Haiku?

Someone, noticing the verses I had put up on the wall of my office, read them silently and promptly announced loudly, “Those poems ….urgh!….Those are what I would call “psuedo-haiku”! Where did you download them from?”

Those?! (aiyoh...so malu!) I did not download them.

I...er...I... (gulp!...This is really embarrassing!) I wrote them.

It was never my intention to pass them off as Haiku.

Is it haiku? Is it not?
I don’t know…and it does not matter.

While writing a few of them, I adopted the 5-7-5 syllables rule, but that was all there was to it.

I did not consciously set out to write haiku….I was not writing in praise of the four seasons, nor was I trying to capture the beauty of nature. I am not into Zen, and I have not had that many “haiku moments” in my life. I don’t exactly know how to appreciate renga. I am least inclined (and even less qualified) to try to pass my poems off as Haiku.

What I’ve written…they are merely words that have helped me capture and store precious thoughts on paper. I wanted to “see” my thoughts in black-and-white. In some instances, I chose to write in keeping with the 5-7-5 syllables rule. In others, my thoughts just flowed freely. That’s all. It’s as simple and straightforward as that. Nothing pretentious, nothing fancy. In fact, I dare not even call them "poems".


Permit me to share my thoughts with you.

If you care to know, read on…



My thoughts about Grandpa’s Alsatian -

Beside his gravestone,
alone it sits, awaiting.
Grandpa’s faithful friend.





My thoughts about the moment when my grandparents first met each other on their wedding day (theirs was a marriage arranged by their parents, they had never seen each other prior to their wedding day) –


The matchmaker leaves
Silently he lifts her veil
and gives her his heart






When my daughter was born –


Wide-eyed she arrives.
It has been thirty-eight weeks
My first-born, a girl.



When my husband first cuddled my daughter in his arms (in the delivery suite at Mt Alvernia Hospital) –


Gently he lifts her
Heart fluttering, hands trembling
Father and child meets



When Armstrong first landed on the moon on July 20, 1969….all those stories I’ve heard…those magical stories about the moon and the fairy tales about Chang ‘e…they lost their magical qualities and ceased to capture my imagination –



July 20, 1969

The moon is but a moon now
Armstrong has broken the spell






What it must have been like when my paternal grandfather was taken away by Japanese soldiers during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore in World War II –


Syonan-To, 1942

They will not allow him to say goodbye
Their bayonet did not permit
him that one last look
at her
or at the little ones

Alone he must go with them
Thankful that only he
was picked to go


The wails from the wife and the children
might raise the shiny blades



HUSH
You are courting Death
Quickly
I must lead Death away


He hurries off
not daring to look back


Broken-hearted
They watched him go
Never to return
Never to be with them again


What’s happened to him?
Did he suffer much at the hands of his foes?
How did he die?
Till today no one really knows