English Haiku

There are few things more tedious than bad haiku written in English. They are the bane of every college, literature class. Here’s mine:

NORMAN SAVES THE DAY

Norman was a tall, soft-spoken, lanky, freckled-faced kid.

I never knew Norman had a problem until Mr. Bell asked us to swap papers and I graded Norman’s pop quiz. I was shocked. Norman’s quiz was a mess of wrong answers shot through with grammatical and spelling errors.

I was a just kid and had no clue about learning disabilities. I had my own trouble with jumbling letters when reading and writing, and believed with more practice, I would fix the problem. And I thought the same about Norman’s problem too.

I knew Norman from playing sports.

Even though our teachers and principal forbade us, we played tackle football without pads and helmets in the morning, at lunch, at recess, and afternoons while waiting for the bus. And while Norman was a god kid, teams would choose other kids before him.

THE TANGLED DREAM OF A NEOPLATONIST IN CAMPANIA

A.D. 260, somewhere in Campania, a Neoplatonist slept among a multitude of empty amphorae after a heated debate with a Cretan who also happened to be a Cynic.  This was his tangled dream—

Mind and Soul take a walk through a garden on the newly minted Earth. And there they come upon Demiurge still busy in his work.

SNAPSHOTS

I love snapshots.

Anyone with enough practice or luck can take a good one. And most people have taken a great one.

I remember long ago my dad telling me to put the Sun to my back as I shot with our Kodak camera.

And It’s funny looking through our old snapshots, because it’s not hard to figure out who shot which snapshot.

My mom was the Queen of Hearts. In fact my dad lectured me on the first rule of photography saying, “Son, whatever you do, don’t give mom the camera. She’ll chop your head off every time.”

THE BEDROCK TIME SLIP

This is a dream I dream where I was Fred Flintstone trapped in a George Jetson world. The entire dream is here more or less with some embellishment.

The bed tilts me onto a conveyor belt that whisks me into the shower. Along the way, a vacuum sucks off my nightshirt; spigots open and shower me luxuriously. I stand naked and cold and dazed. Then a mechanical arm brushes my teeth. Afterwards a blow dryer blows me with a mechanical smile. I shave.

ANT-MAN, MY SPIRIT ANIMAL

I watched Ant-Man.

Scott Lang did the right thing, but in doing so, he earned a three-year sentence. He has a master’s degree, but no one will give him a chance.

ONCE AGAIN THE END IS NEAR

Texas. July 2015.

The world is ending. The date is set. And this time it happens on Wednesday.

It’s funny. People hate things like the IRS, but just love things like the end of the world.

I admit it’s exciting. It has zest. And it’s the period at the end of humanity’s log sentence.

It’s big business too.

FALLING UP

January 13, 2008

I cannot stare into a cloudless blue sky without a rattling in my stomach, because should I stare too long, I fear falling up and into the sky forever.

It’s a silly fear. And many fears are silly, but silly or not there it is.

MONSTERS (NOT ROBOTS)

Ms. R. stormed into my life in 2005, rearranging the furniture in my brain. So I wrote this letter for her not knowing what she would think. And I let her see it before publishing it. She said it was sweet and the nicest thing anyone wrote for her—poor girl.

for Rachel H.

I know a woman who dreams and whose dreams feed upon the Earth—dark dreams where the living dead seize this Earth one agonizing victim at a time. With one bite, the heart pumps infected hemoglobin down dark arterial paths that twist and branch and broaden from species to genus and from genus to phylum where they terminate in the Kingdom of the Dead.

THE MAYAN CALENDAR AND THE ECONOMY OF LOVE

Last night I met someone for drinks. And as we walked down the strip from bar to bar, I asked if Frankfurter’s is still doing business—it’s a hot dog place near the college where I worked.

Well it’s now a Cajun restaurant.

I said in 2011 a co-worker and I were laughing about the Mayan calendar hysteria, when we walked into Frankfurter’s.