On the Suzuki Court

—

Disappointed Hummingbird: quasi-haiku and other short form poems of Benjamin Suzuki

 

compiled by Kendal Q. Binmore

 

part 2

 

—

 

Suzuki poems

 

—

 

quartz

crying through rock

writes its own demise

 

—

 

sound comes:

jet announcing

the only greater world

 

—

 

trek’s length

depends on what I am

 

—

 

bird

mimics rattle

knowing no whys

 

—

 

written

it avoids

murder

 

—

 

boy perched atop

Madonna’s shrine

support unawares

 

—

 

with each death

world begins anew

continuous ideal

 

—

 

unbounded

no understanding

of what you are

 

—

 

bird

escapes evolution

through my gaze

 

—

 

concentrated small

I avoid

all worlds

 

—

 

feces

snakes

its way

 

—

 

rocks cascade

in their own time

waiting us out

 

ravined wall

 

—

 

certainty:

desert paths

crowding the silence

 

—

 

face

transported to oblivion

kicked off the trail

 

—

 

jumping to heaven:

I await on the ground

 

—

 

bird

struggled of rock

cannot care

our demise

 

—

 

ground

peopled by failure

faces on which to step

 

—

 

on its ground

chiseled face

awaits damage

 

contours of existence

 

—

 

no path

when eyes look up

desert belief

 

—

 

impersonal world

absorbs

hope

 

—

 

impersonal world

into which

hope flees

 

—

 

impersonal world

into which

hope is carved

 

—

 

impersonal world

carved of hope

 

[The prior four “impersonal world” quasi-haiku were found together, just as presented. The linked use of impersonal world makes what should be a contextual phrase into a capping or resolving phrase: impersonal world and hope become codependent, not defining one other as opposites, but providing abode for one another. Suzuki, as ever, plays a language game by himself, transforming the loss of absorbed into that which makes the greater, foreign world. KQB]

 

—

 

wrong time of day

fool

alone with the sun

 

—

 

ledge

made foothold

out of many dances

 

—

 

footsteps

echoes others

close, hard valley

 

—

 

quartz outcrop

decayed into personages

heaven is here

 

—

 

cactus

twists

into frozen note

 

—

 

high

looking down:

struggled path

 

I was never there

 

—

 

absent my gaze

landscape vanishes:

unknowingly known

 

—

 

on the ground

so many stones

this side of schizophrenia

 

—

 

closing the doors of creation

God made “Him”

protected from Himself

 

—

 

In anonymity

comes God’s Word

detritus of life

 

—

 

in every pause

a gift

true encounter

 

—

 

climbing the crevasse

fall into the enemy

 

gravity

knows only one thing

 

—

 

actors absent Being

American life

 

—

 

in the distance

what I can never approach:

sentinels who understand

 

—

 

silent universe

dishonestly

lets us infer

 

—

 

parachuting

heaven

ever before me

 

—

 

sound

made rhythm

into which we dive

 

social gathering

 

—

 

genes everywhere

none for me

 

—

 

terrified

let others make me

what I am

 

—

 

falling free

bird

plans failure

 

—

 

xxx

 

—

Mitland/Suzuki poems

—

 

atop cliff

frozen people

inviting

a struggled

elsewhere

 

—

 

hill’s eroding face

witnesses

when we look

 

—

 

standing on the ground

beyond your fear

I see

the walls

that let you be

 

—

 

spined seed

spidered

on the ground

 

[This quasi-haiku comes from Mitland’s journal; there is no evidence that Suzuki had a hand in it–as is often the case with Suzuki. KQB]

 

—

 

on the highway

heads blasted from walls

yet again

 

—

 

on distant hills

rolled heads

still

are messengers

 

New Mexico highway

 

—

 

scarcity

peopled

travelers through which all travel

 

Zuni

 

—

 

magma coalesces into form

never there:

relics for history

 

—

 

visitors to Bed and Breakfast:

money

brings the world

 

—

 

turquoise

screams

after the mining

 

—

 

upon approach

message vanishes

frustrated land

 

—

 

tall figures

making cliff:

wind sheared worship

 

—

 

in the hills

outcrops of rock

 

centuries of thought

unable to die

 

—

 

landscape

does not bleed

when forced to fit our eye

 

—

 

ancient world retreats:

low mountains

surround city

 

—

 

in each meter

a symphony of faces

cacophony cleans the slate

 

—

 

xxx