Haibun and Modern Haiku Publication

Years ago, I subscribed to Modern Haiku. I recently re-subscribed, and the issue arrived the other day. Beautiful.

While I've been writing a lot of haiku again the past couple of years, I hadn't pursued various publications, other haiku poets, or my own submission/publication goals. But I'm back to it!

Along with my rediscovered exploration, I've been writing Haibun. Haibun is a short (anywhere from 20 to 300 words) (more or less) poem, essay, narrative, memory, recollection, prose piece, autobiography, micro-story, poem, and ending with a haiku. The Haibun can have a title.

Several things about this form I love. There is 'Zen zone' between the end of the haibun and the haiku. The haiku is not a linear conclusion. It stands alone, as does the haibun. But they also go together.

The haibun needs to be descriptive, sensory, detailed, succinct, non-repetitive.

I have a Haibun work-in-progress. It's not finished; this is the second draft. It started out as a poem, but I've been re-working it to fit into the Haibun form.

Bronson Caves, Hollywood California 1969

My father -- Big D we called him -- was an amateur photographer. He'd develop his photographs in our living room; trays of smelly solutions transforming paper into black and white images. Big D would develop horrible cracks, peeling skin, on his hands from the chemicals. He gave me his Olympus camera. I felt important, proud, and loved taking photos of the L.A. art museum on Wilshire, billboards, cemeteries. But then he took it back. My dad was also an actor and ex-child performer in the Tom Mix circus. He was killed in an episode of Gunsmoke, the naive and well-meaning young cowboy shot dead by the villain. He rehearsed a role from the Ice Man Cometh in our living room, scaring the shit out of me with his emotional coldness. He directs me telling me to scrams as I run through caves at Bronson Park. "Again!" he yells. My screaming is not sincere enough. I try again, running, shrieking . . . "Stop!" commands Big D. "Do it once more ... really act like you're frightened." Jesus Dad, I'm scared every goddamn day. What the fuck? But I do it again. And again. Still, it doesn't take. 

a narrow cave

ochre walls

dim light

________________

So that's the work in progress. Another version of the haiku at the end:

a narrowing cave

ochre walls crumble

at the end -- a glow

I've written three Haibun so far. The first two I'm very happy with, but can't post them here since I'll be submitting them to Haibun.com and Modern Haiku.

The one I've published here; I get happier with it as I work with it, but it's not quite there yet. As far as the haiku goes, they give off different feelings. The first one, closer to what I was feeling and the overall emotion of the Haibun. The second, is a little more hopeful. I think I'll stick with the first one.

Dino Had a Gun

(A minor edit, but changes the visual, the overall feel. "the den" to "the back room.") july 2016


Dino Had a Gun

So, frantic call at night . . . 
Dino, downtown, in jail 
or something, mom rushing out

Where’s Felix, step-dad, Dino’s friend -- work, or lost his license, or anyway
Dino and mom return

I open the door, Dino standing there, revolver in hand, pointed 
right at me. I blanch, Jesus, I’m spooked.

Then he laughs “It’s not real kid, just a toy” mom comes up behind, oblivious

Dino spends the night,  I don’t remember where. Couch, the back room, what.

But the gun. And when I asked what happened, mom said Dino was just playing around being a joker. He wasn’t really in jail. He just needed a ride, fast.

Out of downtown.  

With his gun.

regan lee

oregon spring 2016

long gone

kids aren't stupid
and the L.A. sun cracking on the clown face was
no surprise

inside, in the cool dim kitchen
our moms in sherbet dresses drank and smoked and laughed
tumblers of jewel colors in their hands,
raised to the warm glass of the kitchen window

meanwhile,
outside, beneath the hard lime trees 
animals arose, twisted out of 
bright pinks and yellows
squeaky poodles and blue giraffes,
tinny music from the portable record player set on the
shaky tv table

faded diamonds, flat ruffles,
Dads long gone.

wrapping paper and rough ribbon on the
brown-green square of yard
bits of frosting stuck to fingers, shoes …

the moms leave the coppery kitchen, stumbling
just a little on the rocky dry grass
kids leave, Dads still long gone

later, cold chicken and spanish rice
in the coppery kitchen,
moms return to their jeweled tumblers 
and Dads
still long gone.



regan lee
march 2014
eugene oregon

Big Duke

big hat
big man
five pointed star
Oklahoma way
Big Duke
dancer man
Stagecoach sheriff
Buffalo Bill
hat-sweat-band, snake oil man
selling on the bay
mayor's wife
train ride
meeting in the dark,
or maybe a hot afternoon
unannounced stops
carny barker, yep
one-liners
cow-puncher
Montana
Wyoming
rumored heritages
Indian mom; Cherokee, Lennape
unknown father
West Virginia
run-away
illegal soldier
out west
Hollywoodland
orange groves, empty lots
sold!
Tom Mix,
tricks with whips,
knives,
spinning women
spider tattoos
dog-fights
Erroll Flynn, John Ford
on set
drunken history, only murmured
affairs and age, ignored
repeated lore.

my memories, only five
Big Duke, white haired, so very long
cane by chair
annoyed, or a rough laugh
as i climbed up furniture
holding red and yellow,
purple 78s
to the sun through
tiny round windows,
squish green centered mints in
an aqua glass dish

death comes
five year olds hustled away
funerals, adults only
and gone.



regan lee
march 2014
eugene, oregon

Olive

long and lean, bony really,
Olive arranges herself languidly in the coarse brown chair.

her tied dyed dress made of sheer scarves reveals bare legs, furry armpits and all
 her hair is a dark-massed orchestra wildly out of tune.

she's demanding uppers and coffee and, getting up, heads down the hallway calling out
"Is this your bedroom?" and her best friend Samantha, so damn voluptuous 
in her pink quilted vest, leans over to me, she's whispering assurances:

"It's all right, her mother's an opera singer" but
I don't feel any better.


~ regan lee
 sometime in the 1980s

the black green sea

my mother voluptuous in summer dress,
thick ankle straps,
shoots a man, 
some man there, on the pier

night lights reflecting on black sea water
at eighteen dark, raven haired, 
a hibiscus behind her ear

"Listen, I must tell you
I like to lose control," 
and she falls into the ivy, 
falls into the black-green sea
salt corroding red petals red hibiscus red the red
of blood.

~  regan lee, 198?