Monthly Archives: June 2021

Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760-1849) 1831 woodcut
haiku, poetry

The Great Wave

So many eyes have seen this sea, they’re blind.

one of thirty-six
fishermen brave the high sea —
mighty fuji’s seen

meditate on where
oh, place the kento1 with care —
every part is spare

the sea’s our lover
her lovers brave her fury  —
lapis lazuli 2

my love’s a dragon 
Edo3 sees the fickle sea — 
push the brush away

So many eyes have seen this sea, they're blind.

@ rlbusséll 2021 - All rights reserved.
Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760-1849) 1831 woodcut

Panorama of Edo from Atagoyama by Felice Beato (1865 or 1866)
Panorama of Edo from Atagoyama by Felice Beato (1865 or 1866)



  1. The Japanese printing “registration” system. Registration is a method printers use to guarantee that each print in a series is aligned the same way. ↩
  2. a bright blue metamorphic rock consisting largely of lazurite,
    a bright blue pigment formerly made by crushing, being the original ultramarine. ↩
  3. Edo = Tokyo ↩
Standard
poetry

Alabaster Arms

Painting: M. Caravaggio, 1601. Oil on canvas 91 inches x 69 inches. Located in the Saint Maria del Popolo Church, Rome. (Detail)

Michael’s chiseled hands have 1
not formed me as Adonis
and yet Medusa’s writhing’s 2
have made me as cold as stone.

Alabaster arms,
alabaster lips,
a cold and lifeless form;
Pygmalion’s infant 3
breath lies ever stillborn.

Yet, I sculpt my life for all to see.
Display it, set it in museum-free.
Wait for all to come critique
my jaundiced eye, my hobbled knee,
and pray they not nail me to a tree.

But if they do,
I pray they see fit
to rest me by my top.4
Then with Peter, I’ll
cringe at our thrice told tale 5
and wrest not glory
from The Ancient Story.

Let me not efface the face that sculpted I.


© rl busséll 2021 – All rights reserved.

  1. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni or more commonly known by his first name Michelangelo. ↩
  2. In Greek mythology, Medusa was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazers upon her face would turn to stone. ↩
  3. Like many do with Frankenstein and his monster, I’ve conflated Pygmalion with his creation. : ) ↩
  4. Church tradition has it that Saint Peter was crucified upside-down. Origen says: “Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downwards, as he himself had desired to suffer”. ↩
  5. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. — Matthew 26:75 ↩
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