Ponyville & Other Poems

by AugieDog

3 - Seventeen Clouds (English haiku)

1
Air is never thin,
And empty doesn't exist.
The sky's full of clouds.

2
The line dividing
Clear below from blue above
Holds the unseen clouds.

3
The wind never stops.
It's always blowing somewhere,
Tickling sleeping clouds.

4
The only stillness
Is flying fast as the wind:
Reach, and touch the clouds.

5
Dampness from the dry,
The air becoming liquid,
Gathering the clouds.

6
My beckoning hoof
Calls them into existence,
Tells them that they're clouds.

7
My hovering wings
Stir the thickness of the air,
Stir potential clouds.

8
The scent of water,
Sharp and flowing, free and clear,
Wants to turn to clouds.

9
How can I deny
This perfect convocation?
Come! Dance with me, clouds!

10
Spin, you air above,
You blue and crystalline depths,
The canvas for clouds!

11
Shift, you air below,
Warm as the earth and sluggish,
The meat of all clouds!

12
Bow to each other,
Reach across the tropopause!
Mix and become clouds!

13
Cold, boiling vapor,
Warming quick and mounting fast,
Waking into clouds!

14
Rollicking, alive,
Wanting to burst out from me,
Spreading wondrous clouds!

15
Pull their air in tight:
Got to keep them tame and sweet.
Cyclones? No! Just clouds!

16
Swirling around them,
Stretching like a second skin:
These are mine! My clouds!

17
Spread across the skies
Mountainous, fluffy, white, gray:
Clouds! Such awesome clouds!

Author's Note:

English haiku, as the Wikipedia page points out, work under slightly different rules from the original Japanese form. Still, seveteen of 'em together makes a haiku of haiku, doesn't it?

Comments

[Honeycomb]

Hey, this is really good stuff. I'm loving these so far.

Like... wow. I'm stunned and extremely jealous.

Can you, like, tell me a bit about your writing process for poetry? How much time do you spend on these, how much of a poem changes in revision, how concrete of an idea do you need to begin writing a poem, that sort of stuff? Anything else you'd have to say regarding poetry, too, would be amazing to hear... I mean, I like writing poetry and I thought I was halfway competent at it, but these three chapters alone blow away everything I've ever written.

[AugieDog]

3474731

To start:

Lemme link you to some pages I did for my webcomic Terebinth some six years ago now where I have the characters talk about putting poems together. There's a whole story going on around these sections, but the first relevant part runs from page 507 to page 518, then the second part picks up on page 523 and runs through page 529. The third stretch goes from page 537 to page 542 and there's one last little piece of advice on page 544.

Give me a couple days, though, and I can probably put together some slightly more coherent comments on the subject....

Mike

[Lurks-no-More]

Oh wow. The Ponyville sestina was nice, and Twilight's sonnet was perfectly in character for her, but this section really impressed me. Rainbow Dash has unsuspected heights, clearly. (My favorite line in the whole mess of haikus? "Cyclones? No! Just clouds!" )

[AugieDog]

3487084

The fifth section:

Will be a similar collection of limericks from Applejack.

Mike

[blank check]

I can't say I'm a fan of repeating words at the end of lines, or stanzas, in this case. Sorry, to be honest, the sestina (all sestinas, probably), and this procession of haiku grated on me. No accounting for taste. Alone, each of these would probably be swell.

But together, all I can see is clouds!

Clouds clouds clouds!

Clouds.

[AugieDog]

3488942

I've never much cared for:

Sestinas myself, but it was the realization that the six Elements of Harmony could be used as a sestina's keywords that sparked this whole idea in the first place. With these haiku, I wanted something to tie the whole group of 'em together, and, well, when you're a weather pony, just about ev'rything is a cloud!

Mike

[Blue_Paladin42]

[AugieDog]

3474731

OK:

I ended up writing a blog post about this because it turns out I can really bloviate on this subject!

Mike

[journcy]

It's possible that my favorite part of this is the way that the haikus almost look like clouds floating in the sky, with their condensed shape...

[Hierophant]

Unlike most pony poems, this doesn't make me want to close my laptop and rub the bridge of my nose. It's not Yeats, but it's decent.

[AugieDog]

3811635

I don't normally:

Go in for arranging the lines of poems in any particular way, but in this case it did seem appropriate.

3812874

In a lot of ways, that's all I ask of any poem: that I can read through to the end without furrowing my brow at a bit of off-kilter rhythm or a slightly wonky rhyme. It's why I have such trouble with Keats, actually...

Mike

[Ardashir]

Hmm, some fan poetry on the site? And a haiku? Very, very well done. Hopefully for him, Basho is not resting lightly on his laurels. ;)

[AugieDog]

5410965

Thanks!

I got my M.A. studying ancient Latin poetry--Horace was my guy--so these non-Greek or Roman forms are pretty experimental for me.

Mike

[Lucky Star 33094]

These are 20% cooler than the average haiku

[Bad Horse]

I especially like "The only stillness / Is flying fast as the wind".

[AugieDog]

11837327

Thanks!

I've been recently getting into English-language tanka which are basically haiku with two more seven-syllable lines at the end. I'm just so long winded!

Mike