Haiku During Crisis
An Ongoing Series, Basically in Chronological Order
© 2020 Kurt Wildermuth
For
Marian Johnson
And the Zen Motorcycle
Of Norton Haiku
And Susan, always
My best friend, closest reader,
Coworker at home
In memory of John Prine
____________________
Hearing rhythms, you
Feel bass lines, feel drum beats, feel—
Hands clap! clap! for you
Godot to go, go—
Why wait? But they do not move
They, too, serve in place
This haiku is new:
A small spider, you, perched high
On five-seven-five
Below the surface
Premonitory surges—
Rice, beans, cheese emerge
I, Whit Waltman, born
On the forthright of New York
Tend to the wounded
Darkness—silence—drear!
Dread—fear—coasting on bat’s wings—
Something with feathers
In a Turtle Bay
Townhouse Sondheim lives stately
So cerebrately
Bob Dylan rambles,
Scrambles—thief of thoughts—
Sneaks, stuck, inside blues
Katharine Hepburn
Rescues dogs, repots plants, sighs,
Picks up lost pennies
Tonight is the night
But for what does it ask not
When why ’tis of thee
Spring is cumin in!
Ground’s dark, damp from yesterday
When greens dripped and drooped
I had this weird dream
Of haiku after haiku—
Clouds without a sky
Peat moss in the parks
Of a virus-hit city—
Sign of tomorrow!
The Omega Man
Meets I Am Legend on a
Cruise ship to the sea
A lone seagull soars
Over opaque crosscurrents
And swoops in somewhere
In the Vondelpark
Near the Van Gogh Museum
Rain doesn't touch you
Pigeon perusing
Patina’d stone boar and frog
And snake and no wings!
East River sparkling—
Child and bicycle are one—
They don't watch the news
Elixir! fixer
Rocketer roller mixer
Upper cupper joe
This is just to say
Those haiku you left for me
Left me wanting more
Saint Iron escapes fire,
Gathers rust, peeling paint,
Bird poop, dirt—a life
Does evil exist?
No, we did away with it—
Your little dog too
Terrible timing
Of a helpful distraction—
Frog prince crowned star fish
Water babies climb
Ladders if they have to go
Somewhere flippers can’t
Lou said to Laurie
I don’t want to be erased
Stopping New York time
All visitors must
Check in at security—
Say chicken sent you
Two only children
Prepare their past lives for life—
Rocks make a garden
Haiku in a time
Of distance between breaths—
Can't hold each other
Dystopia now
Delivered to your doorstop
By sci-fi hive mind
Day without haiku
Not today, obviously
No pleasure, deferred
Flowerless orchid
Sprouting tiny center leaf—
Clock on its own time
I saw the best minds
Working in the worst of times—
Synapses afire
Remember that day
When that special thing happened
And you ran upstairs
Remember that day
When you saw something moving
Maybe it saw you
Remember that day
When you played your instrument
And listened to it
David Byrne saw it
On Talking Heads' Fear of Music:
Urban worry funk
A thousand and one
Stories told at the same time
Using a strange tongue
First line, anything
Second line, a direction
Elusive third line
People walking streets
They have never seen before
Their feet way-finding
Remember the day
Your mom or dad or someone
Taught you how to be
A red cardinal
Sings the Beatles' song "Blackbird"
But does not like it
We need poetry
Said the smiling publisher
Tell all the children
It's time for your bed
Time for washing all your stuff—
Keep bears' needs in mind
While we are asleep
Plants plan their daring escape—
The pots stay neutral
Who knows where it goes—
The time, the tide, the tie that
Binds the twain shall meet
Our rattling Buick
And the AM radio hits—
Did Dad ever speak?
For the longest time
My mother evaded me—
What did she look like?
This world is nuts and
You can quote me on that in
The other nuts world
Subsonic warbles
Say I love you in private
Animal language
I have loved many
Things, including some people
But mainly music
Goodbye to all that
Which won't last the sorting out
After the virus
Goodbye to even
The things that will continue
But in altered form
Channeling Gandhi
She asks herself one question:
How can I resist?
It's a question of
How much can be accomplished
And how much that's worth
Epic in haiku:
Riding the syllabic wave
Until something breaks
The end is nearing
You'll know it when you see it
Damn, you just missed it
Tired of blue sky
They moved to the Land of Smog
And sold oxygen
Bryant Park webcam—
Normally a silly thing—
Where motion means life
Ducks in formation
Their feet fighting strong currents—
Momentum mori
Go ahead take a
Picture, make a video
Of my mask and me
Man standing outside
Other men standing inside
Do they not like him?
You don't like my mask
I can tell by how your eyes
Try to meet my glaze
Bicycle planter
How proudly you bear your weeds—
Flat tires? Who cares!
Leonard Cohen's ghost
Sits smoking a cigarette
Made of his last puffs
Say your slideshow ends
Because the quarantine does—
Make it your mantra
Emergency! Tape!
Plastic flapping poetry
Waiting to happen
Jesus Fucking Christ:
Cancer-disfigured singer
Dies by corona
Illuminations
By Arthur Rimbaud was just
A liberal hoax
Whatever happened
To that "Meet the Author" guy?
Did he meet someone?
Shivering snowman
Arrives in New York in spring
Boy does he have balls
American flag
Displayed like a show of hands—
Her T-shirt, your wall
While you follow one
First line that's going somewhere
Another one occurs
Say you reach the point
Of never leaving a place
But the place leaves you
Assemble a mask—
Dust cloth, duct tape, pine cone, leaf—
That covers the world
Arms outstretched in
A hug waiting to happen
Yoga position
The Crystal Palace
Stood where Bryant Park lies flat—
Go there, do something
Please use main entrance
You'll know it when you see it
Can't miss it, really
Rivers run to you
See if you can catch their flow
Or if it bathes you
Crunchy and Stinky
Find themselves on Gym Clothes Hill
Realize they're socks
Careful what you wish
For wishes really do come
Creeping in the night
New Year's confetti—
You've gotta be kidding me—
Falling in April
Classic martini
Proof a god loves us
Dryly with a twist
This ain't no sonnet
Feel its bloody heart beating
Down the door of love
Haiku by numbers:
You can count the syllables
And recount but be off
Birds are peering down
From ledges just like humans
Who wish they were birds
They took that away
Then they took that other thing
They know what you like
We're gonna rise up
Like crypts in New Orleans
Disgorge our contents
Forgive them for they
Know now not what their country
Is capable of
Forgive them for they
Know not what a loaded gun
A life turns into
When you write your last
Haiku during the crisis
Make it one long breath
I could sit staring
At this unblinking unthinking screen
Or see what's inside
Prepare your next mask
Like you're writing a haiku
That could be your best
Zen Buddhist temple
Had to cancel services
As nonessential
Zen Buddhist priests are
Delivering nirvana
For the art lover
Life is what happens
While you wait for further word
(This is you on hold)
I take walks daily
While thinking about haiku
Not only haiku
Can the virus last
On the surface of a coin
Face down in the street
When you're reaching out
To feel nothing reaching back
You are free from them
Thumbs up or thumbs down
They say the Romans did that—
Took fate in their hands
You live only once
Unless another lifetime
Hits you on the road
Get on the good foot
Your other foot jumps too much
For you to hop on
Open a business:
Machine to count syllables
For mobile haiku
Just cherry blossoms
Don't add up to a haiku
You need your fingers
Luckily for him
It hurts to put Donald Trump
Into poetry
I hate to tell you
Your dog's my kindred spirit—
Its collar, my soul
An only childhood
Prepared me for staying safe
By keeping distant
Where once was fresh earth
There now is newly laid lawn—
Which do you prefer?
Invasion of the
Body snatchers but bodies
Spreading the gospel
Spreading the gospel
Of not spreading the virus
Not resurrecting
Erika died of
AIDS, which she got from a guy
When the plague was "gay"
When my parents died
Four months apart and apart
From home, I moved on
Become the cliché
Your parents warned you about:
A haiku writer!
Life-sustaining life
Like the heaviest metal
By the hardest heart
I went out without
A pen and found—a surprise—
No prompts for haiku
It will hunt you down
That thing you've always wanted
And yet were part of
I love how some signs
Say the current pandemic—
Not the past or next?
Haiku mania
Is coming soon to your town
It's going viral
Waking from a nap
To realize it's bedtime
For someone somewhere
I, Haiku Doofus,
Use up pens and paper scraps—
Clown bouncing balloons
Put it on a leash
I don't want that thing near me
Whatever it is
Prepping vegetables
Is like writing a haiku:
Life sliced into bites
Suppose one minute
You're freezing in rainy wind
The next you're too warm
Let your conscience be
Your guide rope up the incline
You're inclined to try
Each day a journey
Through an unfamiliar woods—
Worm's search for a bird
Each day a journey—
No, not the rock band, you dork—
Steps until you stop
Nothing but gray skies
But how many grays there are!
Pick your favorite
Chalk mark in rainstorm:
Joni Mitchell's metaphor
For whatever is
Aim for the island
In piloting your small craft
But know you will miss
Self-reflexively
You write about your writing
Self-reflexively
In the end I bought
A used LP from the guy
Who used to be there
Private no entry
Please keep off the grass
Beware of haiku!
Someone distributes
Nutrients like breadcrumbs
Do you dare take one?
People dropping masks
The way they used to drop bags—
The spirit is weak
End of enchantment:
When the spell breaks down crying
When it doesn't work
Damn that microwave
Abandoned on the sidewalk—
Useless state of grace
Crumbs from your crackers
How you know I'll notice them
How we discuss this
Do this for a while
Then find yourself something else
Because you did this
Your verse voice could be
Stuff of wagon trains:
Not a word wasted
Haiku fever brands
Dark three-line mark inside your
Light versifier
In Saramago's
Blindness, people shit everywhere
Because they can't see;
Shit happens until
The affliction goes away
Mysteriously
Cute couple passes
Potato on the sidewalk—
Simple food for thought
Dipsy and Doodle
Decide pizza will suffice
On their hungry day
David Bowie shields
His profile from passersby
With one thin white hand
Hits me in the head
Where the brain is said to live:
Be a Receiver?
Jester in Shakespeare?
Wizened Outcast on Ice Floe?
The Old Switcheroo?
How to sanitize
Everything material:
From the spirit out
In summer we swim
In that shallow concrete hole
In over our heads
Fiona Apple
Walked up and down, up and down
A hill while waiting
Wait for the signal
Driver don't proceed
Speed honk curse spit rage
Is it listening
Noting predicting hoping
Falling or crushing
Sweet dreams going mad
Sourdough bread breaking bad
Witch turning good—sad!
His huge platform boots,
Leopard-skin pants, and top hat
Show glam still lives here
How small an item
Can you find poetry in?
Smaller than that one
Small ball of pink thread
Clinging at the waterside:
You make my heart sing
Granny on bongos
Performing all greatest hits
Beating her heart out
"Give Trump the finger."
"I will not do that." Straight-faced.
Give it to yourself.
Santa Clause rises
To defend Easter Bunny
Against charge of theft
Man gets well, returns,
Receives ice cream cone, says, "So
Many calories!"
You must be so dumb
You're riding a mountain bike
Down stairs in New York
Who will pick you up
If you fall and crack your head
Someone who shouldn't
Hit a rubber ball
Against an office building:
Ingenuity!
Don't start playing this
Childish, life-consuming game:
Counting syllables
Big Microbrother
Sees you as a head full of
Thought experiments
Tacos are dollars
And arepas count as coins
At the fun food bank
You'll get back, get back
Into the swing of the thing
Just avoid the noose
John Cage sought silence
In an isolation tank
But heard his heart beat
Atlas loses grip
Putting new spin on old globe
Become gutter ball
Neglected flowers
Abandon garden beds to
Visit hospitals
Gold-plated cacti
Fence deserts where skeletons
Lie in sand mansions
Reach the breaking point
Where your chest pushes forward
Till your feet lift off
Early bird special
Pokes out of his earthwork―oops!
He don't feel so good
King Crab the Sideways
Summons Good Sir Pens Hornbill
For status report.
"All's quiet, sire.
Holding down the fortress, still
Closed to the public."
"Carry on, Hillborn,
Good man." "Good Sir." "What was that?
You're fired." On pyre.
Lung cancer won't quit
Seeing itself as God's head
Essential worker
Waste transmits disease
If you find yourself diseased
Don't waste what you have
Radio City
Beckons from Forbidden Zone:
Ghosts doing high kicks
Couscous and Quinoa
Costar on cooking show where
Talk gets granular
You can be yourself
You can be beside yourself
You can't find your self
Where the hell were we
On some rocky cliff in fog
Or lost in ourselves
Scraping out your brain
Like gold mining, blood taking,
Junkie-sick seeking a vein
Your upstairs neighbor's
Fist-feet pounding the floor
Become metaphors
Something makes you feel
Something like uncomfortable
Must be worth doing
You could keep writing
Keepers all night, morning now
Where did haiku go
Am I in the lead?
Have I become my own league?
Will I be legion?
Oh my God I think
I might be doing God's work
So what's God doing
Keep going faster
Like around a rounded bend
Pretended corner
Friend without a friend
Who needs you to be closer
Is comfortable
You got what you thought
You thought it was at the time
You thought it got you
In Beckett's Endgame
Clov follows blind Hamm's orders
Because nothing's left?
Metaphysical
Speculation will get you
Into deep trouble
Enough for one night
Don't you think you've done enough
Don't you think you're done
Help I have become
The Fifth Beatle of haiku
The faux guru dude
You are not alone
You are home inside your head
Like Dad in hospice
Dog bites traffic cone—
Some dogs settle for small toys—
Proud jaws gripping thing
Empire State Building
Dear old friend, hyperdermic
Flashing red alert
Best days of my life
How sick is it to say that
Judge me judge me not
Mad man that I am
Having passed tests in past tense
Times not judged the best
Yet not sick or sad
I savor the times that test
What I am best at
The stress whale exhales
A steady stream out its hole
Not a soul or sign
Sondheim lives a block
Down my block―or I'm down his―
As I pass the place
I see him writing
Corona: The Musical
But burying it
United Nations:
Modernist tombstone to the
International?
Electric guitar
Comes out of its case to play
For healthcare workers
Harmonica too
Emerges for the first time
In years just for them
Kitchen utensils
And pots and pans and hands join
In giving it up
It has been so long
Since I have been close enough
To anyone else
Your cute little dog
Is so sparklingly whiter
You must have bleached it
No one may read these
Scrambled syllables scribbled
Then sent in secret
Do not block crosswalk
And do not walk across block
Go where you do dare
Do go where you dare
You do dare go where
Where you do dare go
Where do you dare go
Dare where you do go
Where do you dare go
Colonoscopy
Not the procedure but the
Anesthesia
This is how I work
When I have real work to do:
Matter mind over
Some kind of monster
Appears as nonentity
And that's no disguise
Overeating home
Workers have reason to fear
Their rear-end reviews
Avoid crazy man
Taking dictation from air
He might hear the cure
Park chairs have seated
Themselves at safe distances
For people's return
This one goes out to
This one goes out too far out
This one goes out two
This one goes out two
This one goes out there therefore
This one goes out here
Spiritual twins
Separate then reunite
Then split the difference
Ezra Pound's Cantos
Don't step on my blue suede shoes
But draw on haiku
Like this double one
I wrote for you to have fun
Like Ezra's Metro
Abolitionist
Frederick Douglass freed his brain
From their tyranny
What does the muse do
When it muses in your view
Does it amuse you
People fear dying
Needlessly because you can
Take comfort in that
For fifty-five years
I have been looking at things
From inside this head
One day I want out
Like flying long distance and
The plane closes in
I miss my New York
Philharmonic Thursday nights
When nothing happened
I make my nightly
Rounds through the neighborhood still
Caring about it
An empty ferry
Pretends to bear passengers
While dreaming of flight
Tomorrow you'll read
The newspapers piling up
Tonight you're the news
What is it about
A red tugboat that makes it
So evocative
All you wanna do
Lately is haiku don't you
Know they're bad juju;
Do you still love me
Or do you now love only
Three-line poetry
Powered by people
Is the power of people—
Paradoxical
Some of mine will take
A while to get if they can
Even be gotten
To thwart a sentence
Redirect words before the
End punctuation
Here's how you can help:
Pushing past past boundaries
Pushing past your past
A Swiss Army knife
Unfolds in more directions
Than you think you can
Haiku led me to a great experience. One of mine—
His huge platform boots,
Leopardskin pants, and top hat
Show glam still lives here
—is about a man in our neighborhood who dresses just like that, all the time. He reportedly was part of the Warhol crowd. In fact, Warhol's original Factory was on E. 47th bet. 2nd and 3rd, and this man lives on E. 48th off 2nd. Maybe about a week ago, I saw him after not having seen him for weeks, and I immediately wrote the haiku, which I considered a kind of journalism. Yesterday I started down his block, and there he was, walking with two canes. I spoke to him once, years ago, so I know what a gentle, unassuming soul he is. Earlier this year, before the virus arrived in the U.S., I saw him hug a grocery store worker he's friendly with. So I pulled out a piece of paper and my pen, wrote down my haiku about him, then walked down the block, stopped in front of him, and said, "I saw you the other day and wrote a poem about you." I handed it to him and explained, "It's a haiku." He was wearing a big black scarf as a mask, so I couldn't see his expression, but he said, "You're a wonderful person!" "We love to see you around," I explained, heading off. And then—quite uncharacteristically for me, but what the hell—“God bless you!”
Be not afraid to
Look stupid, be not afraid
To look, stupid, be
Afraid not to be
Stupid, look, to be, not be
Afraid, be stupid
Hug time at work for
Domestic partners in the
Factory of love
Mickey and Minnie
Miss mousing around the house
Because they are trapped
Not to get too weird
Not to get all combative
Not to get woo woo
Not to get off track
Not to get sentimental
Not to get on you
Swim in oceans seas
Lakes ponds pools puddles droplets
Tears if you have to
In the ambulance
From hospital to hospice
Dad must have been scared
When his eyes met mine
They dimmed and stopped their wild search
For a resting place
Desiccated gourd
Whose only occupation
Is getting smaller
Poodle with man bun
Contemplates long gray beard as
Retirement goal
Abandoned scooter—
Tireless advocate for
Staying in one place
Wallace Stevens told
William Carlos Williams that
Writing poetry
Was like doctoring
Or like selling insurance
Which of course he did
Williams did I mean
Really practiced medicine
Stevens never did
He did something else
At the Hartford Accident
And Indemnity
Company where he
Wrote poetry on paper
Scraps stashed in his desk
But what he might have
Told William Carlos Williams
I really can't say
Tin-foil hatter and
Six-foot rabbit ask Alice
Who's curiouser
A boxer puts his
Coworker on the ropes
In a title match
Et cetera and
More so on and so on so
Ad infinitum
Plants we leave behind
Given water and sunlight
Grow on their own turf
Everything is haiku
Except for this poem
Which doesn't count
Saw you yesterday
Wrote a poem about you
No, not this haiku
Nature and Nurture
Are vying for attention
Inextricably
My parents had tents
In the end Mom's folded up
While Dad's flew away
Living hand to mouth
Can leave you biting the hand
That can't make you eat
Berryman's Dream Songs
Never dreamed they were singing
Nor knew Berryman
Environmental
Activism starts with you
Cleaning up your act
Don't ruin thinking
By being critical of
Critical thinking
On the other side
Of the other side you'll find
You're back where you started
Play "Murder Most Foul"
Yet another masterpiece
From master Dylan
This one of a piece
With his latest reveries
About history
And mythology
Whirling in a hurricane
That upends the world
Released in this year
Of covid-19 murder
Mystery or not
This one is about
The killing of Kennedy
And healing through art
The pandemic blues
Have got the world singing them
Catchy choruses
T. S. Eliot,
Banker, shored up unsureties
Against sure ruin
Hepburn and Tracy
Never married famously
Or infamously
Man on a mission
To make it his mission to
Make something happen
Man, not a barber,
Gets well, returns, suddenly
Offers me haircut
From Zen Flesh, Zen Bones,
Collection of translations:
"Through change, consume change"
So, now, thank you, no,
I don't need to meditate
Now, I think, no, so,
You know why I think
I am meditating now
I know, I thank you,
I don't need to meditate,
You know I thank you,
I don’t need to know
I am meditating now
So know, no thank you
"Fancy rat attack"
Reads graffiti in doorway—
I don't fancy one
All philosophy
Is a footnote to Plato
Who is a footnote
Warhol's Factory
Started a few blocks from here
Ended a few lives
Glove missing its mate
On the one hand plays the hand
Dealt—on the other . . .
What did you think of
That nothing to get hung up
About the neck with
Jonathan Richman
Lowered his rock band's volume
To guard babies' ears
Sometimes I remain
In a place until I think
"Stay here forever"
When you're receiving
A goodbye kiss off of death
Say hello to it
A haiku highway
Leads nowhere you want to go—
So you want to go
A haiku highway
Leads nowhere you want to go—
You want to badly
My mother's birthday—
She would have been ninety-one
She's happy she's not
A bird seeks a bath
As a birdbath seeks the rain
Bird and bath stand by
What a rabbit hole
What fun for the whole rabbit
Burrowing inner
What goes on behind
The construction fence is what's
Going to happen
You're doing these things
Because it's now, you're you, and
They're available;
However—a big
Caveat—it’s not, just as
You're not and they're not
Here's looking at you
There with your isolation
Looking back at you
The patron sainthood
Of seeking occupation
Seeks a full-time saint
Yesterday: haiku
Today: freedom from haiku
Tomorrow: haiku
Presence or fragrance
Who can tell the difference
When senses are dulled
Wake up so groggy
Can turn over and go back
To sleep in your bed
Take a sad song and
Make it sadder by singing
Everything in it
Compost containers
Stand ready for the day de-
Composing restarts
This is not a bike
Stand right where you are hands up
On no handlebars
A homeless man lives
On Fifth Avenue writing
Signs to inspire
Better behavior;
For example: "Right now small
Gestures of kindness
Truly change people's
Lives"; he sits shouting at a
Man without a mask
The Magic Mountain
And Hamlet lie on benches
Not saying a word
Books left on benches
As anonymous presents—
Showers are forecast
Showers will wash shit
Off the sidewalks, where people
But mostly dogs go
Which do you prefer
More graffiti appearing
Or dogshit smearing
The woman shook her
Head, refusing my spare change,
Shakes eating chicken
Vonnegut sat or
Was it slumped, shot, bloodshot yet
Sallow is the word
My nose runs behind
My mask but I don't wipe it—
A fringe benefit!
"Best mask sale here" sign
Meaning best mask or best sale—
Ambiguity
My mother always
Called it the apartment on
East 65th St.
My parents lived there—
Conceivably, I did too—
In their early years;
After she had died
Dad and I stood outside the
Building, which had changed
"Keep Your Distance" sang
Richard Thompson but in a
Different context
Woman in the dunes
Smiling slyly at the sands
Piling castles
Remember that day
Black-clad women danced outside
The Ford Foundation;
It's happening now
And it will keep happening
Like a bird tweeting
If babies could stroll
There'd be no need for strollers
Still there'd be walkers
Do not touch your face
And your face will not touch you
You will both be free
Runners are the worst
At keeping social distance
As they pass unmoving
You wouldn't would you
Or you couldn't if you could
But should you should you
Feeling self-conscious
Have a good self-conscious time
Being pure feeling
Edward Gorey meets
Greta Garbo, neither says,
You are my sunshine
This might be the place
Where they say the world ends
Its life as the world
So much fun and such
Freedom from wanting to want
Means one thing: Wake up
This movie moves me
This movie is such a trip
This movie is called
Koyaanisqatsi:
(Hopi) life out of balance:
Documentary
Unhappy Earth Day!
Planet, couldn't you pick a
Better place and time?
Apotheosis
Rises to the challenge of
Dropping to nadir
No Shit Sherlock joins
Sticky Gumshoe on ground floor
Of new building case
This haiku is new
Unlike all the old haiku
It breaks every rule
Perfect copy meets
Imperfect original—
Regrets being made
Better days ahead
Says a chalkmark that survived
Yesterday's rainstorms;
And if a chalkmark
Wouldn't understand nature
There's no hope for us;
We remain hopeless
Poor nature interpreters
Apart from ourselves;
We remain apart
From our essential nature:
Animal ahead
This scene repeating
With minor variations:
Are these dogs friendly?
Some dogs may be nice
But other dogs may not be
There's no way to know
Personality
Is a hallmark of the pug—
The same one for each
Dog that stared at me
Bounds, tail wagging, to see you
Because we're all dogs
Of all city birds
Which one is the luckiest—
Do the others know?
Iridescent bird
Variegated body
Like an oil-stained road
Unhappy with me
For standing there and gawking
Hides from bush to bush
Thinking to myself
Because the thinker's on mute
I think I love you
That empty carriage
Roundabout may be calling
Past horses to work
The sheltering sky
Might take you in like you're a
Long lost innocent
I love when signs say
"Due to the recent events"—
Which ones do you mean?
Hi, is Yoko home
I happened to be nearby
Really across town
And thought I'd drop in
Like a visitor from Mars
To pay my respects
Proceed with caution
Do not block intersection
Be prepared to stop
Bethesda Fountain
Is out of water right now
Come back when things work
Zero percent chance
Of normal living today—
Haiku are likely
Yesterday: Be bug
Today: Consider windshield
Tomorrow: Be bug
Where is Central Park
But in your mental backyard
Where it needs to be
Only in New York
Can you turn around and see
The Met waits coolly
Loving memory
Is where much of the city
Is living these days
A small bird dropping
At my feet to say hello
Expects a crumb tip
Syllable thinking
Is like composing music
By first counting notes
Healthcare worker sits
Alone by the river, smokes,
Drifting, smoldering
Subject for haiku:
For those attuned to silence
Crickets speak volumes
For Kafka, living
May mean putting out feelers—
The bug reaching out
Metabolism:
How do you go on if you
Don't know you might not
Out of the way, guys—
Talking to pigeons within
Barriers again
Sidewalk rising toward
Your downward-facing forehead
Packing a wallop
Down it plops! Oily
Long-billed black bird drops
Only to pop up
"Work has called in sick"
Says another restaurant
Wittily resigned
Working a vein of
Making even myself think
I think it's working
New York will be great
If they ever finish it
And can stop working;
Physical world as
Always under construction
Hard hat area:
The Bristol Hotel
Sat on the northwest corner
Of 42nd
& 5th until it
Was demolished to make way
For the skyscraper
Where I used to work;
A computer now sits there
Picturing my face
As I access its
Programs, memory, workings
Silly and Stupid
Stand across from each other
Eyeing the border
Water jug and pen
Hang from bedsheet line knotted
Under scaffolding:
Makeshift writer's room
Abandoned by its author—
Anonymous work
Orwell wrote the book
Of love like a warm blanket
You never shake off
An indefinite
Article and the sure thing
Might make a couple
Three lines that don't rhyme
And don't mean a thing if they
Ain't got that Zen zing
Man's messing with worm—
Hey man, leave that worm alone!—
Returns it to dirt
Rock and roll haiku
Won't solve anyone's problems
Does the twist on them
Put a name on it
And you stop it just in time
So it can't run off
Capture the moment:
Yes, that's it, hold it like that,
And you just miss it
So-called president
Has his so-cold choking hold
On this country's soul
Get out of its way
When current illness passes
Open wellness shop
What needs to exist
Is what might not exist yet is
What needs to might not
Finding iced coffee
You forgot you made before
The caffeine wore off
There's no choice between
The product and the process
Neither can be yours
You may save the date
You may save a place in line
You try to save time
Who was that masked man
Bystanders ask each other
As stranger goes lone
Be an insider
Within your own inner world
Of outsider art
The first to go is
The last of the innocents
Told to lead the charge
What could be sadder
Than a dog park in the rain;
How about the hospital
Across the river:
Ruin, abandoned asylum
Of Typhoid Mary
Shutdown in New York:
Welcome opportunities
To explore corners
Ordinarily
You would not choose to stand in—
Until it turns out
You're on camera
And security guard says,
"Can't stand here, buddy.
You look suspicious."
You laugh, because sure!
That's the way the world works now:
Image keeps us safe
Haiku in rainstorm:
Keep paper dry for wet ink
Or try memory
Can you spare some change
That depends—you can and can't—
You'd prefer more change;
Change kept in bread bag
Can be hard to extricate
But is worth its wait;
The spare change you give
Means less than nothing to you—
Makes the world lighter;
What a world that is
Where change can play hard to get
Or can hit you hard
Not feeling it now
Not even sure what it is
Nor what it feels like
Give a man a pole
And he'll fish out an eyeball
Or thrust it someplace
What if we got cut
All of us at the same time
Giving transfusions
Are you a fretter
A chicken convinced its head
Is running away
The naked mole rat
Loves the hole it has not seen
(Because it has not?)
There will be a hug
Waiting for you at the gate
Of purgatory
At the mouth of hell
They serve the best barbecue
But it's not takeout
This world was made just
But then injustice crept in
Just as you were born
Bagging up the bags
All the garbage of the world
In one neat bundle
If you say it it
Must be so so be careful
What do do you say
Dog lies in the path
Where the world steps around it
Till it's carried off
The last of my kind
And that is kind of funny—
I'm one of a kind
If two red tugboats
Form a tandem flotilla
Their strange pull doubles
Sitting in my spot:
Favorite occupation
Next to spotting it
You get everything
If you live to get that old
Everything feeling
There is no honor
Higher than being dismissed
In lowly haiku
Where I am is not
And I have been there before
And won't be again
Kafka told his friend
Brod to destroy everything;
Brod didn't and did
Donald Quixote
Pins windmill on enemy
Spins party wildly
Calder made mobiles
To show how so many sides
Revolve and reveal
Your darkest secret
Knocks like opportunity
(Bell's toll is reserved)
"He'd had lung trouble . . .
Went home from the hospital . . .
And that's where he died."
Yesterday: today
Today: to be continued
Tomorrow: no change
Woolf saw it coming:
Need for a room of one's own,
Bed of a river
Yesterday: how much
Today: too or much too much
Tomorrow: not much
Philosophizing
Will put your mind in the mood
For love of wisdom
You see how it goes
This is the way the world ends
We laid the land waste
Upstairs feet pound floor
In the middle hands keep still
Downstairs head bangs wall
Pandas together
At the zoo ten years now mate—
Privacy? Boredom?
Here's the last chapter
Of that book you've been being—
Turn back or skip ahead
No need to disrobe
You can stay snug in your robe
All life if you please
River riven flows
Sometimes south, other times north,
Often some of each
LPs left curbside
As someone's hopeful gesture
Succumb to the rain
Empty sardine tins
Left on the path for no reason
Beyond emptiness
A Chump supporter
Ingested fish-tank cleaner—
He won't be voting!
Ronald Chump chomping
On a Constitution burger
Ground from believers
Pyro in chief, you
Feel the spark, fan the flame, take,
Take heat energy
A manifesto:
Do not fret—-cultivate care,
Irony, and rage
Yesterday: weirdo
Today: middle-aged hipster
Tomorrow: artist
Haiku in public
Is like skywriting a mask:
No one knows it's you
By the time they learn
You'll be a different lesson
They'll be indifferent
Fruit seller bowing
On cardboard on the sidewalk
His eyes still watchful
Dog looks longingly
At pigeon who sits calmly
Aware of the leash
In some ways you're still
Back there, with people, some dead
And wishing to be
It's quite possibly
The most beautiful evening
I've ever raged through
He didn't catch it
He stomped it to death right where
I said it would be;
Turned out he'd done this
Many many times before
Now we share this bond
You've stood here before
Taking shelter in a storm
That's now inside you
John Lennon was killed
At forty—I’m fifty-five—
I'd give him some years
Manhattan at dusk:
Glow over rooftops gathers
Strength for what comes next
A whole life condensed
Into one night's meander
Through streets that stay home
What was their work worth
The struggle to feel better
In the end they're dead;
I'm here so I win
And my prize is that I know
What their work was worth
Keep this far apart:
The distance necessary
To keep a part far
Wake up and smell the
Smell of being awake then
Stop and smell the sleep
Last night my sneakers
Wore themselves out on the road—
Soles shot serving soul
We will reopen
When the pandemic shuts down
Its going concern
If you'd made one change
It might have changed everything
Including this line
The way of all flesh
Is the way the world crumbles
And can't be embraced
Look, if you're going
To become a book, stay out
Of stormy weather
Once a hole appeared
And ate parts of the city
Then swallowed it whole
Salvador Dalí
Would have loved you guys, shooting
Hoops without a hoop
Half a dinosaur
Beats not finding any bones
In your quest for past
Position yourself
Somewhere you might envision
Your next position
Without your tether
I'd be a balloon drifting
Or a leaf blowing
Ball against the wall:
Good idea until it rolls
Under a car's wheels
Misremembering
May be hallucination
Communication
They gave him steroids
To reduce the brain swelling
To normal—for him!
Walk your way through it
Even if you're not sure what
Walk, way, or it is
Duck sitting in muck
Like a fat-flat-bottomed boat
That loves its poor port
To dissociate
Is to dissipate your pate
In a stream of thought
A happy martyr
Searching for a worthy cause:
A hot bed of nails
In old Hollywood
We—worldly city people—
Were smart, fast, funny,
But given to gaffes,
Misadventures, and pratfalls;
Our heartbeats outpaced
The clock's tick, the mouth's
Movement, the ear's capturing
Of witty banter;
That was the sweet dream—
A lie, of course, but artful,
Composed of, with, love
A certain outcome
Is no fun for anyone
But grinning reaper
She gives them out but
What are they? They are stars and
Somehow she made them
This is just to say
One of your little buddies
Didn't make it through;
Poor cute succulent
Overwatered, left to rot,
Fine one week, then dead
A damaged person
Is in charge of a nation
With its own damage
Half a dinosaur
Encounters its other half
But they do not meet
Half a dinosaur
Recognizes extinction
In its reflection
Half a dinosaur
In the hands of the right child
Can conquer the world
On the other hand
I sick my dogs in the search
For the one first hand
Savor the wonders
Of Prince, who died alone in
An elevator
So many choices,
Including north, south, east, west,
Up, down, back, or forth
Standing anytime?
No; not much of anything
You should keep moving
If you have to have
To complete something in you
Have something in you
Puppets in a box
Envy free marionettes
Who pray for scissors
This haiku is a
Portrait of the artist as
Disgruntled geezer
Stubborn little dog
Won't let go of stick it grips
Despite being gripped
If you have to have
Things, pare down to essentials:
Jacket, jeans, good shoes
Sign says I'm taking
The John Finley Walk, so I
Salute you, Finley!
Yes, that's me, I'm an
Exaggerated version
Of myself today
You can break your stride
So go ahead, break for me
And stay still broken
Spiritual, me?
Not spiritual man but
Spirit manual
In terms of weather
This moment might be the best
Ever anywhere
Stone in my sneaker
Tries to transmit message in
Minor discomfort
If I were homeless
Would I wonder what I'd do
If I were hopeless
Play find the haiku
In whatever you have or
What you have in you
Health before haiku
Hoodoo guru always said
Before eating words
Do the work upfront
And the work, working itself,
Will bring up the rear
Mythological
Figures ask nothing from us
But give us their lives
Things we do for love
Include noting the other
Things we do for love
Dickinson was off:
"Certain slant of light" can come
Not just in winter
Donald Destroyer
Rages inside the machine
Ripping out wires
Water, whether in
Large body, pool, or shower,
Lubricates the mind
Cement transporter
Barges up the East River—
Such a ship exists?
There's a special hell
For thoughtless people who drop
Masks and gloves on streets
"Anna!" graffiti
Appears twice in Manhattan—
Written by whom? Her?
A window's open
Enough to fit a dog's nose
Getting a good sniff!
You can beat the rain
You can be at the train but
You can't be terrain
Look both ways before
You either choose to go one
Or reject the pair
Hieroglyphics call
To you as do tarot cards—
How will you answer?
Remember that time
Your parents drove you to the
Exciting city
Because you wanted
To visit a place you can't
Find on the web now;
That was your life then:
People who loved you so much
They gave you the world
I had this weird dream
That included everything
I thought I had known
But was this wired
Drama suspended between
Some of my brain cells
A huge Dalmatian
Sits, balancing a taxi
On its upturned nose:
If that can happen—
Even if it's a sculpture—
You can do something
Snake swallows its tail
Then thinks: If I keep this up
I'll be great again
I do what I want
Within reason, until I
Hit some obstacle—
When I can figure
Out what I want, which is not
Just an obstacle
He's not the brightest
Tool in the bloodshed so chop
Off the old blockhead
Instruct your children
So I don't have to waste time
Getting around them
Can you catch being
From something that has it more
Than you wish you did
Can you catch being
Stupid? It seems to be so
Common and spreading
Team Zilch hits its goal
Which hits back with a vengeance
A penchant for none
Vampires arrive—
Play it cool, cold, dead, buried
Like who'd want your blood
She willed herself gone
And inspired her daughter
To play the same game:
Hide and hide and hide
Yourself so successfully
The seeker gives up
Saltines without salt
Really make you think about
Things lacking thingness
Graves we will dance on
Are one pleasure to conjure—
Top of the list: Trump's
There's something about
A ball that makes you want to
Kick it and think: Trump
Someone should worry
It's not going to be me
Which is worrisome
My mother claimed that
Nice weather on Mothers Day
Meant God loved mothers;
She was being wry
But also reflecting a
Biased perspective
Have you always been
Will you again be again
By transmigration
Police horse hooves beat
A Proustian madeleine
For a world gone by
People being cool
Just living the New York lives
They want to go on
Chick wears a bowler
Like she lives in Godot or
A Clockwork Orange:
Urban warrior
Absurdist science fiction
Personal styling
Paper engineer
Making fun pop-up objects—
Who knew that's a job?
What do the ants do
When their paths turn against them
Can't stop being ants
More brown parts than green
But don't give up on that plant
Till its life gives up
Learn to say nothing
While mouthing volumes of words
Making background noise
Join the department
Of lost causes or at least
Extremely long shots
Imaginary
Somethings will take you somewhere
But not bring you back
Thief? running, falling
Onto a parked police car—
Stranger than fiction
Waiting at a pier
Where no boat can dock to board
Shows great faith or none
Justice without truth
Makes a weak case for itself
Then shows no mercy
Crystal clarity
Comes once in any lifetime
But never in some
Your dog want a ball
Because this one seemed to be
Waiting for a dog
His occupation,
Singer-songwriter John Prine
Once claimed, was dancer
If yoga made her
(She said) a better lover
What activity
Might make me (at least
In my head, where I live now)
A better thinker
There'll be another
Fine afternoon like this one—
We'll look back from it
Is it evolving?
Are we adapting to it?
Changing measure change
Situations change
Even when particulars
Repeat within them;
Within them repeat
Particulars even when
Situations change
Story of my life:
He traveled from here to here
Tracing this through line;
Forget what happened
Which just placed points on the line
And, having placed, left
Children's hospital
Is where you don't want to go
Unless you're a toy
Twilight going down
Behind skyscrapers: fading
Glowing shifting shapes
A freak accident
That I'm just the freak to have:
Overthinking life
Scientology
Scene: "Volunteer ministers"
Wearing hazmat suits
Copyeditor
On the prowl for bad grammar
Pencil poised to strike
Younger-looking skin
Will be yours if you strip down
And don a new one
If you have proven
A lifetime's worth of proving
Find another life
A new commandment:
Thou shalt not give up doing
A delicate dance
"Thanks. Have a good day"
I say to say something but
Her look says she won't
Long ago I passed
Dad on the road to the past—
Dead men take their time!
You have one go-round
And you spend it getting rich
At others' expense
Evangelical
Conspiracy theorist
Sees vaccine as plot
Number of the beast
Will mark those who don't watch out
And those who read news
When I'm an old man
Tinkering with my artworks
May I not lose touch
Bags on the pavement
Your belongings spilling out
Your bad skin made up
Dragging yourself through
To a place you might become
If it becomes you
Same sky wherever
You go or where you look in
Photos—comforting!
How can a night like
This one, especially now,
Feel overfull of
Possibility
Like in some ways some things are
Just beginning and
This night connects in
Fundamental ways across
Skies with other nights
No gun has been jumped
We're holding our own, the line
We won't cross too soon
Sickly sunlight from
The east signals a hot day—
Masks collecting sweat
People be shlepping,
Sleeping, practicing dance moves,
Sunbathing, waiting
Tomorrow: We'll see
Today: What you see seems real
Yesterday: Who knew?
Enter the Center
For Prevention of Too Much
Power per Person
Anger in your eyes
And of course I can't blame you
Black man on the street
When the numbness hits
You can only imagine
Becoming stardust
Get out of that state
With its multiple perils
And stay safe, stateless
Droplets of poison
May be lingering in air:
Angels of hot tar
Increase your chances
Of having your final thoughts
Be someone else's
Speaking in haiku
Means delivering meaning
Metaphorically
You spill dark coffee
In the same spot on two nights—
Carpet's destiny
Apocalypse now:
What the hell, let's eat hot dogs
And embrace the end
On some Saturday
Decades ago, I ate what
Will kill me someday
You can accomplish
A lot if you don't want much
Or need the credit
You turn a corner
Run smack into who you were
Who remains in place
You reach out to you
You'd like to steady yourself
Both of you'd like to
Empty sack of shit
Hawking its nonexistence
Don't you love my stink
People are sheep, Mom said
They'll follow each other till
They go off a cliff
Herd immunity
Will protect us from some things
Not stupidity
Tunnel Exit St.
Will take you out of that hole
But not fix your life
Signs remain of signs
You made when people were here—
Remains to be seen
I'm driving you home
From a party, but closer
Is where we arrive
Secret Service knocks
Like an opportunity
Missed or not taken
An epiphany:
Power surges through you when
You give it away
Suddenly you know
You've seen this somewhere before!
What somewhere is it?
Welcome to sign world
Where everything is standing
For impermanence
Dance this mess around
Until it shakes you up but good—
Could you find the beat
It has come to this:
You ask has it come to this—
Your hand stops her arm
Dog turns to say hi
Or turns to go home and I'm
Happy to be there
Day without haiku
Arrives today, after all
These weeks? No, not yet!
Initiate chat
With someone who could be you
In an altered state
Beware of starting
Something ritualistic
You might have to end
When music is all
You think you need or you want
A little can do
Outdoor exercise
In what chalk graffiti calls
"Stir crazy town"
Bikini girls jump-
Start the hearts of middle-aged
Men in city parks
Passive use only
Seems oxymoronic if
You think about it
Apartment window
Sign: "Feet pics $20"—
Taking or selling?
Say you've been tethered
Long enough you've forgotten
How you can get -un
Normally we'd be
Looking forward to being
But we're not normal
If you find me strange
Please understand that this is
My first pandemic
If I am not here
When you expect me to be
I might have gone out
One place: "We serve grits,"
"We are serving tater tots,"
"No mask no entry!"
Victim Bill Withers
Sings "Ain't No Sunshine" on a
Cloudy Covid day
Artificially
Shut down something in your life
As preparation
For the love of Trump
Open the churches and let
Illness sort them out
What’s it like to live
In an A-frame house? Too late!
It has been torn down
Going underground
Will only deprive you of
Light, air, food, news, touch
Thoroughly corrupt
Nonpublic nonservants work
To build up themselves
Grab your little plot—
Property, conspiracy,
Grave—and hold on tight
When your things close in
It’s time to vent, time to find
A vent, an event
Nothing new to say
And yet here you are again
Working on three lines
“All are welcome here”
Says a multicolored sign
In an empty lot
Clear the cobwebs out
Of your crevices and cracks
And find your lost youth
Disrespect the flag
If you dare to discover
What disrespect means
Through sheer force of will
You will deliver yourself
Into your next self
If someone wanted
To design a virus meant
For city people . . .
"Trump where is your mask,"
Reads sign hanging from her neck,
"Put it the fuck on"
Saw two more "Anna!"
Graffiti, here and the Bronx—
Woman gets around
Feels like exercise
Daily coping with crisis
Bending toward what's next
Picture your deathbed
Sizing you up, concluding
You used today well
Possibility:
Portable birthday party
With infinite cake
Summer swimming hole
Dried up, leaving you afloat
And stretched out midstroke
Race against the clock
To write one haiku today—
Alas, the clock won
Empty brain empty
Pen empty paper empty
Syllables counted
Woman in tutu
Pink—the tutu is, whereas
The woman is “white”
Sometimes you forget
That nothing is happening
And you start going
Oops! "Fuck the polcie"
Spraypainted in an effort
To make a statement
Haiku meets haiku
On neutral ground, wide landscape
For epic battle
Race against yourself
So you set the rules and odds
Are that you'll finish
I'm being followed
I'm sure I'm being followed
I'm sure I'm being
The clock always wins
In a clock's sense of winning:
Not what is but when
Your deleted drafts
Rise like electronic ghosts
Only to dissolve
I identify
As a truck, claims a small car
With capacity
Weather doesn't care
Whether you like it or what
You are doing there
Are you Pandora
Or are you the box, because
The contents are out
Commit outrage
Then keep escalating it
Till you feel potent
Many dreams deferred
Even before the dreamers
Could see anything
Inspect your bunker
Just like another famous
Fascist at the end
Series of strange times
Where you are all the strangers—
Every one in flux
Nice people homeless
Bedding down outside the church
Grateful for food scraps
Two martini night
Sometimes announces itself
As what the brain wants
We award ourselves
Not the keys to the city
Just pride in our place
Spring was holding on
As long as it could, for us
Who grow overripe
So humid walking
Is mixing with elements
Changing perspective
Time can be measured
In pairs of worn-out sneakers
Whose treads left no trace
The dead get nothing—
No justice, no peace, no more—
The living take some
I've lived with racists
Been "related" to people
Who said, "I'm proud of
Being prejudiced";
How, exactly, can you love
Someone who says that
Or, say, "I like white";
Now they're dead, and good riddance;
Get out of the way
If you cannot lend
A hand to clearing debris
Or pointing a way
Who wanted to be
Born this thing or anything
Deserves your pity
Nothing I have done
Matters more than carrying
This food to people
Today Central Park
Could not be better but is
Better than heaven
Hot cup of coffee
Even on steamy morning
Streams through you like blood
River waves spray in
Collaboration with sun
Make minor rainbows
What a bad movie!
If I had written that script
I would quit my brain
I am in a world
Of mainly one, sometimes two
Though made by many
Like, say, "Find your bliss"
"You are enough" is a meme
Not for the homeless
Eating and shitting
Are what it all adds up to
Or breaks down into;
If you don't think so
Take a look at the homeless
Waiting at the church;
They want food and drink—
Don't forget they need water!—
And a place to poop
Plastic pollution
Will work its way into you
Replacing tissue—
Black holes in reverse
Not swallowing everything
But infiltrating
Lay the foundation
For your next embodiment
As “free” energy
Meat beast awakens
Shaking, sloughing off victims
Of slaughterhouse dreams
Handhold by handhold
Is how you may find your way
Till your grip loosens
On the other side
If you flip this time over
You'll find a face card
In some other place
There’s a path you can follow
Or lead if you’d like
Leave something undone―
Button, conclusion, haiku―
So you never know
This is a weird place
To find the sun's rays found you―
Out of, in, the way
Black cop and white cop
Comfortable in uniform:
Twin bellies bulging
Keep riding the wave
To see where you land but have
No destination
Let's cancel culture—
Keep, say, toilets and paper,
Refrigeration
If you dip a toe
Into the moment, withdraw
It and step away
How can it not be
That, as in a movie, blink
And the lost are found
Philosopher-king
Or -queen or -other rules through
Possibility
You are off the hook
Like a fish free from a land
Line for good for now
The last time you do
This that or the other that
Might have been that time
When I feel like it
Can be when I become it
Can be a costume
Another layer
Lost and look at what lies there
At that which is left
Yesterday: not yet
Today: what is the damn point
Tomorrow: and yet
Your law and order
Makes patriotic duty
My hope to kill you
Had you only known
How time manipulates life
You'd have killed less time?
Editing a text
Can be weight-loss exercise—
Lifting and spinning
Advisory committee
Splits into subcommittees
To advise itself
My mother's bay leaves
Finally followed her lead
Into the great stew
On the day you die
May you be able to see
A clear light blue sky
What runs in your veins?
In mine it's New York City
As I walk its streets
Manhattan skyline,
Metallic green East River,
My heart rises up
The sound of . . . crickets . . .
Sends the composer into
Silent syllables
Be a receiver
As whatever is out there
Transmitting it is
Hope for an answer
And, while waiting, swear you will
Recall the question
Bear with the traffic
Which is what the traffic will
Not do unto you
Don't forget to thank
Godot, who may be waiting
For you too today
John Lennon's birthday—
What would he have made of this?
How would he have lived?
Shipper and Schlepper
Met on the super highway
And exchanged cross words
The market decides
You go for the buggy ride
And conspiracize
Hey influencer
Best work on those pouty lips
Or lose market share
Here comes a haiku
All three lines pointed toward you
Just one of them true
Crow and Coyote
As roadkill, meet their maker—
Fresh earth, fallen leaves
Field guide to haiku:
Of course you become poems—
Be field and guide too
You like my haircut
So much I should rush back to
Get another one
Mas reggae, menos
Capitalismo, sign reads
(Let the spirit lead)
Your dad's name was Dude
And you lived in a commune—
Your kids don't learn lies
Spiritual day
Like a Fata Morgana
Seen from the inside
All is well but weird
In our holding pattern here—
Pigeons on a ledge
Some forest creature
Sits in a corner, for rest
Beyond its nature
My mother had her
Limitations, among them
Horror of horrors
Not wanting to be
Or to see or to be seen
Or to be wanting
What good are what ifs
If good is measured in what
If and not what is
Shaking out feathers
Is a fine occupation
If you don't have scales
Every dead leaf
A defeat—not just a loss
Of life outside you
As we usher out
What may already be gone
Our eyes do not meet
A rodent appears
To appear and disappears
The food you don't eat
Call me Misanthrope
Or, better yet, don't call me—
Just leave me alone
Metabolism
Wakes you, makes you, takes you to
Your bittersweet end
Self-medicating
Is the way to navigate
Your shenanigans
To prove they are fine
Keepers of law and order
Cops beat up people
My whole life I have
Tried to escape the people
Who refuse to lose
This is why we live
Here and now we are living
In the why and we
Congratulations,
Biden: handwritten letters
Taped to our hearts
We are at the zoo
Watching creatures preen and prance
Rattling the bars
The world's worst person
Has been ruling a nation
And riling its soul
Dancing in the street
Because we have to release
So much karmic steam
How many devils
Fit on top of that pinhead
Or prone below him
Not to be confused—
No, to be not conned nor fused—
Not lit, burned, or used
Punk rock prepared me
For life in the big city
Facing bankruptcy
Time accelerates
For watches, clocks, calendars
Stressed by their makers
Empty streets are like
"Look how beautiful we are
Without people here!"
Single-handedly
With just a slip of the tongue
I can see both sides
News is terrible—
All of it, every day—
It means life goes on
To have lived in vain
Is inevitable, no?
Don't think big picture
I'm lightening up—
Hair whiter, skin paler—though
Increasingly hued
You have history
With a place of your choosing
Or memory's whims
New Yorkers on line
Outside the used-record store
Is heaven on Earth
Leave some for others!
We have to live together
Or suffer alone
Someone put a face
On the blank space where once lived
Possibility
Old-fashioned lefty
Proudly roams in search of right-
Wing propaganda
The brain is on fire
But don't try putting it out—
The brain is the world
Don't take the quirks out!
Where would the world be without
Something fun to do?
I am thankful for
Susan Connor, my red tree
In a browning world
Contemplative frog
Still standing in the garden
Head propped on fingers
Perfectly lovely
Day breaks through clouds to you, says,
"Hey, thanks for waiting!"
Moon waxing gibbous
Meets man at cosmic crossroads
Says follow my lead
Making sense of things
That you know don't make no sense
Until you don't know
Where is Central Park
But in your mental backyard
When you're far from home
Don't believe in soul
Yet live like you have nothing
But world soul to build
Who controls that light
Pouring across expanses
Warmer than humans
How do they differ
And why are they bothering
Each other through walls
A macrocosm
Meets its maker, gives birth to
A microcosm
Must be on our toes
Or out our eyes, for people
Making mistakings
Memorial bench
Sporting small bouquet given
Water in glass jar
Change: Drop some. Find some.
Change into your self costume.
Give some change. Change more.
Hello, survivor!
Welcome to your great beyond
Beyond where you were
Life being finite
Don’t waste time in baby steps
Doing fine—be it
Patti Smith’s birthday—
Seventy-four, still roaming—
Room to room this year
Remains to be done:
See yourself decomposing
Some beast in repose
To reiterate
Is to iterate but not
Again—the first time!
New York’s winter blue
Clarifying clouds and smoke
In crystalline white
Never met the man
Yet can’t see into his eyes
As he sees his I
What is undeserved
When may be undeserving
Who are underserved
Spirit animal
Meets the spiritless meathead
Who kills and eats it
Took the liberty
To the freedom repair shop
Where they shook their heads
Don't pay attention
To these seven syllables—
Write your own haiku
“Knowledge is power”
Wrote good Sir Francis Bacon
But what kind of each?
Need to stop thinking
Of parts you would recognize
As full of feeling
You are in one room
Making a racket moving
To another room
A hollow Caesar
Or at least or most a bust
Backwards to the world
Here is not bathroom
Nor is here kitchen, basement—
Some place else go home
William Shakespeare
Doesn’t want to be your friend!
He sees right through you
Something is coming
Up through the blood: reflection,
Reflexive action
Approximation
May be as close as you come
To being or not
So much depends on
How one works: for us or them,
At or under desk
If hope is the thing
You might feel fluttering in
Keep your windows open
Mind-bogglingly
Short-sighted so-called leaders
Lie in wait for brains
A year of haiku
May yield a ton of nothing:
Notes made about time
Pigeons are cooing
As Rihanna croons pop songs
Do they like the tunes
The (better?) angels
Watch from high perches (purchase?)
Then may swoop (or poop?)
A braying jackass
Will enjoy nothing but
Its own mulishness
Artwork you don’t like
Could turn out to save your life
By holding you back
New York as dada
Will tolerate no nada
Claimed Tristan Tzara
Billie Holiday
Knew no possibility,
Hope, dope, struggle, fate,
Or necessity
Could save her ever-loving
Soul, black, blue, from you
My America:
Freed from Fear During Crisis
By Haiku Itself
In one episode
Rescue Bear is found again
By Eight Bucks Bunny
Who says, What a sap!
That bear can’t live without a
Happy follow-up
President Biden
Seems like the calm grandfather
I wish I had known
Kamala Harris
Is the U.S. president
I look forward to
Hell is, probably
Will be, a portal into
Perpetuity
To have many days
Just like this one still ahead
What would that be worth?
“Baby, I Love You”
Sung by Ronnie or Joey
Quivers like heartstrings
In this solo show
I grow, I grow old, I go
So low, now, where to
Fat mermen have sung
Over all but the shouting
Which was all he wrought
A tugboat pulling
A barge five, six, times its size
Matter-of-factly
Should give us puny
Humans the power to pause,
Think, stop emotion
Musical moron
The moviemaker Fritz Lang
Described himself as;
But he could whistle
Well enough, the story goes,
For the M soundtrack
Your biggest blunder
May snake around you like an
Opportunity:
Good way to go out
Of business from the ground
Down to your godhead
I’m reminded of
My dream of remembering
Living where I was
When I was being
My dream self remembering
To remind me now
Rooted in your place
But not buried under it—
Shoots feel free to leave
A folk-rock chanteuse
Is a good goddess to find
In mind for a while
Say you liberate
Europe, stride purposefully,
Pose for photos, what then?
Salvaging scraps leads
To responsibility
For a world of them
For a world of hurt
The bodhisattva looks out
And vows to hurt more
A Zen garden kit
Sold in a small cardboard box
That becomes a hat
That becomes a home
For a Buddhist who looks out
At a Zen garden
We are transforming
Into sentient creatures
But we won't be them
And so finally
You find your favorite toy
In a mean dog's mouth
Clearly you are not
A spiritual person
Being unclearly
Spending time at home
Looking at pictures of home
Until there is here
My anarchist friend
Regarding your plan of no plan
Who will pave your road
If you spot mustard
Smeared on a New York sidewalk
Do not think hot dog
Big dog looks my way
Then away because it is
Humanly sheepish
Man in a dog suit
Greets dog disguised as a man
Whose eyes beam the truth
Birds do not exist
Say the latest signs of nuts—
Flying, spying drones
For a world of Kurt
What would you need to give up
Or which self to wake
Can I be your dog
If I sit, be good, and beg
Will you be my leash
An aneurysm
Snuck up on him from within
And so much for that
We are just this life
Like pigments mixed in the rain
We make so much of
Nature lacks context
Taken closeup or wide-eyed
Without what comes next
According to whom
And with what authority
Are we good enough
A celebrity
Looks around, sniffs his armpits,
Then implicates you
Don't drive Highway 1
Fifty miles from Monterey,
Where a chunk just fell
And the Pacific
Like a shark, will be brutal
In pursuit of more
Stuff, more whatever
Will descend into its maw
In wild recompense
Like Hitchcock's The Birds
But played out by a liquid,
A landform, and you
Haiku met Haiku
On the road to nothing much—
Exchanged syllables:
“Nice weather today”
“Been vaccinated lately?”
“They found more bodies”;
Haiku took Haiku
By the hand, and standing still
They waited their turn
It’s worse on TV
Because you’re trapped in a screen
Which is just a box
Lo the god of hogs,
Cried Upton Sinclair, watches
And weeps at hot dogs
Your secret is out:
Liberal cuddler-hugger
Spreading arms like alms
Pedestrian yells,
“You just drove through a red light!”
Driver says, “Shut up”
Without musicians
Where would we find ourselves?
Lost in space of sound
A man of action
He reportedly implored
Get me out of here
Haiku by request:
You can put in your orders
(I’ll be here a while)
The graft and the grift
Go as you work each day’s shift—
Only faces change
So much activity—
Even just snow shoveling—
In New York City!
Boycott Amazon
To save what for the moment
We can call real life
When their eyes meet ours
Over masks over distance
What might those beams mean
Near to us or far
Are they calling us back to
Old-fashioned human
Life as we know it
In verisimilitude:
Closest we will get
To being really
To being what we may see
When we can say that
Life is coming back
To greet us on each cheek once
Or if masks come off
Christian Marclay
Created a film artwork
That runs a whole day
As bits of footage
Include clock and time motifs
That synch with real time
And once the film starts
Barring a technical glitch
It cannot be stopped
From counting down life
In moments spent spectating
Inexorably
Don't poop on me, bird!
Leave my head and day pristine
And I won't curse you
Does how fast you swim
Determine how far you can
Go against the flow
There is the Buddha
But where is his bicycle
Under the squirrel
And the squirrel learns
To ride the damn karmic thing
And thinks: I am free
Your way of being
Could be my anathema
Or my Gethsemane
Don’t be Vonnegut
Be a Kurt of another
Mother or dada
These uncertainties
Certainly unmake moments
Momentarily
Gumby don’t wiggle
Though he do be flexible
He don’t be undone
The world always wins
Try as you might to change it
The game makes the rules
An armed person
With ill-defined intentions—
Inactive shooter
Crabby New Yorkers
Bouncing back from the crisis
Like balls with flat sides
Weird melancholy
Descends like a holiday
Decoration shroud
A round roundabout
A bout and nowhere near out
And about around
Be willing to share
Wherever you are being
Because you are a part
Not giving an inch
To fear or not to fear not
To embrace pure now
A very old man
With enormous faith in flight
Philosophizes
A man without teeth
Wishes he could gum carrots
And dreams of a beak
Be respectful is
Theoretically my
Cottage industry
Nobody can say
Why these forms each take their own
Form from fear of none
From here to over
Here, discontinuously
Missing my person
Am I wrong or left
Or somehow somewhere between
Being and has been
Someone’s belongings
Don’t belong in this picture
So reframe the world
Same old meets same old
On the small hill of has been
Where same old was born
An escalator
Running an uphill battle
With no soul in sight
Loathe humanity
For its lack of self-loathing
As it squats and squirts
Lost spirit reward
Has sentimental value
Can identify
Stop being the cop
Of the world outside your whole
Being behind bars
When I watch movies
My life passes as depthless
As pictures lying
Forswear fiction, be
Wary when making your vow
To enter the world
Year of retooling
From every thing that was
To what it seems
If a rock moves out
Of no one’s sidewalk garden
Who will put it back
Neither here nor there
Is that where I am living:
Nature not human
Tugboat pushes barge
Or maybe powerless barge
Is pulling tugboat
No humanity
Could be a rallying cry
As dead souls rally
World as hard, harsh place:
Word is heard, registered
As shots to the head
I am supposed
To have my best year ever
By whatever means
It is time for my
Untimely meditation
On medication
Do not grip tightly
Do not gripe despite lost life
Do not group—lose!—live!
Anthropocene blues
Got me and mine running round
In bloody circles
We can be heroes
But maybe should be pigeons
Sitting in puddles
Flaneur a la mode
Surely taking advantage
Of no sure vantage
Cross paths with yourself
At crossroads you recognize
Wherever you are
Death be my rooster
Ready to strut in the dawn
But willing to crow
You can seize the day
And make hay while the sun shines
And be a cliché
Rainy Chinatown
High noon and blade runner dreams
Of fried dumplings
Haiku my haiku
Are reasons to be grateful
For being nothing
Do you remember
Writing that thing I just read
Without getting it
To make sense of things
You need to know their language
Or redefine sense
As you seem to have
Your own language for things
Remembered or lost
Beast river fishing
Your life a way to be a
River fishing beast
Transport or transform
Now via tugboat, teacher,
Oija, I Ching, eye
More of this moment—
Please sir may I have some more—
This moment of more
Accordion fold
Attached to what it was then
To another what
Two nuns are talking
To the guy who sits with signs
There every day
It was not today
At least not up to this point
From which much might turn
Joining the haiku
Rewards program entitles
You to these rewards
I am watching you
And I am wanting you to
Be wasting this time
Moments of being
Are becoming history—
Your life will change you
And then there were none
And none proved good enough
For the time being
Where there was a wound
Is a sign of the struggle
To hold life in place
Purification
Comes at the expense of truth
Which wants to be free
As I live and breathe
I find myself in the air
Born water balloon
If you watch people
Do things you may find yourself
Doing your own thing
Back where it started
Someone found a trace of it
Without a label
Floating holiday
On what you might call Earth Day
If you were earthbound
Pirouetting man
Makes the park his pivot point—
He stops—it does not
Because we are here
Far from the end of a world
Unknown we live on
A dead composer
Decomposes while his work
Notes passage of time
Welcome to haiku!
Where three lines awaken dreams
Through sheer pull of will
This is good practice
For when life presents a bill:
Time to give it up
Riding the wrong way
Will get you down the right street
Or flat on the road
Facing the dumpster
One aims to become a saint
Of toys in landfills
Ferocious kind
Is an admirable goal
So be sweet with teeth
Those who don’t make it
To the end of the story
Are territory
I thought I had lost
My glasses but then I saw
I was wearing them
No consequences
For selling shit labelled fit
For being yourself
An empty office
Awaits an umpteenth return
Holding space in place
Saving paperbacks
From their fate worse than the rain
Will not change the world
We were just going
To get there and turn around
So we spun right here
My eyes deceive me
As I perceive the sunrise
Under my covers
Making the coffee
Stronger will not save the world
But it can be done
I had a weird dream
That I went back to the womb
But the womb went home
Rather have someone
Lie to your face or die for
Your right to unmask
Half a peanut waits
On the steps for you to stop
Or the dustpan does
Seldom did a thing
Worth doing because someone
Told you to do so
A bird climbs into
A gash in the metal of
A Walk/Don’t Walk sign
Why am I being
Right here right now for no good
Reason not the need
Things you do not know
Can creep up and awaken
Your wish fulfillment
Changing your working
Can work wonders on your ways
If you can free them
Leave the plants to fate
For you cannot carry them
Wherever you go
Moving beyond reach
In a motion blur of still
Images of you
Leaner and Meaner
Took themselves to the cleaners—
Never returned
You do not get it
When the invitation comes
Then it gets to you
What you were given
Was not information but
Inner resources
If you can keep it
Together for however
Long the search might take
It was always thus
And to thus it shall return
And thus will remain
Live a life or time
Like a line elongated
Between ear and ear
Try to read and fall
Asleep in a mesh of words
Then fight your way out
So much happened
Surprisingly at the time
Then clear as church bells
You let them run you
Raggedly you emerged
From a wire forest
As permanent as
Anything is anything
And nothing can be
Dog does what dogs do
And if that mean dog bites you
A human did that
Evaluation
May be how you do yourself
In from the inside
Crisis what crisis
You may be asking yourself
Haiku what haiku
Swimming your way in
To both being in water
And being water
Taste retirement
And a foretaste of never
Forcing out small talk
Not as much a thing
To think as a thought to be
And being thought through
Good thing I like this
Place and the place it is in
Because they make me
How easy to walk
Away from yourself or not
Even have to move
When hit by a wave
Best to find yourself rolling
A rubber ball as
When loud sound starts and
Small birds gather their forces
For sweeter tweeting
Found it on the street—
Kept it at home for a while—
Heard it went back out
I sit in my chair
And read about Buddhism
As the sky changes
And the day stretches
As the days now do because
This is my work space
Vase in your window
Golden in someone’s morning
But what, whose, later
Someone situates
Knowing the situation
Can make one a home
Inside the machine
Parts may meet, match, mesh, and move
Until they do not
Somewhere a jockey
Has lost his favorite horse
Or the horse has won
On have a hat day
Your head hurts from trying on
Your not quite findings
It did not end well
But it never has nor will
It ever stop here
Watching changing light
Maybe letting it enter
What may be your place
Inexhaustible
Avenues, streets, alleyways
And corners, always
In some ways it is
An open door you look for
So you can close it
Clutching a dollar
While waiting for the seller
Of a dollar’s worth
Both sides of your mouth
And perhaps your other mouth
Tell more than you know
This is a short book
—No, wait, I mean a quick look
At a long strange trip
Haunting old houses
Was my preoccupation
But it too got old
To be near water
Is to encounter your nerves
As raw energy
Buying a respite
Can be like borrowing time
You have to return
If life is fighting
For a chance to make it out
Life loses its sight
This motherfucker
Knows which way to keep going
And that is around
What preys on the mind
Goes around and comes around
Like a sniffing dog
Somewhere a jockey
Saddles a cowboy and rides
For both of their lives
Looking straight at me
A fish like a dog or child
With kindred spirit
If that is the plan
Then I am down with it, man—
If I will, I can
Laboratory
Of life is what you make it
Is where you take it
Dog crosses river
To find something or show no
Leash means no owner
To have lived here
Is to have known light changing
Place into places
To live in one spot
Is to stop seeing details
Distinguishing it,
To not be a part
Of that rushing or crushing
On the farthest edge
Giant weather storm
Is headed toward headache
Is aching to blow
Birds on parapets
Have positioned themselves
Equidistantly
Or have they been drawn
Like metal bits to magnets
Over distances
Morning light patches
Over tan bricks of the old
Art deco hotel
At which residents
Awaken into the light
Knowing past again
Your best year ever
May be right where you left it
Out of reckoning
You just lost your fin
Inside the maw of the shark
Which is more the tank
Did I ever say
Central Park is my backyard?
Yes, I told some trees
Typhoid Mary sat
At the smallpox hospital
Counting her blessings
Your best year ever
Could be the one where you love
Places you must leave
Your nonattachment
Clings to you like a medal
Awarded for nought
With all due respect
To what awaits this phase is
Self-medicating
Work is being done
Everywhere you may look
And where you may not
Practice means process
(Neither stands in for perfect)
In search of project
Leave something behind
For someone not you to find
Not your peace of mind
It is news to me
And amusing it may be
To use what you see
A little Elvis
Can go a long way toward
Shaking up yourself
Your tragic worldview
May prevent you from seeing
Some inner turmoil
If that is not good
Enough then how do you know
What is good for you
Do not do dumb things
Is what that declaration
Kind of reminds me
It is hard to read
History in the making
So you need patience
There is nothing on
My phone more interesting
Than what else is there
Use all the crayons
In your box, and when it goes
Change your medium
A feeling of calm
Like pulling up the covers
To save a heat source
Wiggle me this way
And I will wake up smiling
A smile like the sun
In a place you were
You may find traces of you then
Lose the trail again
Damned if I know
Where the cloud bank breaks the day
Or the world differs
The less people know
Me the more they seem to like
This more or less me
You never know when
Inspiration will strike you
On the head, down, dead
If you could bottle
The majesty of right now
Would you dump it out
By your curtain time
Still not say your uncertain
Annunciation
When you fall in place
Maintaining handholds for a
Delicate balance
Is part of the sky
Becoming a reminder
Of what remains in
You and moving you
Retain what will continue
An unread statement
Take it for granted
That you can take whatever
Twisted route you get
Nothing much to do
About where you are being
Taken for a ride
Just to make a move
You could deposit yourself
In desolation
Or go through phases
Or let phases pass through you
Like phantom-limb pains
But meanwhile take this
As your due for being made
By plan or mistake
Big liquidator
Looks to perform its function
So you need to move
Things you will get to
May get through to you before
You have prepared
Or the way has been
Paved the way a forest
May carpet its floor
For paths not its own
Two, four, or more feet belong
Yet remain apart
From the oldest growth
Which stands while forms continue
Nonvestigial
Welcome to a place
Where all news is exciting
Exit is final
But a do-over
May let you through a doorway
To another state
That you may not know
How to extricate yourself
From in a moment
Of shock or panic
Or simply recognition
That you made the news
By leaving the place
And the state you inhabit
Fits like newborn skin
One dream races past
Faster than a video
Made by an eye-blink
Followed by one
The dreamer realizes
Is even smarter
Than the dreamer’s mind
When it thinks it is awake
It sinks in it is
Unmoored and can
Drift off around surroundings
Taking a last lap
Like a lost swimmer
About to run out of pool
But finding the sea
Never take the bait
But nod, smile, swim, eat, write, know
The perils you face
Right in the dust bin
Is where I expect to drop
Or the compost pit
Where I put my hand
Out for a contribution
And find more options
Are deposited
Like opening my eyes wide
Makes items to see
And what things to think
Might come from an open mind
Like bugs from a ditch
Dug not just for you
But down the middle of you
In the place you make
Fuck this bucket list
Because the universe fits
No known container
When you reach a goal
You did not know existed
The game may play you
When you feed two beasts
One may be nothing or a
Negative number
I try not to think
I just thank a broken thing
I never knew whole
A different place
Circles back to your first place
And finds no one home
You are grasping it
Then risk loosening your grip
On a taut tether
To time and go down
Like the garlic cloves in brine
Indefinitely
When the words add up
They do nothing but announce
This was what we did
Intuitively
You understand the landscape
Wherever you stand
Strangely enough
Surrounded by a howling
That never dies down
A sheltering sky
Taken off the line, folded
In squares, put away
A missing person
Thinks it is too late to think
Or rethink just steps away
In case of fire
They would go back to the earth
Wherever they stand;
In winter they drop
Branches and leaves to the floor
Because it is wood
Do not diarize
For lines in time become lures
And you are the fish
Little dog grips ball
In teeth not sharp for gritting
Or grinning sidewise
Object in motion
Tends toward you in motion—
You are the object
Object in motion
Tends toward you in motion—
You must change your life
Go manifesto:
The object in motion aims
To be or not to
Be there in spirit
As some interesting shit
Tends to go for it
A place outside you
Like an igloo for storage—
Where are your snowshoes?
Morpheus puffs once
Scentlessly on both eyelids
Losing all sense of
Time of your choosing
Refusing to settle down
To one stopped clock:
Moratorium
Spreads itself like a blanket
So over your head
Sensibility
Comes running up behind you
To deliver knocks
Ten reasons to love
Might start with what you carry
On to bring it on
To form what follows
From things you know will happen
To things you do not
Then decide one day
When to simply walk away
Is loosely to live
The little mermaid
In your pocket sings sweetly
As a siren sounds
On the road to hell
Paved with crap you make up
In the shape of you:
Lowest form of life
Like a flat thing that could be
Floating and taken
Damn those cormorants
Dipping and masquerading
As loons in the drink
Disposable sky
Tosses itself and the world
Opens like a shell
Home is a fortress
But its steel beams are wood bones
That move with the Earth