Haiku – richwrapper

*(Juice, as I and a few others call the newest and lastingest U.S. Marine – before, then and since – poet, especially of haiku and some tanka as well as other forms and stories, used to serenade our Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station barracks (I was the newbie fresh from the 1s Battalion, 27the Marines – First Marine Brigade who delighted in the theme music on his harmonica I associated with the television series “Combat” featuring the late Vic Morrow) and later its mournful notes he’d play at my request when we held “night call” at the base’s public affairs office where he and I would gather to get away from all the green stuff. Bruce Jewett faces his latest nd hopefully not last battle with the calm grace which I’ve come to know is central to his life and faith. Never a more gentle soul walks through his life with wry joyfulness and sometimes too-spot-on imagery woven in the tight symmetry of his own invention, a 5-5-5 poetic form of haiku, a departure from the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic count. But then, noting gets him off-the-couch than a good or in my case adequate game of chess as he smokes his yearly cigarette in Artie Shaw “Laugh-In” Teutonic fashion, he irony and satire painted large behind his words. God Bess, you, Juice, and knowing you said Rosary for a dearly departed – Buddha, Bruce, wrote, “winks” and nods. And you, Lance Major General Jewett, Sir, get the same treatment when time to cast your lot on the ever-same, ever-changing wheel. Love you, man.)

December 8, 2023 by richwrapper Categories: J RichardsTags: buddha-winks-his-approval, Haiku, Poem, Poetry, praise, Tanka, w3

“August Held Over”

(September 5, 2019)

held-over August

ennui – beer budget blown – now

hammock ‘drops’big stitch!

Ensconced between shading camphor trees with red and yellow shrimp plants among the visual delights, this doughty hammock has had its share of use – and abuse – and, alas, lost a valuable set of weaves and must be replaced.

September 6, 2019September 6, 2019 by richwrapper Categories: J RichardsTags: beer-budget blown, ennui, Haiku

“Shrapnel Squeezings”

Little love pieces

of Hanoi keep working out

for forty-six years.*

*(In just under a month I celebrate the time I had an early wake-up in Quang Nam Province of Vietnam (December 9, 1970) during which time I acquired much miniscule minor shards of shrapnel which over time have bedeviled their way to my epidermis. It is nothing like what the Naval Corpsman prized out of my left forearm – a piece the size of a BB on a diet remains there – and my left shoulderblade, but the one I most would have liked to keep was the long sliver embedded in my nose’s left side, extending far enough to tickle my upper eyelash when I blinked. The quandary: should I keep the BB – is has moved almost three inches closer to my elbow in the intervening years – or should I have it excised and with its cystic covering intact set as a charm on a chain?)