Better Than Starbucks
Poetry and Fiction Journal
. . . if you love diversity and creative writing in any and every form, then you’re in the right place . . .
May 2021
Vol VI No II
Published quarterly:
February, May, August,
and November.
Haiku
with Kevin McLaughlin
The Haiku Mind
“I purify my thoughts, my emotions, my memories, my perceptions, my sensations, and all of the atoms in my body,” might well be the aspirational prayer of every haiku writer. For it is in this State of mind that we are best able to objectively locate and express an image that reveals the thing-in-itself. Most, if not all, haikuists have a deeply spiritual nature associated with a religion, a benevolent philosophical / humanistic tradition, or a branch of scientific inquiry. Haiku does not relate a narrative or take a moral position. These characteristics are not required in this poetry form. No similes or metaphors are typically employed. Symbolism may be used, but only infrequently.
This spiritual component traces back to the form’s Japanese origin, to a hybrid of Shinto and Zen that described the seasons and the changing of the seasons. This was the “kigo,” an association with nature that had pantheistic elements. Life’s essence (Gods, Goddesses, energy, electromagnetism, hadrons) which comprised the natural world was everywhere . . . in rocks, waterfalls, mountains, the winter solstice, etc.
In the last 100 years haiku has acquired a powerful ally, the science of physics. Both seek to understand and describe the natural world.
The haiku mind catches life as it flows and presents it, objectively, to the reader.
Decayed maple leaves,
Pile up against the shoreline,
Where the current ends.
Kevin McLaughlin
Matt Dove of Andalusia, Spain, is an Irishman by choice and a wanderer by habit. He loves haiku and the smell of tatami.
Morning, Asia.
Cocks crow. Monks chant. Women rise.
The sound of sweeping
(The sound of that sweeping is the sound of the universe breathing.)
Matt Dove
Professor Juan DePascuale is in the Department of Philosophy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
summer draught
magnolia weeping
petals
pine forest,
flapping wings
ruffle the silence
(For those whose minds have been spiritually ripened, this is a significant poem.)
staring at mother
staring out the window
nursing home
Juan Edgardo De Pascuale
Stephen Joseph’s work epitomizes that haiku-mind connection with nature.
crows caw from the trees
geese honk from the gathering clouds
old debate renewed
(The caw of a crow is a call to Be Awake as we go about our day.)
single bright red leaf
surrounded by green sisters
no hurry, grass waits
moth on the mirror
plainer than its wild cousins
admiring itself
Stephen Joseph
Kortney Garrison lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems have appeared in Solitary Plover, Hummingbird, and Warming Station Poems.
Nine geese pour across
the nearly full moon:
an evening benediction
(The fuse that through all nature runs.)
The river carries
earth’s crescendo in
fallen color and leaf rot.
Kortney Garrison
Philip Piarrot makes his home in Nashville Tennessee. Ah, the first line of the first poem!
Idyllic and warm
A sandy spot on the bay
Rowing there and back
Porch swing; in sweet gloam
Shadows play on the sidewalk
Dusk swallows them whole
Mottled One sleeps
Ruling over her kingdom
Little paws twitch
(How beautiful, the furry twitching.)
Philip Piarrot
Connor Bjotvedt presents a spirituality that is highly nuanced.
Pilgrim, auspicious
conditions are unlikely.
Providence is shrewd.
Connor Bjotvedt
Edison Jennings is a Head Start school bus driver in Virginia’s southern Appalachian region. Broadstone books will publish his collection Intentional Fallacies later this year.
I learned my lover
died while watching airplanes touch —
and-go, touch-and go.
Edison Jennings
Yvonne Hurst is a poet and artist living in St. Louis, Missouri, who finds her inspiration in nature, people, and just being.
small, silent, yearning
he lifts his arms to heaven
as the wild geese rise
moon-fruit bobbing in
star sauced sky sugars and stains
the black bowl of night
(Moon fruit…easy to enjoy moon, saucer, and bowl.)
round shouldered night rocks
star woven cradle, nestles
the cloud swaddled moon
(Such a beautiful image…and so comforting.)
burnt stubble pockmarks
rock’s wind-bitten face, grey ash
capes hunch shouldered hills
Yvonne Hurst
Yet once more I encourage all haiku writers to share their work, their insights into the nature of all things, with fellow poets and BTS readers.
For those interested in haiku, I recommend you cast back into the BTS archives and reference the September 2016 column. It provides a pretty thorough explanation of the basic format.
—Kevin Mclaughlin
Steve Harvester was a United Methodist minister for 25 years. He focuses the reader on the whit-whit sound.
child recites fourscore
after taps
whit-whit of woodthrush.
Steve Harvester
David Watts of Mill Valley, California, offers tides joined to human activity.
bell tower
secrets
on a plaster wall
(That is an imposing bell tower.)
she pushes her sister
on the swing
tide ebb and flow
still waters
the jagged edge
of the loon cry
David Watts
David Gelber is a writer whose interests are not limited to a specific genre.
Canvases of light.
Many shattered scattered stars.
Fireflies marching.
(Fireflies/shattered stars burst upon the reader’s retinas!)
An emerald spread.
Perfume permeates the air.
Pine forest kingdom.
A sea breeze flies up.
Sapphire walls expand outward.
Mighty waves strike stone.
David Gelber
Bernard Lazenbury answers profound questions with subtle natural answers.
After monsoon rains
the air feels purer,
roadways steam then shine.
Sea drowns the sun.
Dying rays pierce the far clouds.
Colours to die for.
Curled corpses spiral.
October’s reds and golds.
The waiting broom sweeps.
(That first line would enhance any poetic form.)
From dark wintery seas
the leviathan erupts.
Gashing the white foam.
Bernard Lazenbury
Madi Castro is a 15-year-old girl from the Philippines and has already acquired what many might call the “Divine Eye.”
The blue butterfly
With its delicate wings, flew
Away from the leaf.
The sun is rising.
Her petals reach up, up up!
Above and beyond.
Madi Castro
Michael Pugliese from Warwick, Rhode Island, is as one with that “pantheistic” understanding of how kigo link man with every other physical entity.
The spider’s shadow
and the spider —
floating
Every day
a bit less —
the squirrel’s body
Bare branches
full of birds —
winter leaves
Michael Pugliese
Ron Tobey, a West Virginian, and his wife raise cattle and keep goats and horses. He is an imagist poet who writes haiku, storytelling poems, spoken and video telling poetry.
wasp stings the spider
drags it across gravel drive
plants its eggs inside
(Magnificent insight into death and life, the natural cycle.)
white fields cattle loo
breaths plume in Fall’s first frost
geese honk in gray dawn
Ron Tobey
Mark Ward of Dublin, Ireland, is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international LGBTQ+ poetry journal.
communion wafer
raised slowly into your mouth —
dawn sea eats the moon
(Magnificent juxtaposition! The communicant and the dawn sea become as one.)
the stream bends around
rocks that don’t feel each sliver
being washed away
the owl in daylight
ululating iambs
into a soft breeze
Mark Ward
William Cullen Jr. of Brooklyn, New York, is a veteran and works at a social services non-profit. He embodies haiku’s universality.
gnats in a sunbeam
the stream disappears
through dark pines
(Universal, yes. I’ve spent years trying to write this haiku.)
crisp day
the wind’s indentations
in the high cirrus
William Cullen Jr.
Sharon O’Bryan’s Old Fashioned Children’s Games, published by McFarland’s, is still in circulation. This lass was published in Scotland’s My Weekly magazine and has won numerous awards for her poetry.
October morning
green-gold hay and sassafras
scent the pumpkin patch.
Early morning rain
taps a soft shoe down the roof
cooing whippoorwills.
Wounded butterfly
flutters calypso across
sweet oleander.
Siesta key sand
trickles cool between my toes
pelican nose dives.
Sharon O’Bryan
There are 10,000 opportunities every day to write a haiku.
Kevin McLaughlin
Haiku Archive
Sept 2016 Oct 2016 Nov 2016 Dec 2016
Jan 2017 Feb 2017 Mar 2017 Apr 2017 May 2017 June 2017
July 2017 Aug 2017 Sept 2017 Oct 2017 Nov 2017 Dec 2017
Jan 2018 Feb 2018 Mar 2018 Apr 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 Sept 2018 Nov 2018