Haiku for a Spring Snow Storm

Yes, there's a cold front blowing through New York. Places like Fargo, North Dakota and Iron Mountain, Michigan are getting snow. And somehow so is New York City. Boo to you, Jack Frost. These are not all weather related I guess but inspired by its mood.


we are drunk on night
the bridge holds, fastened to rivets
white hot in the sky

please, cold suns of streets
if you keep me, light me home
I’ll keep the day watch

the overplush couch
an impromptu deathbed
an open casket

the moon is deaf
now to night made promises
the sound of breaking

I am only hurry
I am the flint of my bed
where a pretty stone cools

static is called snow
so let’s not watch that channel
turn on the covers

new ice will turn black
if it finds cold reception
a lonelier road

If Life Gives You Lemons, Make Haiku

For non-Brooklynites, these take a little intro. The BQE is an elevated highway, hideous and inspiring running like a gray ribbon between those boroughs. Sufjan Stevens wrote a whole symphony about it. It's an eyesore and frustrating to drive on and your only option and wonderful and unique to Brooklyn.

The Gowanus Canal is the filthiest piece of water in America. It's a national health hazard and the EPA has stepped in. The bottom is covered with shopping carts and rusting iron. The top is floating with grease and algae that has living samples of gonorrhea in it. That's right. You could get an STD from swimming in it. Also a baby whale got stuck in it once and was cut apart by the metal maze in the water. Very sad.

I wanted to write some romantic verse about them.

Haiku for the Gowanus and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Winter 2011

1
Brooklyn winter breaks
slow as iron in water
hide me Gowanus

2
night traffic mezzo
headlights point home, cars yawning
circling for some sleep

3
the moon on dimmer
how needy the limbs of night
caught in wan spotlight

4
canal full of eyes
bodies adrift in freezeless sleep
I will find you all

5
great grey artery
if I cut you, would you spill
all your red riders

6
whale catcher, release
or clench, keep your dinner tight
be jealous of now

7
canal means lost vein
the moon said it could mean much
the moon is bloodless

Day 8 - Zuihitsu Day 2

I keep on keeping on. I think I'm a day behind now. I will post two poems tomorrow. Make up. Because I want to post during the day. But I've been getting home late. Because I'm so popular. Among poplars. I hang out with trees. I'm tired. I have weird jokes this late.

Here's another part of my zuihitsu. It's a journal essentially. Which is a thing i don't really keep. But then I fill up tons of moleskines with writing so what I am doing? I was thinking about this as I was writing this.


No World But This – Zuihitsu Day 2

If I never feared mortality,
if I never feared man or war
I could be a mountain, moving alive
time would spin away from me
all persons becoming cut flowers

~*~

I could sleep a century
I could keep a century alive
I could keep a country life
I could sleep a country’s life

~*~
I remember being young
saying things I thought were new,
as if I had peered into the world
and found a new vein of silver
thought that no one else had plumbed
I told a girlfriend that “Hate was not the opposite of Love,
but Indifference is.”
I was so impressed with myself
I told this to her Mom as well
and she nodded, a mother’s nod
to a toddler holding up an object
and saying, “red”, “ball”, “play”

later, I learned I was not new
I was walking in deep ruts of thought
I have not said anything original
yet

~*~
this mash? this bog of pulp and ink?
in Sunday School they told us to journal
but I chronicle nothing here, no day, no significance
I only write poetry and half poetry and bad awfulness
I will not ever call poetry
and sometimes dialogue between a fictional person or three
maybe a comedy bit I’m working out,
but a journal? can’t be

who would read this?
progeny? (I haven’t made any)
peers? I’d be mortified to show them

~*~
I’ve forgotten how to edit
my poems emerge as big as my life
1:1 scale
as I walk, sometimes I write I walk
uglier words hang on
like love handles, plantar’s warts, eczema
things I should treat, freeze off
but I get too caught up in sunsets
stare off and forget the form
between my hands
Or I’m busy digging for winter signs,
a raw November, where I will not rake again
this white page will snow over my mistakes
the rustling clauses beneath, of thoughts
broke off but wrote
but rote
but written
but rid of
I am sorry there is so much
for you to get through
sometimes I just keep castling
on top of this swamp
as deep as the walls are tall

Day 7 - Zuihitsu

I got home too late for this one. I thought about cheating and changing the time zone but whatever.

So this form I'm going to attempt over the next few days is a zuihitsu. Now it's not really broken into days but I have not the time nor attention this week to sit down for the hours needed to accomplish this.

This is the definition a la wikipedia.

Zuihitsu (随筆^?) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. The name is derived from two Kanji meaning "to follow" and "brush", and thus works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or random jottings down of thought by their authors.

So it's an excuse to be a little random I suppose, but it's also a very exciting form that I learned from my teacher and friend Kimiko Hahn. The Narrow Road to the Interior is a breathtaking book.

No World But This – Zuihitsu Day 1

Dear Parallel You,
have we ever agreed again
when you split from me, or maybe I from you
did we leave like lovers cold
was there a moment when in your mirror
we perhaps, were both at a breakfast table
and a spoon held at the same time
felt like a tuning fork, felt strung to something
and if you looked over toward
a somewhere, a felt direction
because I was

~*~

I’m wearing a pair of jeans Valerie washed for me and in the left pocket is a mess of washed paper
that I’m trying to decipher, that seems to me like a memory I need. But the metaphor seems so easy, I chuck it all. Start over every day.

~*~
my boss told me he doesn’t feel himself
because he has no hat on today
and his hair is wild as a fire
he said his dog ate it
ripped all around the Yankee N and Y
had the bill in his teeth when he woke up
it started right when he came in
the dog just kept barking
he suspects it was the smell of his sickness
he has a cold, wasn’t feeling himself
he keeps saying that
as if you is a feeling
you can lose like sight

~*~
Sometimes I wake up sure I’ve drowned.
When I do, Valerie is there
to talk me into the air again.

Day 15 - Final Tanka

Not a weekend of rest. Just a weekend of go. I achieved this quiet moment tonight to read more Kimiko Hahn and write some more tanka. It's a form I'm still working on and she never uses all the numbers she writes and she never uses them in order. So i'll have to consider. But here's a few more. And tomorrow starts Denise Levertov. Depending on if I write a Zuihitsu, another Japanese form.


Brooklyn Tanka

24
Upstate looks like Michigan but not Michigan. It must be the trees. Or me.

25
On the Hudson, the cliffs miniature all the cities. Shrunk cars wait for a toy train full of people impossibly small making gestures barely noticeable and speaking in voices no louder than dust rubbing together.

26
I am full to the eyes tonight. And a slow tug pushes me from my chair to my bed where Valerie is lying in X formation.

27
Let’s travel to the upstate of our minds. I hear a whirring fan, the night slush of traffic. A dream I never ended has a new twist to show me.

28
The words are enough nightshade to end this. I have your confidence. I will return. Leave in your mind a door cracked open.

Day 13 - Cheat Codes and Tanka Projects

So I'm doing it again. I'm saving a spot. Making a post without a poem. I have one, I just need to put it down. But the clock is ticking. Eight minutes left. Not my fault! I worked until 8. Went straight to Prospect Park where The Swell Season were playing. (The Swell Season are the two musicians from the movie Once.) Listened to them. Came home. Ate salsa and chips. Fell asleep on the couch. Woke up before midnight. Hurried to the computer.

I'm still working on tanka. And maybe tomorrow morning I'll have more developed, more numerous tanka to put up. Oh, that's part of my rules. I have to write poems like the person I'm reading. So as soon as I finish The Narrow Road to the Interior by Kimiko Hahn, I'll move on to another poet. Denise Levertov in fact. Ok, poem a coming.

1:05 AM

Brooklyn Tanka cont.


14
The hurt of our words is another kind of music. I forget and then I remember quickly.

15
I will cut the trees and listen to all absorbed conversations. I will sit open every ring of Merwin’s tree and listen to poems never scratched.

16
This can’t be. Another night, you crashed in your day clothes on our bed while I type away. All writing is selfish.

17
The moon hummed like a broken streetlamp. The world is a highway end to end.

18
There is no poem.

19
If I say ‘night’ and ‘our’ and say ‘flesh’, some will find conclusions. What if I tell you our night flesh is separated by the need to stay less sweaty?

20
This is our season. Long and warming to us.

21
When I wake up, I will help someone move. My hands have a start in them.

22
The streets need replowing, to be chopped and the wires rooted. The cables and pipes ground and fertilized with the slivers of a million manholes. We will grow a greater infrastructure.

23
Our landlord said the pipes are too weak for Draino. We nodded as if we’d never done anything. Our ceiling and above plumbing are replaced. We now walk on another questionable ceiling.

Day 12 - More Tanka

I went to a seminar tonight with the guy from Improv Everywhere, Charlie Todd. It was very informative about how to spread your internet self. How to get more famouser. I took notes. By tomorrow I'll be so huge, none of you will recognize me.

BROOKLYN TANKA, Part II


7
You are my everyday Coney Island. We are always on the Wonder Wheel.

8
You are on the edge of the rain and I am full inside of it.

9
Hummingbirds never come here. Though my sugar water is getting drunk.

10
It is hard to not speak the whole day. Then to be home so late all our words mean bed.

11
You wrote for lunch you had a bucket of chicken. I wrote I’d be devouring a BLT. And both of us were instead sensible. A first.

12
Under my skin are veins so surface close, I can’t get why I’ve never nicked one. Bad enough to see my blood run for air.

13
You have a vocabulary for all this world and I just listen to be described.

Day 11 - Insert Poem Here

Total breaking of rules. I just got home. I'm posting. With no poem. And I will add one post haste.

---

Back. Wrote a tanka series. A bit styled after Kimiko Hahn's tanka cycles. Does it feel like a little cheating? Maybe. Does it do a little disservice to Kimiko? Assuredly. Here it is.


Summer, Brooklyn 2010


1
When I’m hungry, I’ll stuff and lull. When I drink, I find rivers to feed. When I still, I find my skin is holding me back.

2
No shadow surprises me. Only the shades Valerie shows me.

3
I chafe to hear any ‘doing my time’ talk. Just leave. The rivers and I will forget you.

4
The breeze is my favorite song. The fan is my favorite voice.

5
Prospect Park still gives me wonder. Like a paradise cut from a larger paradise.

6
Hide me under the hot streets. Wake me when they are knit together , when I can walk like Cadillac suspension.