Monday, November 25, 2024

A new form—Lyriku

 Jane Reichold first introduced me to haiku & senryu as “a fragment and a phrase”. I have been experimenting with a variant form where the fragment is replaced by a short quote from a song lyric. I am calling them “lyriku” for now


a yellowjacket

on her exposed left shoulder

“it’s probably me”


just after

the hound dog squats

“Elvis was hero to most”


“I watched TV until

TV went off”

blue super moon 


freckles & red lips

“every day is Xmas

every night NYE”


trickling down

the length of the pane

“can you stand the rain”


the fate of

a favorite coffee mug

“unbreak my heart”


scarlet smudge

on a white collar

“is it a crime”


hoop earrings

and knee high leather boots

“she’s mighty mighty”


I don’t know if these are any good or not, but they’re fun to play around with. Drop one in the comments if you’re feeling frisky. Try to keep it concrete and based on physical perceptions and keep in mind that the goal is more to suggest than to state.

Adios Amigo

 So I finally left Twitter (never X) after ten years. It was by far my favorite SocMed app. By far. I loved the communities I found there and the ability to get fast and accurate news and info from all around the world and never wanted to leave. But once Elon bought it the downward trajectory took its toll. Almost all of the changes he made made it a worse place to be. As others left the size of my favorite communities shrank, once he changed the Block function there was a mass exodus that couldn’t be recovered from. Black Twitter & Haiku Twitter basically collapsed and Haiku Twitter seemed to be migrating to BlueSky, so I followed. I kept my Twitter account for a few weeks, but once I saw that Bluesky had its own nascent version of Black Twitter and had robust moderation capabilities that was enough. I deactivated my Twitter account after downloading all my data. I had a good haiku day yesterday and here are a few I really liked:


AIDS Quilt

the search for my father

foiled again


peony snow

I change my mind about

false eyelashes


pine needles

another day avoiding

my father’s track marks


before the brass band

the slightly metallic taste

of hooves on asphalt


garbagemen 

along the predawn avenue

the gray aroma of rain


group chat

three sparrows bicker

over bird feed


November rain 

a woman’s eyes glisten

in the bus shelter


ripple of thunder

the eyes of the barn owl narrow

and widen


one hawk

circling a chalk line of clouds

call it Picasso


in the distance

the bison before

the withered grass 


rising above

my buck-toothed youth

Beaver moon


November morning

our flowerbed blooms 

with peony snow


Starry night

learning how “lights off”

rhymes with Van Gogh


September breeze

not the name of the butterfly

or the bee


Rafah at dawn

only one bullet hole

in the doll’s body


February night

I fish for Pisces

in her freckles





Friday, November 01, 2024

AND THAT’S THAT ON THAT!

 





AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

AS A FREE JAZZ PRISM SENTENCE

(for Ashly Barry)


Do I mischarge your wine red pentecost 

to an atheist believing in faith

but still shoplift almost all the orange kink  

off your lips because it rubs in the ways

“librarian” is the sexiest word

yellow birds translate from dove language 

or net Coleman’s green calligraphy to

“Choke me & call me Blue Moon” in Old Norse  

with runes neither of us might decipher

or speculate from indigo bruise shapes

yet read “Negative Capability” 

to riff on the lavender grammar of

Apophenia’s domestic violets, well

—if you can’t be free, be a luxury.