that she is only 40. Maybe on mercury.
But hey, my sister is pregnant again. Only with the same baby she had two days ago. This is ridiculous. And I am not even thinking of what happened in the toilet.
I don’t want to be not born again. I want to live. I Want to Live! I WANT TO DIE!
Monday
the layers of warmth
in my good morning
Hour 12- A Hundred Words
what would I do
with a hundred words?
write you a letter?
a song in praise of you?
the beginning
of an epic?
an essay on beauty
pegged
to your gold standard?
if worth
were to be weighed
by quantity
and adherence to rules
surely this
would win a prize
fifty words
I have already reached
and so far
said nothing more
than when
I started this poem
and repetitions
do not count either
now I am sure
your are as befuddled
as I am
but if I were
to paraphrase all this
it would all
be said with my eyes
Hour 11- the swallowtail jig
writing a poem
to the background
of dawn chorus
the rush of a train
through lush fields
Hour 10- colour haiku
your smile
slipping a rainbow
into my dreams
Hour 9- a word sonnet
so
bravely
riding
a
gossamer
to
worlds
unknown
not
my
dream
just
a
spider
Hour 8- a Golden Shovel and a nonet
This is both a golden shovel and a nonet
a mere brush of your hand and I
was gullible enough to think
we were a pair, you and I
the sweet remarks you made
hid the bitter you—
time to wake up
stop messin’
with my
head
The line I have used is from Sylvia Plath’s “mad girl’s love song”
Hour 7- inside out
teeth chattering
I wring the day
out of my clothes
only an hour
to walk all the way
from aye to nay
Hour 6
A haiku/ senryu sequence
music concert
the room abuzz
with mosquitoes
an exquisite phrase
not even one clap
is for the artiste
keeping the tala
an offbeat catches
my ear
Hour 5- remembering the magic
a cherita
our family home on sale
a towel to protect me
from a few decades of dust
I climb into the attic
to try and salvage
a memory or two