Joy Haiku

trio of flying 

seahorses splashing color

across dreaming sky

    Gaza

Thin children, brown eyes

having lost their shine,

hopscotch stumbling 

In dust across concrete shards

On what was once

An avenue that thrived.

Watered-down soup and stale bread

Their only meal

If not shot

At the feeding station. 

What’s that constant buzzing

Overhead?  Where is

The elusive deluded world? 

That “Good trouble”

They talk so much about?

   Cliffbound 

He resides most nights

In a puddle of parables.

Some sun, some sea,

Occasionally luminous,

Others Plutonian if not

Downright numinous.

He rolls over

Remembering cliffs

Along the Adriatic~Jadransko Mare~

The Croats call it

And how his mate

Had hope to sail

One day to Venice.

She never did

But hopped a midnight train

For Istanbul instead. 

Now she sleeps along the Bosporus 

Where huge freighters

Have their way

With her, how they keep

Plunging through her dreams,

Foghorns rippling

Across black sea 

Where Asia wrestles Europe,

Uncertain if they’ll ever marry. 

And the man she left?

Well, he’s 

Still sitting, waiting

High up and

Bleary-eyed

On those lofty cliffs

Wondering from his perch

If Venice

Is underwater yet

As it lurches

Towards the future.