Haiku

 

Rice and beans when cooked

with all the season's colors

and smells are a prayer.

I am a stoic

in the matter of summer --

flowers brief riot

This is a failed haiku

it treats syllables with scorn

that would make Basho smile

What a thing is this!

Mountains flex with pine and oak --

under them folks yawn

In Afghanistan

we walked on the roof of hell

weeding the flowers

Why define haiku

at all? Is it not the sound

of one heart beating?

Changing the angle

of the rug in the big room 

improves perception

Haiku.

 

Green moss on tree trunks

are veins of hope in winter

when sweat and sap leave

As long as I breathe

as long as my old tongue can taste

I am near content

A bat or June bug

hovers in the red twilight

flown off by moon rise

Children chasing birds

are so wonderful at it

when they catch nothing.

Torku.

 

A place with 100 doors --

not quiet, but hungering for

the crumbs of life.

The sun is melting

into smoke

flooding the sky.

An old calendar

whispers 

clean out the closet.

Poetry with rules

is a flock of wheeling birds

who refuse to shit.

I stay in my room

traveling the universe

with a cup of tea.

Even a mountain 

shrinks

given enough reason.

Escape from sleep

gives morning pleasure;

the same as embracing

the dark bed.

Haiku.

 

Summer moonlight --

ants still swarm

over a dead bee

mindlessly.

A blue and white mask

blowing around

in the summer heat.

The old man 

mowing the lawn --

his hair rusted white.

Sirens at night

in the city --

slicing through asphalt.

Rice in the cooker

with one bay leaf --

my exciting life. 

One drop

of water

is too much

for an ant.

The red 

of a fresh apple

makes me sleepy.

A blue and white mask

blowing around

in the summer heat.

To sit outside

all night

is beyond me now.

The ripe apricots

litter the sidewalks --

how much riper 

will I grow?

I cover the hole

with leaf mold --

it falls in and

rots. 

I type, delete,

then retype, and

delete again --until

summer is over. 

Heat tastes like copper

Dust sounds like gray dirty ghosts

Wind looks like sparrows

A News Tip To Coral Murphy of the New York Times.

 

How I love to tip the news/with my zany thoughts and views/Journalists delete my blogs/cuz they're fancied catalogs/of conspiracies galore/against my early apgar score/Food reporters know to shun/my recipe for sally lunn/Bizness writers, too, proclaim/that my theories are to blame/for their migraines and despair/plus their early loss of hair/Still, my views do carry weight/with the masses insensate/and I'll nag newspaper scribes/until they send me lots of bribes!  

Prose Poem: The Boycotter.

 

I'm in the middle of my biggest boycott

ever.

One day soon the media will recognize

the importance of what I'm doing and 

I'll go viral in a New York minute.

*

I started boycotting as a child.

I boycotted my Cream of Wheat frequently.

Despite cruel repercussions from my mother.

Boycotting school came as naturally to me

as falling off a log.

My determined boycott of brushing

my teeth was my first real success -- 

 I had a full set of dentures 

by the age of twenty.

*

Why work when you can boycott --

am I right?

I boycotted my job at the Post Office.

Then at the Ford Motor Plant.

Then at the lawn service my brother ran.

I'm proud to say that I withheld my

patronage from the entire Silicon Valley

cartel.

*

I am still boycotting Covid-19.

And masks, of course.

And apartheid in Mexico.

I have always boycotted Burmese cats.

*

And now my biggest boycott

is taking place right in my own

apartment.

I am boycotting global warming

by the simple action of ripping out

my thermostat. 

This has already piqued the interest

of building management.

I expect that interest will grow

exponentially,

and I am already learning Swedish

for my appearance at the 

Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony

in Stockholm . . .

Where I will explain why I

am boycotting my award.

Prose Poem: The Good Luck Bog.

 

So my fiance Alice and I went to

this good luck bog in Ohio,

where couples throw in an old shoe

or boot to bring good luck to their

marriage.

*

The place was a tourist trap,

of course; but both of us like

chintzy and quaint things.

We didn't have a shoe or boot

to toss into the bog; we threw in

a six pack of Mountain Dew.

*

Then a strange thing happened.

The mist hanging over the bog congealed

into human form and addressed us thus:

"I am the Spirit of the Bog. Come with

me, you foolish mortals, and see

what your thoughtless actions have

done to the future!"

Then she tapped each of us on the

head with a mop handle, transporting

us hundreds of years into the future.

*

Then we saw that our six pack of

Mountain Dew, combining with the tanin

in the sphagnum moss, had slowly vaporized

into a psychotropic gas that made people

believe they were monarch butterflies.

Hundreds, then thousands, of people migrated

to Mexico, where they perished from a lack

of nectar.

*

This in turn led Mexico to declare war

against the United States. Being the 

weaker nation, Mexico hired Taliban

mercenaries from Afghanistan and 

Communist mercenaries from North Korea.

*

The ensuing slaughter was terrible.

No one was left on the North American

continent except the Inuit way up North,

who had hid in the bog myrtle.

*

When we were returned to our own time

the Spirit of the Bog returned our six pack

to us and disappeared.

We drank the Mountain Dew and 

threw Alice's mother into the bog instead.

It was the organic thing to do.

Prose Poem: The Used Rope Store.

 

I don't really remember where I got the idea;

probably from some newspaper article.

I read a lot of online papers.

See, I could get my hands on a lot

of used rope for next to nothing.

So why not open a Used Rope Store?

*

I had tested the market earlier,

selling tap water from my garden

hose in used pop bottles for ten

cents each. Online. 

Shipping & handling was $19.00.

People bought it. 

Not a lot of people,

but enough to convince me there

is a market for everything today.

Even used rope.

*

But I didn't sell it online.

Too much regulation.

A brick and mortar store,

in a scuzy neighborhood,

represented by a city council

person who didn't care,

required nothing more than 

a bicycle license from city hall --

I framed it and hung it up behind

the cash register and no officious

busybody from the city ever bothered

me.

*

I sold used rope, twine, and string

by the yard. 

I got most of my customers by hanging

out a sign that read:

FREE DUST BUNNY RECYCLING.

That's a thing for a lot of people;

they collect the dust that accumulates

under the bed and furniture and then 

they don't know what to do with it.

So they brought it to me (I just tossed

it out the back door when they weren't

looking)

and they stuck around to examine my

used rope.

*

They bought it for tire swings.

To wrap around fruit trees

to prevent winter burn.

For handmade bee hives.

And to boil and feed to their

goats.

*

I was so successful that eventually

I was bought out by a big retail

chain. But they ruined the whole

concept by expanding the inventory

to include plastic doo-dads from china

 and junked auto parts. 

*

Still, I had made my pile

and didn't have to worry

about where my next Jimmy 

John's was coming from.

*

Nowadays I catalog gastroliths

for the Smithsonian, working

as an unpaid volunteer.

It makes me feel utile.

Prose Poem: Babbling Bat Pups.

 

The author, with bats in his belfry.

The babbling bat pups really got to me;

I mean, all night long they babble out on

the eaves next to my bedroom window.

So I finally contacted the Biden administration.

*

I emailed the undersecretary of defenestration.

He referred me to the Department of Windows.

Who, in turn, asked for my social security number

then asked me to open a bank account in Nigeria.

*

And still the bat pups babbled.

It sounded similar to Pushtu. 

I moved my bed into the garage;

but the babbling bat pups were there

ahead of me.

*

They dropped things on me:

Monkey wrenches.

Moldy yarn.

Cans of Bardahl motor oil.

*

Finally the Department of Windows

got back to me.

They had deposited fifty-thousand

dollars in my Nigerian bank account

and said I should hire an 

exterminator.

*

But there are no bat exterminators

in Nigeria. 

*

I began babbling back 

at the bat pups.

They liked that

and stopped dropping

monkey wrenches.

*

Now they study my eating habits

and I study their speech patterns

and together we have started an

LLC to monetize the lice

in their fur.

*

This is what makes America

so great in the trenches.

A British Village Is on the Hunt for a Vandal Who Throws Beans on People's Front Doors. (Food and Wine Magazine.)

 

Tim Torkildson, canned ham.

"This kind of canned food vandalism isn't an isolated incident in the U.K."

In Wonersh town, a hamlet quaint,

a fiend with beans their doors does paint.

Using cans of Heinz this brute

porch furniture will persecute.

*

Children's playgrounds aren't immune,

where beans are dumped by tablespoon.

I doubt not but this libertine

will next descend to canned green bean.

*

Or maybe pickled beets he'll smear

on bay windows with gloating sneer.

Mushy peas no doubt he'll find

go well on walls with bacon rind.

*

Oh why can't constables arrest

this naughty tinned food-throwing pest

before he he has a chance to stoop

to throwing cans of Windsor soup?

*

The least this villain ought to do

when splattering his veggie goo

is to provide a spoon and plate

and let the homeless masticate!