IN THE NAME OF LOVE
Inspired by titillating and tragic news headlines some time ago, I wrote the first two related tanka and posted them in the Summer Haiku Blog, a world-wide community of poets with the common love of the Japanese poetic forms. Then I added the third and fourth ones later after a similar headliner.
she gunned him
in his sleep
as she can’t bear
to share her lover
then she killed herself
mystery solved
he disappeared
only to admit later
he’s with his other love
living abroad
their vow of love
remains unbroken
to the very end
when both submitted
to euthanasia
she with terminal cancer
he with hale heart who chose
to die with her together
in a foreign hospital
sanctioning self immolation
While having dessert in a restaurant after a late lunch, I wrote these lines on the back of the sales receipt, fresh from the memory of the poems I wrote above.
Being a wordsmith that I am, my poetic persona meandered to a familiar magical and homey place where the past and the present mesh and time stands still. With just a bit of remembered lives or events, an avalanche of words spews out from nowhere and weaves themselves into a poem, like this one.
the entwined ivy
and blooming rose
reach for the sun
the entanglements
of forbidden love
the entwined
rose and ivy
hanker for the sun
the vicissitudes
of forbidden love
the entwined ivy
and blooming rose
reach for the sun
the entanglements
of forbidden love
Sketchbook, Vol. 4, No. 6,
November/December 2009
