January 2010 – WALKING ON THIN ICE

mundania

January 31, 2010 2 Comments

r u hungry? – foto by Smith

Here’s a mundane poem about the momentary nothings that affect the flow of our daily lives, inconsequential details of non-moments told in non-haiku.

I think technically these eight stanzas are senryÅ«, as are most if not all the 8 poems I’ve written these past 2 weeks containing 54 haiku or senryÅ« – I’ll explore my thoughts on this maybe tomorrow in a poem titled The Haiku Police.

~ ~ ~

Mundania

Refrigerator
clicks on hum in the kitchen
two dark rooms away

Wake, rise, piss, shit, weigh,
brush, gargle, kiss wife, pet cat,
make coffee, sit, blog

Coffee in morning
Hot lentil curry for lunch
Dinner banana

I toke the last smoke
knowing the normal ahead
Contentedly go

Sit on couch and read
Sit on couch and do my work
Sit on couch and rest

Wife’s ex ran up bills
in her name, crashed her credit
Worm in man’s body

The interaction
twixt men, women, strangers, friends
is hopeless at best

Get your head out of
your morass and pick your ass
up off the ground, clown

snow – foto by Smith

freedonia

January 30, 2010 1 Comment

poverty – foto by Smith

Freedonia

Gave up Lent for Lent
Had enough of their Pay-now
Don’t-collect-later

Slick chains the rich play
Around the poor to keep them
Turning other cheek

Your Trickle-Down plan
Feels warm yellow sticky
You pissing on me?

Anything they want
The rich take without asking
And no giving back

Republican scum
Or Democrat cowardice
Crooks at either end

Is non-violent
Revolution a trick to
Keep us in our place?

The Gots they do got
The Got-nots get even less
Fuck me very much

third world – foto by Smith

dear diary

January 29, 2010 2 Comments

ectoplasm, West Side Market – foto by Smith

Dear Diary

Online mindless I
Play Solitaire or Tetris
In Zen nowhen trance

Dark dreams in the day
Feed on the shit left over
From my happy lies

Can’t keep being me
All the time – don’t like just me
Better be’s to be

A common suture
To fix bad start, broken odds
A walk in the woulds

My head nods, dips down
Eyes close, sleep creep, mind ramble
Delicious nowhere

This play of three lines
In seventeen syllables
Seeks grace as its goal

For there is cool
And there is cruel
And one is not the other

ectoplasm, West Side Market – foto by Smith

cat noir

January 28, 2010 2 Comments

queen cat – foto by Smith

I spose I’ve gone too far this time, beyond the pale, too close to kitsch.

Already been too many haiku — household haiku, funny haiku, family haiku, philosophical haiku, moral haiku, sex haiku, faux haiku, diary haiku, social satirical surreal brooding wide ranging bad and good haiku, senryÅ« haiku.

Yet here’s another seven-in-oner, only this time it’s feline lines.

Cat Noir

Food! And affection!
Clean cat box! And attention!
It’s ALL about her

Her sad meow of
Existential howl rends
But is fake, I laugh

Hug her to my ear
Purr rumble against my chest
Proper start to day

I give the cat ham
She rubs my leg in purr fur
Walks to wife for more

Suncat lies in light
Curving purr, lick stretch fur, yawn
So slow, motion art

The cat wakes my wife
Each morning at 4 a.m.
Get up! Time to play!

Cat walks a thin line
Between cute and obnoxious
Cuddle or cat gut

cat noir – foto by Smith

achoo

January 27, 2010 2 Comments

Jesus bomb – foto by Smith

Achoo

Haiku! Gesundheit.
Any towels with this shower
Or is this dessert?

I burble in blurts
As I dabble in gamble
Gamboling about

Don’t have no handle
And I too often dangle
Within and without

Capitalism —
Unholy guacamole
Batman, it’s a sham

Rise, shit, eat, work, sleep
Day after daze after day
In never ending

Chaos from Christians
Death debt Capitalism
Babylon babble

Mind or animal
Same as spirit versus flesh
So I mine my mind

be nice – foto by Smith

obscurata

January 26, 2010 3 Comments

American pop – foto by Smith

This is Lady K’s only household haiku, written about her father smoking two cigarettes simultaneously at her first wedding.

Good dad wipes his eyes
Cigarette dangles, candy
Drips from fingertips

– Lady K

Lady asked me to explain my scorpion-frog haiku from yesterday. This is a fair request since it’s way too enigmatic.

Frog and scorpion
Pollution in the river
Need kill desire

This is based on the famous parable of the scorpion asking the frog to carry it across the river on its back. The frog says no way, if I carry you on my back, you’ll sting me and I’ll die and we’ll both drown. The scorpion says don’t worry, I won’t sting you in the middle of the river because then we’d both die and that would be against my better interests. So the frog says okay, the scorpion hops on, they head across, and halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog. As the frog is dying he cries out “Why did you sting me? Now you’ve killed both of us.” The scorpion simply replies, “It’s my nature.”

So the pollution in the river in this haiku is the bodies of the frog and scorpion on one level, but the larger level is the “need / kill / desire” selfishness that’s killing off our human civilization. (I like what Gandhi said when he was asked what he thought of Western Civilization:”What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.”)

Not a good haiku because too dense, too esoteric, too enigmatic. But what is one to do late at night when that’s what appears in one’s brain, especially when the scorpion perfectly sums up our current rash of politicians and the frog exemplifies our country?