#Michael Boiano

[journalofanobody]

Haiku

the sight of her hands

fingers round her coffee cup

one wearing my ring

-- Michael Boiano

Photo via browndresswithwhitedots

#michael boiano #haiku

[lillyli-74]

In the darkest night,

deep forest, brooding shadows,

I wander alone.

The starlight is no solace,

for these stars died long ago.

~Michael Boiano

#michael boiano

[thethirdbear]

and now, at long last, the street quiet, i must go up to the shadows. i’ll close my door behind me and make no noise as i leave.

michael boiano

#death poem #jisei #but not death (the death) #but a death... #(an end) #a beginning #a now nevermore #michael boiano #gaijin diary #2018

[helpingthingsgrow]

I’ve always had dreams

and I guess I have them still,

though they are less grand.

Modest dreams and great longings,

and some seasons yet to live.

– Michael Boiano

[beyourselfchulanmaria]

我們所愛的一切

只不過是個影子，轉瞬即逝

一溜煙就不見了 

everything we love

is but a shadow, fleeting,

slipping away

– Michael Boiano  /俳句 Haiku

《Gaijin Diary》  A selection of Japanese-style tanka poems penned by Michael Boiano under his own name and under the pen-name Aziz while living in Japan and Thailand. Most have appeared in various little journals in Japan.

"As a longtime avid reader of Classical Japanese and Chinese poetry, I've always been amazed at Michael's ability to blend a classical sentiment within a modern context. A seeming homage to a past poetic style can take an abrupt, ironic turn into a sudden flash of insight. Never far from the surface is a wry sense of humor that jolts the reader into the unpredictability of life's travails. These are songs of love and regret, the passing of the seasons, mundane observations of daily life transformed into wider truths, with a sensitive ear for spoken and unspoken thoughts and feelings that underlie the current of everyday life. There is much here to inspire the modern reader in the current and past tradition of Japanese tanka."

— Bill Senecal

#my photo #I was walking on the countryside took a break lunch time at part-time job yesterday #under sunlight you know shadows be with you everywhere always😎 #shadow lover

[idkmanfuckthisall]

david levithan

“From that first hello we are preparing to leave. Everyone we know, they’re an image that lingers as we quickly blink our eyes.”

Michael Boiano, from Autumn Garden: A Tanka Collection (Black Turtle Press, 2020)

anti-hero, taylor swift

I suppose, in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most, is not taking a moment to say goodbye.

Life of Pi (2012) dir. Ang Lee

margarita karapanou

"How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives."

The Sky is Everywhere, Novel by Jandy Nelson

i don't like how endings in real life come on so suddenly without making sense, without much warning. one minute you're in the middle of something and the next it's all a very long time ago and you're a different person and none of it is ever coming back

@/fairycosmos on tumblr

richard silken

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.

#ww. #there is no other version of this story

[othersidesofnobody]

Haiku

nothing real ever goes,

what exists, always exists

in some form, some manner

-- Michael Boiano

[cobotis]

Today I think one way and tomorrow another. Only love is constant...

~ Michael Boiano

#michael boiana #edward bulwer lytton #have heart #love

[sinsentidono]

haiku llueve aquí todos los días

mi corazón se ralentiza en la oscuridad

y espera el sol

--Michael Boiano

[aki-no-niwa]

The moment between glances …

There is a challenging energy in this work by Michael Boiano, poised delicately between places; balancing, other-worldly and yet lived-in, commonplace, almost but never quite comfortable. Snatches of beauty, peace, harmony but never far from pain, puzzlement and, dare one say, grief.  Or is it grieving short of grief? Grieving being threshed as it were.

Ezra Pound, that other exile, wrote: "The essential thing about a poet is that he build us his world" (’Selected Prose, 1909-1965’ Faber & Faber 1973). Is that another way of asserting that the poet must make the light worth the candle? This world of Michael Boiano is built of fragile moments easily missed by an uncaring eye: tread carefully through their arcs as this story unfolds.

And there is a story, it is a narrative, although it may not first appear so.  There is more than enough longing, unrequited love and tenderness to answer this question: why do this to yourself? Or this other question: why do it to us?

Do we come to see something of the Japanese sensibility? Yes, but between those glances, peripherally. John Bayley in his Introduction to Sumie Okada's "Western Writers in Japan" (Palgrave Macmillan 1999) writes of a Japanese as against a non-Japanese handling of the quest for harmony, peace, stillness. That tension between linguistic cultures is part of the bedrock of these poems. Some of these poems are works of contemplative focus (”Folded in my hand …”).  Some are rumbustious (”Grooming his own yard …”).

 In our English language conventions, the sonnet say, is it overstated to say harmony comes from the encapsulated violence or contradiction, a metaphysical struggle before resolution and stasis?  This is perhaps not quite the Japanese way; the untranslatable “quite”.  But this is not a Japanese world, it is a world of the poet making his uncertain way in Japan as a stranger, and yes, in a strange land. It is his own world that he builds for us, the world of an outsider, an exile, a stranger not always if ever and only ever conditionally welcome; and they are his own questions to hesitantly, tentatively answer.

In this work, as James Kirkup reminds us in the Introduction, Michael Boiano has a deep sense of the absurd in daily life: comic and true.  We begin with the poet as outsider.  We end, if we discount the envoi a moment, with a useful but purposely not value-neutral glossary.  The last definition: yen, a Japanese unit of currency.  His heart was ten yen short of a quietus (”To reveal my heart …”). We end where we began.

But the envoi gathers in the cherished in this work: “the moment between glances …” and reminds us that there is light, albeit behind the darkness.

John Gilbert

Sydney Australia

[John Gilbert is an Australian journalist, lawyer and broadcaster, now semi-retired as a Teaching Fellow in Law at the University of New South Wales.  He first met with Michael Boiano's multiferous, eclectic and erudite presence online half a decade ago].

[journalofanobody]

Haiku

even now, after all

there's always astonishment

waiting to be seen

-- Michael Boiano

#michael boiano #haiku

[journalofanobody]

Haiku

be still, poor old heart

what's left may seem so little

but joy still remains

-- Michael Boiano

#Michael Boiano #haiku

[journalofanobody]

Haiku

where would I wander

if I could escape this place?

anywhere, anywhere

--Michael Boiano

#michael boiano #haiku

[journalofanobody]

Haiku

full circle, I'm back

propped up before my table,

waiting for what comes

-- Michael Boiano

The few who still visit this blog will have noticed that I have returned, more or less. It's good to be back but it feels a lot like most who followed this blog have disappeared. No messages, little of note in the Activity section--a half-dozen notes per day and a few, just a few, new followers.

And yet here I am. During my absence I wondered if I might be "gone but not forgotten," but the opposite seems to be the case. I've beeen here for 13 years. Imagine that.

#michael boiano #haiku

[journalofanobody]

Haiku

take me to your arms

hold me there for a time

and be my last love

-- Michael Boiano

(photo via blukcattalking)

#Michael Boiano #haiku #Valeria

[journalofanobody]

Contrary to how things might seem...

I am still here.

After three weeks of February, in hospital, surgery, a string of heart attacks, and pneumonia, and being told my heart was nearly destroyed by coronary artery blockage and receiving the first of several stents, I've been home for the last week, recovering.

So driven to earn some money for rent, I did some teaching during this week. Tiring, to be sure, but also invigorating, being with my students and seeing how happy they were to be studying with me again.

However, on March 9-10 (and I hope it's only those two days), I must return to the hospital for another stent--a more complicated one, they tell me.

Well, after all that has gone on so far, I dread returning, but I have heard from many that the completion of these procedures will give me a new life and I will be able in the sort term to return to my normal life.

So off I go, but I want to let my friends and followers here know that I will be back and blogging--and writing new poetry--fairly soon. There are a lot of people here I have never met face-to-face but with whom I have been lucky to find real friendship and I have missed them very much indeed. I've missed even the casual rebloggers who seem to find something worthwhile in my posts.

Thanks to all who have stuck with me in me in my absence, and especially to those who have written. See you soon.

#michael boiano