Haiku from Graham Nunn

Currently leading our Kasen Renku at Issa's Snail (see link to the right) is the talented Graham Nunn. Here are some of his own haiku:



dawn service
red scarf slashed
across the digger's throat


~


nudist beach
all eyes stare
out to sea


~


rooster's yellow beak opens the morning


~


makeshift bed
blood on the face
of the new born


~


at dusk
pink and blue clouds
of fairy floss


Graham Nunn
Unfortunately, Graham's haiku collection, a zen firecracker, is sold out, but his beautiful haibun collection is not, have a look below
http://www.pardalote.com.au/titles/measuring/

Bite - Graham Nunn

Bite

how close a minute ago had been
young girl in the sand
pulling off wet clothes
red on white
beautiful but for the horror of the moment
the frenzied tide
pulling out and around
as the people piled up
a simple example
of twenty-first century fascination
the screaming hell of flesh
humanity's reaching arms
sand sticks to everything.

Graham Nunn
http://grahamnunn.wordpress.com/

Tourist Strip Poems - Graham Nunn

Tourist Strip Poems

1. The same old people
walking along the
same old skyline

2. A shell in the window
listening to the waves

3. Ghosts of the Yugambeh
people selling artefacts
in the avenue

4. Tomorrow's sand
waiting in the bilges

5. A seagull deafened
by concrete
on all sides

6. Clouds of sandflies
rise to neon calligraphy

7. The night sky's excesses
pour into
wakefulness

8. Streets of homeless;
suburbs of living dead

Graham Nunn
http://grahamnunn.wordpress.com/

Grounded - Graham Nunn

Grounded

Coming back, the land didn't know him.
Not the soft air, peaks and skittering leaves
or blurred faces rising out of the fog
along Kingsford-Smith Drive, not the river
haze of the city
opening into his eyes
through trickle of morning sun
or the aging pier at Breakfast Creek
he half-imagined had been built for him —

the land under his feet and brooding
in shadows cast by the sheer rise of the city
had forgotten him. The odour of the river
drummed into shifting rock
was familiar, but wafted the frail taint
of foreign ghosts. He thought he knew
the sounds: low hum of ferry coming into dock
with passengers murmuring
home home

but it was not. The clouds
had grown heavy, the radio
in hard accents, promised more
rain continuing through the night.
In a crowded bar on Merthyr Street
he trembled like a sailor or fisherman
having seen the slope of the world and its infinite
smallness, having returned
with the illusion he had not changed, but friends
had grown old and disappeared
into home and heartbreak.

After short black and numbing
football on the TV, he rose
weightless as a ghost
and followed the riverbank, with drifts
of crows crying ironic above him
coming home coming home
the land didn't know him.

Graham Nunn

http://www.smallchangepress.com.au/index.htm

Soup - Graham Nunn

Soup

ten pm. Chinatown
birds wait
in the window

he is drinking Johnnie Walker
and I am drinking beer

a bowl of something clear with
greens and pale meat

outside the steamy window
it is raining
he is smoking

pale blue curlicues
drift from his nostrils

move across the surface
of his scotch
like famous Highland mist

I watch the words
come out of his mouth
but cannot hear them

I am listening
to the birds
pursue their seed in us

Graham Nunn

http://www.smallchangepress.com.au/index.htm