Carpe Diem #1819 romance on the beach (haibun)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

This is our last regular episode in this CDHK Love Month. For this last episode I have chosen a nice theme I think Romance On The Beach, and this time I love to challenge you to create a haibun (prose and poetry) with a maximum of 100 words (including the poems).





Video © Rodica Madan

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until March 5th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1818 ... the color of love

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a belated episode of our wonderful Kai. So I will give you only the prompt for today.
Today I have chosen The Color Of Love for you to work with.

too old for new love
the moon rises each night
as I remember
the backseats of strange cars
it's helpful light afterwards

© Jane Reichhold

A beautiful tanka in which we find the beauty of the rising moon, but also the beauty of discovering sexuality as teenagers. Maybe you can remember having the first kiss in a car, or the first time having sex on the backseat of a car. In this tanka you can find that strong romantic atmosphere.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until March 4th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1817 Renga With ... Jane Reichhold ... Moonlight Moving

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We are counting down to the end of this wonderful month full of Love. Only four days left (regular episodes) and than we will start a new month full of exciting words and views ... next month we will do a reprise visit at Shikoku Island.

Today however we are still in the Love mood and with love we know there comes ... desire ... Today I love to challenge you to create a Renga With Jane Reichhold, our beloved and so missed co-host of CDHK may she rest in peace.

The goal of this feature, Renga With ..., is to add your two-lined verses / stanza through association on the scenes in the given haiku ... together with Jane Reichhold you are creating in that way a so called "Junicho" (a 12-stanza renga).

Jane Reichhold (1937-2016)

Here are the six (6) haiku by Jane Reichhold, extracted from her online Saijiki "A Dictionary of Haiku", section Spring, sub-section Moods:

morning fog
dreams not buried
deep enough

spring sunshine
the strangeness of his perfectly
normal thumbnail

kids laughing
in the neighbor's house
the childless couple

moonlight moving
with the gate as the servant girl
takes an evening

Desire In The Moonlight

Saturday rain
desire by a warm stove
for an affair

waterfall
delicate forms
for a spirit

© Jane Reichhold

As always you can choose your own "line-up", but ... your Renga With ... has to start with the following haiku:

moonlight moving
with the gate as the servant girl
takes an evening

What an awesome series of haiku on desire to work with ... love cannot exist without desire ... Create your Renga With Jane Reichhold ... enjoy!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until March 3rd at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1812 The Day After Valentine's Day ...

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Love Month here at CDHK. Last Friday it was Valentine's Day and today I have chosen a nice theme ... The Day After Valentine's Day ... Ofcourse that was last Saturday, February 15th, but as you all know we have our weekend meditation nowadays in the weekends.

This haiku is about Valentine's day or more the day after. As you maybe know Saint Valentine's Day is on February 14th and is a holiday in almost the whole world, also in Russia. Here is a special haiku by Alexey Andreyev for your inspiration to write an all new haiku in the same sense, tone and Spirit as the one given.

Russian Icon of St. Valentine

To stay in touch with our Love theme I have used the above Icon.

РПУМЕ чБМЕОФЙОПЧБ ДОС -
ЛТБУОЩЕ МЕРЕУФЛЙ ОБ РПМХ, Й
НЕФМБ Ч ХЗМХ
                      
day after Valentine's -
red petals on the floor, and
a broom in the corner

© Alexey Andreyev

A wonderful haiku I think. As I read this haiku I thought "what happened here?" Did the young lovers have a quarrel? Or is the scene more metaphorical? Tells this haiku that the love is over after a long time? Why didn't they sweep the floor? All that kind of questions came in my mind. And with those thoughts I wrote my own haiku inspired on the one by Alexey. I even have tried to write this haiku in the classical way.

petals of roses
scattered through the living room
a ring on the table

© Chèvrefeuille

petals of roses

A sad haiku ... but that sadness is also part of haiku. Haiku is a great medium to share your emotions caught is a few lines. This also is part of Love ... breaking up.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 23rd at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1810 rainbow

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Kai. This month it's "Love Month" and that my friends means all our prompts have to do with love. Today I have chosen the prompt "rainbow" and as you all know the "rainbow-flag" is for all kinds of love, not only the love between man and woman, but also the love between two man, two women, transgenders and bisexuals. Isn't it a joy to see that in the most countries around the world you can be gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual. Ofcourse there are countries were it isn't possible to have a relation with a man if you are a man, or two women in a love relation. That makes me sad.

Isn't it the most intense emotion we all know ... LOVE?

Awesome to see this flag wave against the blue sky ... colorful ... as is life, as is nature, as is love.

against the blue sky
Gods Love waves at us
shining rainbow

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 19th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1808 LOVE acrostic challenge

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend. I had a busy weekend because I had to work. I am at work now, but have my coffee-break, so I have a little time to publish our new episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai.

This month our theme is LOVE and for today I have chosen a nice challenge for you. I love to challenge you to create a  so called "acrostic" dodoitsu. Let me first tell you what "acrostic" means:

An acrostic is a poem (or other form of writing) in which the first letter (or syllable, or word) of each line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet.

An "acrostic" haiku example, acrostic: ONE:

Only eyes for you
Naked she lays down on the beach
Everlasting love

©️ Chèvrefeuille

sunny beach

But today I love to challenge you to create a Dodoitsu, that's a 4-line Japanese poetry form, let me tell you a little bit more about the Dodoitsu:

Dodoitsu is a form of Japanese poetry developed towards the end of the Edo Period. Often concerning love or work, and usually comical, Dodoitsu poems consist of four lines with the syllabic structure 7-7-7-5 and no rhyme or metre.

An example of a Dodoitsu:

One Night

one night I searched for a star
what I found was a full moon
now my every day is
full of shooting stars

© Ben Gieske (2012)

So the goal of this challenge is to create a Dodoitsu with the "acrostic" LOVE, the first characters of every line need to form that word.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 16th at noon (CET). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1805 Introducing our new Theme ... Love month

credits logo

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Haiku Kai. We are here to create and share Japanese poetry and this month our theme is Love. This month we celebrate Love in all its beauty. I have chosen this theme because of the fact that we celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th, but also because I love to explore Love as a theme for haiku.

Love ... we all can relate to it I think, it's not only the love between people, but also between plants, flowers, insects, animals and the love for something. I love my wife and kids, but I also fell in love with haiku back in 1988.

As you all know haiku is about nature, deeper meaning and so on. Tanka once was the poetry of love between people, it was used as a kind of secret love-letter, and is therefore known as a love poem. Haiku ... is mostly not seen as a love poem, but this month I hope to explore it ... together with you all. Are you with me?

Love is a challenge (photo © Sachar Gilad)

Love is one of the most important emotions I think, and Unconditional Love is what we need here on our planet, because unconditional love has no boundaries and will always reach out to other people around you and around the world.

without boundaries
I open my heart to spread love
on wings of birds

© Chèvrefeuille

With love we can reach out towards people around us. Love is really the only way to spread peace all over the globe.

Spread love,

Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 9th at noon (CET)