Selected Tanka Prose: Routine Crises

I key in the headline Dozens dead after boat capsizes. Phones ring, and laptops chatter with stories from around the world. Adrenaline pumps through my body like a tidal wave.

fading tracks

on an Aegean shore

at twilight

which of them belong to those

who drowned in cold water

I glance at the oversized clock on the rear wall of the newsroom. Its hands march closer and closer toward the deadline. And the refugee story waits to be replaced ... with the latest news from the front lines of yet another war-torn country.

Haibun Today, 11:1, March 2017

Selected Tanka Prose: Re-Homing

for Li Bai

go back

to where you came from ...

slowly, I push

his middle finger

to a vagabond moon

drinking alone

under the autumn moon

for a moment

I speak to it

in my mother tongue

Where is my home? Is it Taipei, capital of the Republic of China, aka Taiwan, a modern metropolis with Japanese colonial lanes, busy shopping streets and towering glass office buildings, that place where I was born and raised, that place I often complained about and wanted to flee?

Where is my home? Is it the County of Mount Dragon in Hunan Province of the People's Republic of China, my father's hometown with its rushing waterfalls and misty mountain peaks, a place I've never set foot in?

Where is my home? Is it Ajax, Ontario, a bedroom suburb of row upon row of single-family detached houses in the richest province of Canada? Here I own a front lawn, a backyard, and struggle with a life in transition and translation ...

Haibun Today, 10:4, December 2016

Note: The Republic of China, aka Taiwan,  is the 14th freest economy in the world, yet still not recognized by the UN.

Selected Haibun: The (Mostly) True Story of My School Days

It was the first day of school, and I waited by the community gate, keeping an eye out  for any sign of the school bus’ arrival. My mother held my hand so tightly that I felt  as if I were chained to a lamppost.

“Mom, what time is it? When will the school bus come? Will Uncle Bus Driver forget to  pick me up? Mother, did you tell the school …,” my mother interrupted my rambling and  looked me in the eye, saying, “Son, you need to be patient. Just wait for the bus. I  contacted the school a month ago and made sure that they would pick you up once school  starts. Don’t you want to spend more time with me now?”

“Yes, I want to be with you. But, Mom, I just don’t want to miss my first day of  school. Hsing-hsing always tells me that there is a lot of fun stuff in the school. I  like to play ...,” “Honk! Honk!” Upon hearing the arrival of the school bus, I was so  eager and ready to shake off the grip of my mother’s hand and rush inside.

a box of crayons

in the pool of sunlight

a circle of kids

When I got back home that afternoon, I could barely stop talking about my day. My  mother kept nodding her head with a smile as I regaled her with my stories.

The next morning, my mother woke me and said, “It’s time for school.” I looked at her  in a cheerful mood and asked, “Mother, does it happen again?” Pausing for a moment with  tears welling up in the edges of her eyes, my mother replied, “Yes, you’ll have another  happy day in school.”

Haibun Today, 10:3, September 2016

Selected Tanka Prose: Cassius Clay Turned Muhammad Ali

In Rome, 1960, Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light. What so proudly we hailed  at the twilight’s last gleaming? ... was sung through the summer breeze for the black  boxer. But, the Olympic gold medal couldn't buy him a cup of morning coffee and a  hamburger in a downtown restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky.

he watched the river

dragging the ribbon down,

red, white, and blue ...

his steady bombardment

of left jabs at the air

Haibun Today, 10:3, September 2016

The Death of Sympathy

Abandoned by a coyote with a forked tongue, we are as forlorn as orphaned children lost in Arizona desert. When you stand in front of me, looking into my eyes, what do you know of the grief in my heart? And what do I know of yours?

this windy night

descends with snowfall ...

a child migrant's life

merely the dash

between illegible dates

Haibun Today, 13:2, June 2019

Selected Tanka Prose: Aftermath

in Notre Dame Square

a blindfolded young man

with a sign:

I am a Muslim,

hug me if you trust me

An awkward laughter embracing the square. A lineup starts to form before this bearded man. In the shafts of sunlight,  particles are dancing and twinkling like tiny stars. To me, this world of wars today rearranges itself into a poem in the human form.

Haibun Today, 10:1, 2016

What's Past Is Prologue

A ray of sunlight through the attic window falls across my face. For a moment, nothing negative comes to mind, and I  wonder if a new day might start with this moment of renewal.

I get out of bed to find only one slipper, and realize that I must have inadvertently kicked the other under the bed  last night. To my surprise I find not only my slipper, but also her long-lost red sock. The mere sight of it awakens  the ghost from my past. And then it starts to stalk me everywhere ...

gathering dusk

I avert the stare

of a wounded dog

Haibun Today, 13:1, March 2019

Selected Haibun: New Immigrants

After the last shift, they come in a babble of tongues, battling over the Canadian winter, work-related issues, and politics -- both from the local district and back home. Their talk begins in Mandarin, merges with Cantonese, often migrates into accented English, and then returns to their native tongue. Most of the talk is repeated, amplified, and sometimes changed a little for a new co-worker or particular occasion. The only pause is at the mention of broken dreams.

chopsticks clicking

in Gold Mountain Diner

the smell of home

Haibun Today, 9:2, June 2015

The Distance of Love

for my mother

on the phone

I murmur to mother,

I love you ...

an ocean away

the silence at her end

Coming back home after my first day in grade one, I asked, Mom, do you love me?

I love you this much, she said with a laugh, holding her hands half a meter apart.

Now, forty years later, living in another country, I still can't fathom the depth of that L word inscribed in my mother's heart.

Haibun Today, 12:3, September 2018

Chen-ou Liu’s "The Distance of Love," A Commentary by Pravat Kumar Padhy (Haibun Today, 12:4, December 2018): Liu's Tanka Prose is a serene symbol of eternal love of a mother. The spectrum of the tanka is based on love, grief and solitude (ushintei). The poet symbolizes the emotional credence and divine love for his mother by placing the tanka in the beginning. This, in essence, manifests a long bridge of emotional feeling in the reader’s mind for the follow-up prose. The reader is urged to travel the distance into the prose to fathom the emotional exploration...  see the full text here

Chen-ou Liu’s "The Distance of Love," A Commentary by Gerry Jacobson (Haibun Today, 12:4, December 2018): Liu’s piece pierces me: brings up the guilt. I walked out of my London home at 18, caught a train to Tilbury dock, emigrated to Australia, never saw my mother again... I’m grateful to Chen-ou for opening up these feelings. And I’ve said nothing about his piece. Perhaps I don’t need to. It’s perfect.

the spirit travels
at the speed of a horse
so they say -
mine has been galloping
far too fast

See the full text here

Darkness Visible

The night never ends at twelve. It continues to thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, ... in my mind. I hate the night  I can't sleep. I loathe the day because it can only march towards the night.

In these haunted hours the black beast rides my mind, and there is nothing I can do to tame it.

tick, tick, tick ...
counting stars
in the skylight

Haibun Today, 12:3, September 2018

Selected Haibun: I see through a glass, darkly

like a newlywed standing by her wooden mailbox,
like a hungry spider lurking in its dewy net,
like a spring seed breathing under heavy snow,
with fixed attention I’ve been looking
at the end of the winding road
where He is supposed to emerge

winter twilight
between the pages of Job
a wooden cross

Haibun Today, 9:1, March 2015

Selected Haibun: This Drifting Life

I am here -- and not here. Every night I sleep in Taipei, but wake up in Ajax. My mind is winged by a yearning for things not yet lost. It flies into the garden of hometown memories.

between morphine drips ...

feeling the weight

of cold air

Haibun Today, 8:4, December 2014

Selected Tanka Prose: A Portrait of the Poet as an Immigrant

Drunk on moonlight from Taipei I stand alone under the Toronto sky.

My mind is schizophrenic, but my hand is steady as I pursue a would-be poem on this wintry night.

my anguish

crumpled into a ball ...

I keep writing

as the wastebasket waits

for another throw

Sunlight drifts through the window and settles on the worn cover of A New Practical Chinese-English Dictionary. My heart, that lonely hunter, seeks the page where the odor of words is strongest.

every day

tastes a little

different

my hunger for words

to picture a poet

Haibun Today, 8:3, September 2014

Selected Haibun: I Am a Poet Nevertheless

if you die poor and young,
your poems may be worth something ...
her dimpled smile

After she left me for a man with a 9 to 5 job, I say to myself, at least I have two loyal readers: my drunken shadow and the black hooded man holding a scythe.

Haibun Today, 8:3, September 2014

The Old Man Who Read Basho

a body

under the outdoor staircase

crumpled balls of paper

He often came to the library shortly before it opened and wouldn’t leave until the chief librarian walked him out. He spent most of his time leafing through old encyclopedias and vintage copies of The Paris Review. He wasn’t much of a talker, but occasionally he gave a monologue on what he had read or thought about. I was one of his few (reluctant) listeners.

Recently, he had trespassed into the contemporary world, venturing onto the Internet, typing with one finger. The day before he died, he stopped me on the way out and surprised me by saying, “I've enjoyed reading some of your haiku on Twitter.” He slipped a piece of paper into my hand and left.

lotus pond …

all that remains

of frog song

Haibun Today, 12:2, June 2018

Selected Haibun: A Room of His Own

In the poems we reveal ourselves. In prose others. -- Phyllis Webb, Notebook, 1969-1973

cold moonlight

books of poetry

stacked floor to ceiling

Hearing of my housemate's suicide was like being stabbed in the back with a sharp knife, and yet I barely knew him.  Only his work and the scratching sounds of pencil on paper that came from his room. "His noisy silence (in an emphatic tone) hangs over us like a long, dark cloud," one of my other housemates once said to me.

drafts of old poems

on the water-stained wall

a starry sky

One week before his death, I was standing on the edge of the table hanging a clock, when he passed through the living room.  He suddenly turned to me, saying, “I have this insatiable urge to commit pencil to paper. It soothes my soul." He went back to his room and continued to spin poems out of the gathering darkness.

Haibun Today, 8:2, June 2014

World Haibun Anthology

Note:  Read Ruth Holzer's in-depth thematic and structural analysis, titled "On Chen-ou Liu's 'A Room of His Own'," which was first published in Haibun Today, 8:3, September 2014.

Selected Tanka Prose: A Life in Transition

ten-lide ticket

to Toronto ...

in the booth

what did you say

echoing and echoing

I try to speak like you in order to be able to speak with you. But, to your Canadian eyes, I look just like one of the Chinese coolies who laid the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and who were cropped out of the ceremony photo.

Haibun Today, 8:2, June 2014

Changing Sides

for Syrian artist Abdalla Al Omari       

I walk down Progress Avenue, passing a poster on the utility pole, its corners flipping in the winter wind. Printed on the left side, in red ink, are the giant words Breaking Point: One Is Too Many. On the right side is a long, snaking line of people in ragged clothes, staggering toward the border, arms and backs piled high with their belongings and sleeping mats.

drunken shadow
on the wall of ignorance . . .
Trump stands 
in the worn-out shoes
of a Mexican migrant

Author's Note: Abdalla Al Omari is known for depicting world leaders as refugees in his "Vulnerability Series" of paintings.

Haibun Today, 11:4, December 2017

FYI: "So far from God, so close to the US": Mexico's troubled past with its neighbour, The Guardian, Feb.1, 2017

Donald Trump’s reported threat to sort out ‘bad hombres’ revives a venerable tradition of gringo intimidation and humiliation that dates back generations

Selected Haibun: The Question Unanswered

slanted sunlight

in the Meditation Hall

a drift of dust

“Every question you answer,” I say timidly, "leads to another question." The air conditioner continues its rhythmic humming.

"And do you have another question?" the master asks. For the first time, I notice that there is a small twist to his mouth.

Haibun Today, 7:1, March 2013

My Best Friend

I have only two photos of him, and I put them in the bottom drawer of the Boulder Creek desk, his generous gift for my first award-winning poem. One is his prom night photo with a yellowing hue. It shows a late teen who looks like a grown up, clean-shaven and assertive (his father’s favorite expression). The other is one of the last photos we took together. It has burnt edges and shows a middle-aged man with patches of grey hair, disheveled and confused.

after the fire

he struggled with ghosts

in the dark

this tug-of-war now ends

with a silver bullet

Haibun Today, 11:2, September 2017