"Take a Granny Smith
on your journey, you might need
something to chew on
as you consider
your way to the next pastor.
Green, though it is ripe
with meaning; it's sweet
enough to get you
there and back again.
It's not knowledge fruit,
so no worries there." she, smiling,
said kindly to me.
I took the apple and felt its shelter
by planting the core further down the road.
Imagine, if you will,
calm: no conflict, just listening
and comprehending.
Then reality
cannot be far behind. This
is thoughtfulness forged.
Burning in the mind;
just before the idea is hammered;
our eyebrows get singed.
This is the future
when Truth Social will post
only Haikus. Thus.
When i think back on days gone by
bright moments rise in my mind's eye:
sunny rays on a worn porch floor
warming us as we explored chords
to a new song while children played
ping pong and puppies chase
each other and woodchucks
near the cairn with pluck.
And while we strum our friend
walks in with some new chore
that becomes a game that builds
a pier, or shed, or oven fired
with fondest memories. Inspired
thus, we made them all; afterwards both proud and sore.
And at day's end, having made all these,
with instruments we gathered round and sung ourselves to peace.
The hardware clerk said,
"Oh, i just sold the last roll!"
with mock dejection,
when asked for duct tape
that would prevent lips of power
from speaking lies and
stop ears of meek ones
from hearing them and children
from seeing them. No
amount of irony
helps heal understanding's lack.
The project remains
sticky. So, i buy the monkey wrench
statue banning evil by ignorance instead.
October 7, 2024
I have no idea if this form has already been invented, however, my proposal is that a new hybrid form called the Haikusanette (Hi-koo-sonn-ett) be practiced. The form is this: Four Haikus followed by a two-line Koan. The idea is to combine the best parts of the Elizabethan sonnet and the Haiku. Please note instead of using a couplet to tie the poem up in a kind of textual bow as Sonnets often do, the Koan opens the package to reveal a paradox upon which to meditate after the poem is over.
Here is my first attempt at a Haikusanette:
A tree falls without
witness and i pretend to
care until i'm caught
etching my love for
you in its bark. i try to
claim ignorance, but
everyone knows.
And meanwhile i dissemble
with sappy knife in
hand: "But love heals sin,
right? Besides the tree was dead"
And your reply:
"A simple 'I love you,' would have been fine."
Can i get a witness of thought, word, and deed?
Tootle on (Click link to tootle vigorously)
Tootle on, you turtle you, you Horseshoe Crab, Waltz on, please do.
Tootle through the eons do, oh tootle, tootle on.
Tootle on and vigorously, be of that mind and tootle to
the beat of your eternal toot oh tootle, tootle on.
When you were one, you tootled fair.
You Tootled here you tootled there.
So tootle now with all you are heart oh tootle, tootle on.
Tootle on, you myrtle you, you Maple Tree, Inhale we you.
Tootle through the eons do, oh tootle, tootle on.
Tootle on and vigorously, be of that mind and tootle to
the beat of your eternal toot oh tootle, tootle on.
In Nashville just before dawn the not-so far off train
Whistles while it works, while i lie in bed
and wonder as many likely do: why does it sound again
and again, every morning, in this way? What is ahead
that it tries to warn? Perhaps a deer or moose
who daily mistakes its call for a mate long gone
from the one time the conductor, in the caboose,
forgot to call to remind the engineer on the phone,
By joking, "Dinah, won't you blow your horn?"
And the result was a sad loss of wildlife.
Straying from a field of summer corn
just long enough to get crossed out in strife
in the single headlight, frozen for all time.
My thoughts break at the alarm's chime.
