haiku – Page 2 – Pamela Helberg

Another month of writing haiku has sped by and here we are on the cusp of Spring—ready to launch a new season. I’ve continued to write a haiku a day for the Haiku room.
Magic happens there—a (virtual) room full of essential strangers share their innermost longings, secrets, feelings. A room full of strangers responds, supports, delights together. We draw strength from one another, courage, encouragement.

Inhale images
***mystical fermentation***
Exhale poetry

I attend haiku church
Words and syllables offered,
Received. Communion.

The haikus arrive
Droplets of oxytocin
Sacred addiction

The haikus I’ve written this month correspond to the work I’m doing with my therapist, the work I’m doing with my massage therapists (yes, you read that correctly, I have two massage therapists—each does amazing and unique work, each has succeeded in “fixing” me in ways that the traditional medical establishment could not).

She laid hands on me
Channeled a Divine spirit–
Broke through to my Soul

Opaque woman looks
Inward and finds her own light
Source, glows brighter now

My heart beats strong, true
Because of the scars woven
In, around and through

Without shadow I
am only that part of me
I let others see

Old prisons crumbling–
Bars and chains and rank darkness
Opening to light

Some have to do with my rich (hahahaha) inner life. Some with my love and my wife.

I see you seeing
Me and in that gaze I see
You. Deep reflection.

This heart’s fragile terrain
Has no natural boundaries
Travel gently here

Woman’s voice, but girl’s
Fears: Silence, ache, and longing
After all these years

All of them are gifts—some I work on for hours, others come to me in flashes. Occasionally I will wake up in the middle of the night with an idea or a fully formed poem. Sometimes I exchange haikus with friends and the alchemic interactions produce poetry I could never have made on my own.

Silence spirals up
Rising like the heat of a
Clarifying fire

I am bigger than
The box you’ve put me in. I
Can’t write on these walls.

I just meant to tug
that one thread, not to make the
whole thing unravel

Twenty one days to
Break a habit—to forget
You, sweet tendency

A few have to do with the creative process—writing and self doubt, which seem to go hand in hand.

I tamp her down–yet
she rises in me, demands,
aches, pens poetry

Shadow self writes and
I wonder how she wrested
Control of the pen.

Taking a haiku
Holiday–away from psy-
Ku hai-ology

Words fall from my tongue–
Spilt, dance upon this altar
Freely sacrificed

Peel words from my tongue
Thoughts stuck in my throat, silence
Masquerades as truth

We construct our own
Prisons whether by longing,
Desire, inertia

A single pebble
Tossed carelessly can create
Ripples of longing

Fragile, frangible
My heart’s porcelain terrain
Travel gently here

A few just have to do with life in general—living in the neighborhood, running, that sort of thing.

Early morning run
I can do anything for
one hour. Anything.

Chainsaws, wood chippers
Shattering this afternoon
A storm’s noisy toll

I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Turns out there are writing prompts for this daily blog posting event. Yesterday’s was Five Interesting Things About Me. I made a list, but I am so tired of Internet lists. I’m going to start with just one of my endlessly entertaining quirks, and hopefully, Dear Reader, your curiosity will be piqued and you will return tomorrow and thereafter.

Shall we begin with a haiku?

Your hands sweep across
My face—time moves so slowly
And life rushes past

I am pathologically on time. My wife, The Little Woman, shares my sickness. We arrive early for everything. Movies, appointments, ferries, interviews, coffee dates, events. I don’t know what drives TLW, but for me I can trace my punctuality to two things: a self-help/self-awareness/personal growth workshop I took many years ago and a previous marriage. I guess maybe people were trickling in late to the workshop and the presenter asked them how important the workshop was to them. If memory serves, they all answered that it was very important. Then why are you so late? She pressed. Traffic. Kids. Spousal issues—the answers varied. Then the workshop is less important than all those things, the presenter said. They protested. No. Not at all. Stuff happens. If the workshop were more important than all of those things, the presenter said, you would have been here on time.

They went round and round for awhile longer on this topic. I squirmed in my seat, hating the conflict I wasn’t even a part of. The upshot was this—we will make time to get to the things that matter to us on time. How important is that job interview? Is it important enough that you refuse to risk being caught in a traffic jam? Is it so important you will arrive the night before and get a hotel room to avoid being late? How important is teaching your class? Your livelihood depends on being on time. You make time to get there. How important is this workshop? She asked again. Light bulbs went on. Pennies dropped. Heads hung. The lesson was not lost on me. I internalized that lesson.

The other reason for my punctuality has a lot to do, I think, with having once been “married” to a woman who, given an extra twenty minutes, would paint a bedroom before we left for an event. Didn’t matter if we were going to friend’s for dinner or to a play at the university. She could squeeze an extra chore into any sliver of time, no matter how small. Ten minutes? She’ll weed whack the back yard. Fifteen? Give the dog a bath. I hated living like that. Hated arriving out of breath and with paint in my hair. Hated the stress.

Being early for things certainly has advantages. I can find parking. I generally don’t arrive to anything sweaty and disheveled. I get good seats. Sometimes I get in to my appointments early if no one is ahead of me, which gets me out earlier. Getting to movies early is particularly entertaining—TLW and I have sort of made a sport of watching people arrive and choose their seats. Generally it’s comical. Sometimes it’s annoying. Occasionally we will be in a virtually empty movie theater and someone will sit right in front of us. One time, when there were at least another 50 seats available a woman and her friend sat right next to TLW—right next to her. No one seat courtesy. Just bam, right there to share the armrest. That was a WTF moment. But sometimes getting somewhere too early is awkward. People aren’t expecting me. I have to sit in the car an uncomfortable amount of time. Time drags by. I worry and wonder if people think I’m casing their homes.

So, I’ve been trying to fine-tune my time management skills, looking for the sweet spot between being too early and being late enough to cause stress. I’ve been noticing how much time I waste waiting. Since I got my iPhone ‘lo those many years ago, waiting is rarely boring, but perhaps I’m spending too much time on LOLz when I could be a tad more productive. I can take an extra ten minutes to finish up a piece of writing or to rinse out the coffee pot or to stop for gas so the low-fuel light doesn’t go on. I’m not going to start a major remodeling project, certainly, but I could wrap up a few small tasks instead of monkey-minding my way through my Twitter feed or flipping through my Facebook posts. Yesterday, for example, I made myself sit until I finished my blog and posted it. I had plenty of time, but I had to force myself to stay in my seat. I knew my pending appointment was only a ten minute drive away, max. Even in Bellingham where we may as well just make the speed limit 20 on every single road because no one drives faster than that, ever, I could get there with time to spare. So I sat. I finished typing. I edited. I glanced at the clock. Still plenty of time. I copied. Pasted. Posted. Even with the slow Internet at the café my blog post showed up before I needed to leave.

I put on my jacket. Finished my tea. Bussed my table. And sauntered to my Jeep. I drove the speed limit all the way. And I still arrived ten minutes early. I guess there’s still some work to be done.