Greetings and salutations. This week, we present our selections in the deceptively complex "haiku" form of poetry. (Three lines with five, seven, and five syllables.) Our instructor, Mr. Matsuya from Osaka, has us on a diet of miso soup and lotus leaves, as we meditate in virtual darkness with the sound of water trickling over stones in the background. Anyway, please enjoy...
A Brief Meditation on Mortality
Yellow moon rising
Clouds kiss mountains gently
Some day I'll snuff it.
This haiku was inspired by 1 800 AUTOPSY, a mobile-based thanatological specialty company that offers a diverse range of downright horrifying services, including body exhumation, organ retrieval, toxicology analysis, and crime scene "cleanup help." Now that's the stuff of poetry! They also do autopsies. Don't miss the gift store.
Lines Written Upon First Seeing Shaft
Purple Cadillac
.357 Magnum
Ouch! That must have hurt.
This poem was written in honor of the 1971 film, Shaft. We were particularly drawn the recurring leitmotif of "people shooting other people." Of course, Shaft is just one of several landmark blaxploitation films from the Seventies, including Melvin Van Peeble's trail-blazing Sweet Sweetback's Badaaass Song and Pam Grier's hard-hitting Coffy. Blaxploitation.Com features an extensive poster gallery, soundtrack clips, movie trivia tidbits, and much more.
Marxists on my Mind
Lenin drinks vodka,
Trotsky dances, Mao giggles.
Happy red heaven.
This poem harkens back to the famous "Drunken Boat" series by Li Po; we simply replaced drunk Chinese farmers with drunk dead Marxists. We tried to fit in Eugene Debs smoking a cigar, but unfortunately ran out of syllables. (Note: The poets wish to thank the The Marxists Internet Archive, a top-notch compendium of crimson criticism from some of the brightest minds in the business: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and more. Users are invited to read memoirs, browse snapshots, and generally bone up on Bolshevism.)
Motor City Breakdown
Fabulous ruins of
Detroit. The Ford Model T:
Did it have air bags?
Mr. Matsuya was absolutely obsessed with Detroit, which he'd visited once in the early Fifities. He kept talking about "firing up the ol' Studebaker and roadtripping to Motor City." Unfortunately we never found the time. However, he did manage to use the city in one of our favorite writing exercises. "Close your eyes," he said, "and think of eternity. Think of the sweet paradise. Think, my students, of Detroit." We didn't have the heart to tell him that things had changed since his last visit.
Hit Reload
There once was a man with a site
Who stayed up and programmed all night,
Then he said with a chortle,
"My left asscheek's a portal"
And now the world is randomly informed of its plight.
Okay, so it's a limerick, not a haiku. Sue us. In any case, it is another fairly difficult form, and we're quite happy with this little ditty about our favorite "experiment in randomized news content." You see, the site that inspired us pulls together an arbitrary collection of news articles from sources all over the Web. If you don't like any particular batch of headlines, just...
An Ode to Earth and Sky
Humming radio
Sweet scientific knowledge
Don't touch that dial.
We spent most of the quiet desert nights either considering the mind-numbing Zen koans of Mr. Matsuya or listening attentively to the broadcasts of cool science radio show, Earth and Sky, during which we let our subconscious meander among the Leonid Meteors and other heavenly subjects such as Planetary Dodgeball and Moonquakes. Next time we come to Taos, we plan to write a series of sonnets based on lunar exploration. (Working title: "The Eagle Has Landed and We're All Out of Coffee Cake.")
Freezeframe Rhapsody
Worth a thousand words
Colorful canvas of hues
Say "Cheese!" and don't blink.
This one goes out to all the folks at Lomographic Society International, a gathering place for devotees of the Lomo, a weird little camera from St. Petersburg, Russia. We ourselves took several hundred photos while wandering through the local mesas south of the compound, which, when we got them back from the lab, inspired our long, narrative poem entitled "You are a Cruel Foe, O Lenscap." Thankfully, we still have our words to paint with (and easy access to the Yahoo! News Image Gallery).
We must take our leave
The agile sparrow takes flight
You, please take your pick(s).
If you know of any timely, informative, or wacky web sites, please drop us a note. Also, feel free to send any general thoughts or comments about Picks.