Autumn 2013 Showcase

… and then everything went red! I don’t know why, it just happens sometimes.

This Showcase has arbitrarily taken a colour as its theme. That’s not to say it has been painted uniformly. Several of the offerings don’t even pay the theme any attention at all, and the colour is highlighted by its absence. That makes it all the brighter when it re-emerges.

Under cover of that colour we have several haiga for you, plus haiku and related forms in less-than-conventional mode, and some wordless illustrations. Next Showcase will return to a preponderance of words, and I think I will look for writers never published on the zen space before, and to that end I’m looking to you readers to suggest suitable writers to me. Do you know anyone in whom I might be interested?

As I type, my fingers are still stained crimson from picking blackberries. I always think that sounds wrong.

Marie Marshall
editor
the zen space

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Stella Pierides

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Peter Fulton – New Haiku Déjà vu

Left without a stain
the past drank itself away
empty spirits glass.

Drunk men fall softer
from their galloping horse
than the sober man.

The ocean takes sips
of sand from the rock face and
slowly drinks the cliff.
Writers always write
like a painter has to paint
and you always use.

Lost between the sheets
a grammar never spoken
in lovers’ silence.

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Debbie Strange

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Peter Butler

CONSCIENCE

It looked a close contest Until he applied the stranglehold, And head butt, then rinsed It under a waterfall, Before showing it to me.

‘My conscience’, he grinned. ‘Looks clear to me’, I observed. ‘For now’, he said, still grinning.

Then threw it over his shoulder, Headed back.

To the Red Light District, As before, I imagine.

TANKA

sunset sinking over the horizon without a word – I cling to her photograph

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kris moon

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Clare McCotter

 

Still his
unknown
name
dancing
under
a sky
frozen
with stars

 

kneeling on cardboard sheets
where he sleeps    
a man faces Mecca and bows

 

all the fields end
as sky moves towards indigo
she dances on rubble

 

the dancer’s blue shadow
on broken pavement
he lights his first of the day

 

clouds drifting across my face a mare’s creamy breath

 

evening full of green-gold light the beckoning barley

 

A gold moon
fills
her throat
perfume
from
black flowers

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Angie Werren

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Sondra J Byrnes

california poppies –
the faint scent
of asphalt

zazen –
coming back
to nothing

half moon –
so many ways
to disappear

shorter days –
she squirrels away
second thoughts

falling star –
from a long line
of if onlys

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Richard Vallance – autumn poetry in English and French

detail from ‘Cardinal’ by Ed Bremson

roe in a bound
over rustling leaves –
startled by the moon

chevreuil d’un saut
fait frémir les feuilles –
affolé de la lune

cold rain pouring
on the window sill –
a far off train

froide averse
sur le rebord de la fenêtre
un train lointain

showers
on leaves in the eaves
overflowing a bucket

averse sur les feuilles
sur l’avant-toit, sceau
plein à déborder

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Irena Szewczyk

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Phil Madden

as the wind slows
the earth
catches its breath

above the storm
the still moon

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The next Showcase at the zen space will be Winter 2014 which will be released, subject to karma, on 1^st January 2014.

Please note that the copyright of all written work and images used in this Showcase and elsewhere in the zen space is held by the creating artist/author, even where not explicitly stated, and may not be used elsewhere without permission.

Would anyone whose browser makes any part of this Showcase look peculiar please get in touch.

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