Contact The Author: rdlbarton@gmail.com

Ron. Lavalette's work has appeared in these fine publications:



Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Two Small Threes By Five

(Haibun)
World Haiku Review (Online) March 2013

Irresistible— 
harvest moon after midnight
a haiku mandate

This is how it is for him. It’s pathetic, and even he knows it’s pathetic. He wakes up hours before daylight, fully awake with his self-imposed deadline ringing in his head: two small poems, three lines each, finished before breakfast; he just keeps thinking Two Small Threes By Five, over and over again until finally he gets himself out of bed to write them.
 
He thinks about where to start, takes the time to look up the phrase harvest moon—an antique phrase he’s vowed never to use in his writing—but the moonlight’s just so very present, flooding the window, shining on his desktop, and illuminating his keyboard that he feels the need to check it out and be certain. Sure enough:  a harvest moon, shining on.
 
After the first three hard-won lines, he hits the pre-set audio and the Sandhya Raga floods the room. He’s out of incense. He’s afraid he’s out of ideas. He walks to the kitchen, makes the coffee by moonlight, steel strings still ringing in the darkness:Raga Of The Harvest Moon. He looks out the window.
 
absolute perfect moon
coffee moon keyboard moon raga moon moon
haiku moon, release me

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Charlie

*82 Review (Print & Online) March 2013

Charlie visits the Precious Savior
Bookstore, stocks up on all the latest
offerings: Ticket To Heaven postcards,
sticks of incense, The Greatest Hits
Of The Grateful Faithful, featuring
the Certain Resurrection Choir.
He goes for a walk on Water Street,
his head and headphones buzzing.     

Charlie folds himself into a corner,
contemplates nations murdering
nations. He no longer aims or claims
to be a general; thinks instead about
suicide, rain, and the sidewalks, running.
Smoke rises near the airport, insubstantial,
like a ghost rises from a cooling corpse.
Charlie, airborne, cools his heels, thinks about
jets and vapor trails.   

Back home, he’s got a fan
and a paint-by-number Jesus.
At night they find a little harmony:
the fan spins around and
the room spins around and Jesus,
pleased, lets Charlie go to sleep.