Sunday, August 17, 2008

Haiku

Haiku is a perfect form.  Rarely have I seen poems with more power to describe the undescribable, the unparaphrasable.  Poets like the master Basho and later Issa, narrate humanity's relationship to mysterious and beautiful nature.  With a samurai-sword-like economy of language, haiku poets lift the curtain on the mundane, revealing the divinity inherent in the reality of existence.

The current master of the form is my friend Lisa.  She nursed me through a nightmarish, Orwellian layover in the Denver International Airport with haiku.  The following is a selection:

Listen you cheap slut
I want my peanuts quickly
Pretzels mean nothing

Stop screaming at me
I hope your bags get stolen
Your kid is ugly


Her husband Miah, while not as prolific, certainly adds to the discourse:

Security guard
mystery sore on his lips
digging through panties

Stay tuned for preliminary reflections on Las Cruces, the desert, random killing, the uniformity of the academy, back hair, and poison.  And check out my new pictures on Flickr.com.  I'm very handsome.

3 comments:

Bill said...

This is weird. And terrific.

Lisa M said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lisa M said...

Seth,
I am honored to have been published on your blog. I am also inspired to further explore my talent for "hateku". I may need to stop substituting derrogatory names and swears when I run out of the traditionally acceptable one syllable words. Or perhaps not. Perhaps that will be the cornerstone and identifying characteristic of hateku, which I am excited to pioneer. I will celebrate the mundane rather than the divine.