- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
On Richard Gilbert's 61st birthday
baby boomers rattle their sixties
chanting 'amandla!'
baby boomers ski
the downhill slope
sexagenarians shooting blanks
moonstruck
I become
its alibi
time-tide
no turning back
on itself
Is this the way the world ends?
Is this the way the world ends?
Is this the way the world ends?
Not with a bang but with a boomer.
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Glaucoma
glaucoma—
a seer at odds
with vision
light
strains the edges
of itself
astride dreams
horizons gather
to the flame
under the weather
my eyes acclimatise
to their ends
climate change
I feel the earth
for a pulse
optic pressure—
vision swells up
in words
measured—
the range of vision
and words
all dark!
between stars
my light
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
see the light
in the undergrowth
where we dream
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Hiroshima - 70th Anniversary of the Bombing
Hiroshima
in flames of being
here and now
is this light?
a little boy's weight
on the wide island
rain fills
the space that was
once yours
on ones so silent
the full impact
of a scientific yes
silence falls
like a mushroom
from the Enola Gay
hollowness
rings out loud
from the sky
i am
become death
atom by atom
mumbling sky
the build up of heat
to come
a true man
without the sounds
of agony
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Nagasaki - 70th Anniversary of the Bombing
(dedicated to Kaneko Tohta)
Nagasaki
where east meets west
treading fire
a fat man
implodes in light
the long cape
ground zero
a white wormhole
opens at mass
after light
dark stains of martyrdom
on stone walls
seared through
faces and forms
at worship
a fumi-e
in deafening silence
stomped under
kakure kirishitan
keloid hands break open
the bread of words
in light
the death of martyrs
reborn
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
after rain
pavements come clean
on where they led
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
deep-sea diving
moon-struck lovers enter
each other's shadows
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
childhood home
I left my otherness
within you
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
late snow
for a change the change
is seasonal
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
haiku at dusk
my calculated foray
into silence
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
long silences
the circadian rhythm
of cicadas
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Nagasaki bombing anniversary
fat man,
in your rain of terror
we rust
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
turning leaves—
that to which I cling
stripped bare
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
night goddess—
a fantail's fanbase
grows less
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
when writing haiku
must I learn to eschew
rhyme too?
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
spring haiku—
images more and more
sound wordless
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
primal scream!
this too, infected
with words
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
moonless night—
the distance that remains
of climate change
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
somewhere in these words an absence lives on
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Truth
the statement in the next line is false
the statement in the next line is false
the statement in the previous line is false
rumours
of evanescence
persist
underterred
dead sea carrion
stilling stars
testament
of a foreign will
the flea bite
holding on
to its becoming
a chrysalis
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
ice melt—
my descendants snorkel
down main street
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
the wind tonight
becomes a symphony
of native chants
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
wretched poet
seeding fathomless depths
with shallow words
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
mass war grave—
a universe bleeds out
of dulled dreams
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
wisps of valley mist
yield to the sun and are lost
to sky, to emptiness—
tell me again mayfly
just what has been the point?
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
El Niño—
mother earth brings us
to our knees
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
spring's early shoots—
brother sun, sister rain
reawaken me
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
fingering humus
again the innocence
I thought I once had
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
mate tea—
my first love reborn
and her lips
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
oatstraw tea—
the taste of reaping
what was sown
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
petal shower—
the words I’ll never write
sounding distant
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
planting alone
in this too
I am spring rain
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
making hay
while the sun still shines—
Wall Street zombies
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Garden
garden god
in-breathing the smell
of humus
awake with words fall from the soil
re-
membering the dust
I am
down with worms
fingering the cling
of the earth
eventide
life-seeding the garden
with little deaths
native chant—
a kumara quickens
in the void
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Perseids
Perseids—
ashtral projection
of an urn
ever now
the underbelly
of stardust
redshift
stardrift
lightsift
Southern Cross—
my albatross
of exile
echo-light
in meteoric fall
of darkness
in faith
the cloud cover
of doubts
down-fall
light's burn-up
in coming
sibilant
the background resonance
of silence
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Examen - A Lament
finger shadows—
silent assassins
grip my pen
bomb victim,
your otherness
ends now
on deathrow,
your otherness
ends now
storekeeper,
your otherness
ends now
black driver,
your otherness
ends now
unplanned babe,
your otherness
ends now
handicapped child,
your otherness
ends now
terminal patient,
your otherness
ends now
foreign pig,
your otherness
ends now
docile lamb,
your otherness
ends now
enemy ours,
your otherness
ends now
tangata whenua,
your otherness
ends now
brother, sister,
your otherness
ends now
future life,
your otherness
ends now
mother earth,
your otherness
ends now
and thou
no breath at all?
thou'lt come no more
never,
never, never, never,
never more!
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
superannuitant
the pitter patter
of little feats
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
In Transit
I am
still welling up
within me
I am
without
object
I am
the all left out
of equations
I am
misting up behind
the I was
I am
a conjugal visit
of being
I am
the night sky without
a word
up to
my ears in
I am
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
digital dewfall—
haiku via hypertext
transfer protocol
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Asthma
atonement—
my breath at one
with wind wheeze
sound break
between lightning forks
in-gasp gone
the breath
I left
in the clay
heaven-holed
dark matter
clogs the night
misty shore
nothing to grasp
but breath
asleep
the habits of being
breathe easy
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
winter ends—
a dark alphabet
shreds the moon
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
august end
a sacrifice of weeds
for the harvest
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
Autism
(to my daughter)
(to my daughter)
afterglow
word by word
light withdraws
until
it has no self
cooing dove
the hedgehog
curling into itself
finger-found
illusions
tip-toe through the death
of beached waves
somewhere deep
within the blast of time
a silence grows
moon-bathed
her lightness of footfall
on the earth
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: August 2015
deep space field
dark matter shadow-plays
in my eyes