DizzyHaiku #1:
Karm-L-Korn at Sears---
Mommy always said, "No Way!"
Now I need lipo.
DizzyHaiku #2:
Some nights I wake up,
Face glistening in moonlight.
Ooops. It's just the Velveeta.
DizzyHaiku #4:
Bacony-bacon;
You smell good, my strippy friend.
Smoke detector off!
DizzyHaiku #5:
Pop Tarts sleep at night
In little foil sleevies like
Tasty astronauts.
diz: #3?
*manfully resists urge to say "fu ku"*
Number Three? Surely
Only an E with a case
Of Dyslexia!
Some wolves live in Canada;
but they don't say eh
Still, they live in Canada.
When it comes to Haiku? I like mine filthy!
(some of my recent work, two troikas and a duotone, courtesy the other monkey house)
Hey there neighbor Nurse!
What's the weirdest thing taken
out of someone's butt?
(pause, she looks upward
briefly) Fes, that would have to
be a black Maglite.
me: how'd the pervert
explain? her: "the usual:
slipped, fell, '...went right up'."
***
Stripper Safety Tip:
A labia ring will zap
fillings just like foil.
And, trust me on this:
Tugging that ring like grenade
pin will get you kicked.
***
At the porn tryouts,
doorbell rings; director finds
amputee on mat
with no arms, no legs
just lying there. "What do you
want?" "Try out, of course!"
says Stumpy with grin.
"But how could you possibly..?"
"Rang bell, didn't I?"
I like poetry posts. Although I don't contribute due to lack of skill.
thirsty for a drink?
all monkeys prefer a glass
of tasty cock punch!
Fes, too funny! And clever, I might add.
Party aftermath:
dirty dishes clot the sink
as the coffee brews.
At Seattle's dawn,
gray mists roil off Puget Sound.
Coffee lights the fog.
Cat's cry, clarion
to wake! to rise! to-- log on?
MonkeyFilter calls.
One more link to chase,
one more cup as morn unfolds.
Kitchen chores will wait.
Ev'one loves haiku?
And I thought Everybody
Loved Raymond. Dumb me.
Internet haiku
like ebay kidney sales is
so two-thousand-three.
(Still recovering
from MeFiSoCalWenCom.
What more can I say?)
Goetter's haiku rocks
As Kimberly says: your mom
Up and down the block.
I dunno why but the Chicago Tribune had some great haikus this week. (If you need a password, plastic/plastic should do it.)
My favorite was from Chris Miksanek of Rochester, MN.
Why Paris Hilton
Acts like Paris Motel 6:
Money can't buy class
Monkeyfilter: we're sooooo two-thousand-three.
We all saw the words
"Membership is again closed"
Now we are monkeys.
Island of Dr. Moreau Haiku:
"What is the Law, Boys?"
"No Spill Blood!" "What is the Law?"
"No Spill Blood! No Blood!"
Would-be haiku-ers
do not even have to rhyme.
Too easy, perhaps?
*cough* I've read some bad haikus in my day...
But hey, they're still fun to read!
Evening coffee
enough to take on mofi?
The monkey will see.
Big URL--
one ad pops up --
I click away.
The cuckoo flies west
After a single cock punch,
Past a poptart moon.
I freely concede
Haiku is not my forte--
But I'm a Monkey!
dizzy haiku five
coins my new favorite phrase:
tasty astronauts
Monkey, snore all night,
In your soiled silken nightie --
Morning brings remorse.
Haiku for your soul.
Look into my eyes mortal!
Whoops! Only pudding.
Whisky from the isles,
And haggis from the hillside --
Such things do console.
a sunshaft lances
the air above
the place you sat
whinge whinge whinge .... not just about the nunber of syllables .... whinge whinge whinge ... should mention a season...whinge whinge whinge ... proper form ...whinge whinge whinge .. 1995.
Good point, and one that's been discussed -- http://monkeyfulter.com/link.php/8763#comment_171828" --before.
[Apologies here for for not making the link, but after 8 attempots to do with the HTNL tags found it was non-functional, so perhaps tracicle you would take a look at this? It is aggravating enough not to be able to access the archives without my losing ability to link within MoFi itself. See, muteboy, I can whinge with the best of ye!]
A main objection to the 17-syllable form in English is its tendency to provoke laughter in the reader -- something not every poet desires to do. Or not all the time.
muteboy, the link should be here.
tracicle, I should apologize again for my appalling typing ...
However, not being able to access the archives has been going on for several months now. Could you please put fixing it on your to-do list?
bees, we're not fixing it. We're rewriting the code for MoFi in its entirety. However, there have been a whole lot of non-internet things going on that have taken priority lately, as well as maintaining the site in its current state.
btw I don't care about the 'proper form' - I was just pre-empting the pedantry
Thanks, tracicle. Recall your saying something about a rewrite a while agp but since I hadn't seem mention of it recently, I'm afraid I feared it had fallen by the wayside. Alas, I am a bad bee!
muteboy, here's one for ye:
low tide
the driftwood
rests
-- Giovanni Malito
Those are poignant, and some are heartbreaking, techsmith -- especially if ye have Windows.
Three American haiku:
march winds...
the mailbox
also moans
-- Elizabeth St Jacques
In shallow water
half of the minnows
are only shadows.
-- David Priebe
field of wild iris --
the pinto pony
kicks up his heels
-- Elizabeth Searle Lamb
night falls
hushed as
the owl's wing
terrorist petals
fall on guns and in barrels
that truth blooms from cash
five, seven, and five --
yesterday's celebration
of Japanese form
December's rainfall
waves in a windy harbour
lamp glows in portlight.
a quiet afternoon;
the old turtle drying out
beside the still water
-- Larry Oates
these old haiku forms
are necessary to make
a meta-haiku
(that is: five haiku,
seven and then five more make
cipher syllables)
What about punctuation?
. ,
... / ~
- '
as if his hooves ache, the stag
on the frozen pond
steps forward slowly
Winter begins* now
January coming
Blahs are now entrenched
Dec. 21
this flower is returning
tonight a small bulb
like its own toes in the earth
with a 7-5-7
we fly --
going
))) !!!
Twilight -- the sound
Of the sad letter dropping
Into the postbox.
-- Santoka Taneda
The cell phone rings
It's someone else's cell phone
Please answer it soon
(((!
teasing the crab
the ebb
the flow
-- Barry Goldmann
on the dark side of the fence
I rest
with the white camelia
-- Rich Youmans
seance
a white
moth
-- Raymond Roseliep
loverly
but so serious
teasing the monkey
the poo
the flinging
Thunder --
the mirror shifts
in its frame
-- Matthew Louviere
whistling winds
a loon surfaces, beak full
of waving crab legs
-- Suezan Aikins
In the poppy field
a black butterfly separates
from its shadow
-- Anna Holley
Is there a different name for it if it doesn't conform to 4-7-5?
petebest, variations on the original Japanese haiku form when rendered into English are often described only by referring to syllabic count per line -- so Louviere's above would be a 2-4-3, for example.
The extreme compression of Japanese haiku has had and is still having a great impact on poets writing in English. Some English haiku now are written all in one line; I'll try to find a few examples for ye of this development.
Japanese haiku are centred in the natural world, and usually indicate a particular season of the year in addition to the syllable structure, which also can vary somewhat.
Haiku: Looking Out of the Back Bedroom Window without My Glasses
What's that amazing
new lemon-yellow flower?
Oh yes, a football.
-- Wendy Cope
circling a quiet pool water striders
-- Gary Vaughn
Blackbird and nightfall sharing the darkness
-- Virginai Brady Young
the bright silence of sun in a clay pot
-- Geraldine C. Little
coming in on the tide the moon
-- Minna Lerman
There's a lot of experimenting going on, and haiku forms are very much in flux. Can't say I think the one line variants are going to become mainstream, but they are interesting examples of pushing the limit.
Thank you Sir Bees - does that mean that poets are writing in Japanese and then using an English translation on one line, or simply writing on one line and trying to keep the syllables in . . order? Me no fix pretty word good.
Not aware of any English-as-first-language poets who are thrawn enough to try writing in Japanese first and then translating that into English, although I daresay a handful of devotees may try this approach.
I would assume Japanese poets would write initially in Japanese before translating into English, but these are matters of specualtion on my part, not rock-solid factual knowledge. (If indeed certainties can be said to exist when toucvhing upon poetry and individuals' methods of creation/inspiration. It's my personal belief that generalizing about poets is a loser's game, anyway.)
summer
swallows
skyward
surfbirds on the rock
reappearing
reappearing
--David Rice
And ))), InsolentChimp, for the haiku!
above the treeline
snow blankets a frozen lake
trout remember flies
)))!!!
What a fine closing line, islander.
incessant showers
clouds crowd close
crickets are silent
Thanks, bees. Here's one with a title.
Reflections of the Rocky Mountains While Careening, as One Must, Mostly Westward Through Them in a Greyhound Coach Which is Empty Save the Narrator and an Elderly Man Sighing Behind Long Before Man Should Have Walked on the Earth
stone
seeds
spring
And, islander, that is a great line.
Most Impressive Title of 2006! Outstripping even "Wet, Soapy Mares at Play", a video I've just seen.
InsolentChimp, the haiku has a most spritely minimalism when paired with this [much] title. Fine work!
A four line form:
the river
going over
the afternoon
going on
-- Dee Evetts
A two-line form:
in the merry-go-round
that empty blue bench
-- Alan Pizzarelli
And another one-liner:
thrush song a few days before the thrush
-- Marlene Mountain
A quiet garden
But for the gentle snap of
The butterfly trap
))) !!!
Good one, EarWax!!!
Thank you.
The sound of dancing dies,
wind among the pine trees,
insect-cries.
-- Sogetsu, trans Harold E. Henderson
pied pine leaves fall to roots
one springs aloft
windless
Hunh!
Wet Soapy Mares at Play will always be MY favorite title.
**snorts, tosses head, puts nose in air**
water dribbles
into the pond --
horses drink duckweed!
"Wet Soapy Mares at Play"
read the furrows from hooves
of Blue
**blushes**
**bucks**
**gallops off**
Oh jeez, for f**k's sake
When will this misery end?
Say something dammit!
680
Lies, corruption parade
A soapy Mare
Compassion bhudda smile
haiku with owl sperm
I must have my rubber gloves
Spring inflames 'nockle
Here's a variation on the best-known Japanese hsiku:
The Queerness of It All
frQg
pQnd
plQp
-- bpNichol
honey covered )))) for the Bees!!
What a lovely concrete poem!
That's awesome, bees, that one's going on my bathroom wall ;)...
A more dark-humoured take:
A frog floats
belly up --
dead silence.
-- Michael Garofalo
Creation Myth
After the First Night
the Sun kissed the Moon
"Darling, you were wonderful!
Haiku: After the Orgies
All the maenads had
terrible headaches and
unwanted babies.
Haiku: the Season of Celebrity
With summer comes the
bluebottle; with pleasant fame
comes the Journalist.
North American Haiku
Hail, tribes of Outer
Alcohia -- the Rednose
and Goutfoot Indians!
-- Gavin Ewart
"A quarterly journal, Simply Haiku contains original contributions from new poets and experienced haijin, with offerings in the English genres of haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, renku and haiga. "
morning's hustlers:
sparrows sure of
picking up a meal
hey beeswacky, friend
I thought haiku was five then
seven then five. No?
Late to this, scrolling
up I see I may be wrong;
Many posts not so.
Perhaps the way of
the haiku posters here is
not what I'm used to.
Ralph the Dog, indeed, the approximate last half of this thread is about what happens when haiku, which in Japanese are often 5-7-5 syllables, is then written in English by people with a whole other set of literary traditions and options than is the case in Japan.
In brief, now is a time of much experimentation in English; there is no exact equivalent for a Japanese haiku in English, so often what is sought is a 'haiku moment' -- in which the aim is to allow a reader to have a sudden or profound insight into some aspect of life, nature, etc.
Some English poets also still write in the 5-7-5 syllabic form, but the result of the classic 5-7-5 in English is that poems tend to sound -- um -- (un)intentionally humorous/ponderous -- in the hands of the less practiced. Some excellent examples of this in this thread.
Should add that even in the hands of quite skillful English poets, a 5-7-5 haiku can sound too wordy, too ponderous.
Northern
Spring is
Yawning
Beeswacky, thanks for
The clarification as
I sure was confused.
Clarification
comes unbidden to those
whom Bees hits in head
Daresay we're all confused here, Ralph the Dog -- though I suspect most of us don't want to believe it.
Tickle twitch
Wait
Now I know
Three haiku from Narrow Road to the Interior
Ungraciously, under
a great soldier's empty helmet,
a cricket sings
High over wild seas
surrounding Sado Island:
the river of heaven
Lonely silence
a single cicada's cry
sinking into stone
-- Basho, trans Sam Hamill
it's not that i don't
want to believe it but forget to
want to know it,
bees
Much Later
Small children ask the right questions,
but who has time? Later. Some day.
Besides, they can't understand. Won't.
Once grown,
gone. Then all those pat becauses
you slicked down on their glossy heads
bounce back
in cowlicks of your own.
Now that you have time to pick up
after yourself, and linger over
boxes in the marital attic,
you stumble
on tough little kernels of wisdom,
risible carrots and peas, black
with neglect.
They rattle around in the dark.
Ellipses and loose ends have undone you,
snaking dryly down important halls
on the heels of your tall children.
Options blink
and digitize in birthday watches,
write themselves out of life-
long contracts
you had meant to explain.
You wish someone would explain.
When the children come home they look
knowing. You'd like to ask how
they manage
to forget what's wrong, to stay busy.
Instead you start explaining everything.
They nod, smile,
They don't remember asking you.
-- J. Allyn Rosser
Ouch, Bees. Must we have so much reality on a Monday?
For those who proclaim
they've grown weary of children,
there are no flowers.
Basho, trans Sam Hamill
... say it faster --
it's almost like sayin'
s' mammal ...
rain spatters the newspaper
my fingers stained
with the names of the dead
-- L.S. Daniels
new and improved
bold new taste
less filling
first snow
a passing child
sticks out her tongue
-- Keiko Izawa
7/1/7
the young jay gives a hawk's cry:
sees
how fast other birds can fly
cloud steams upward
from the folds
of the mountain's flanks
reason
unknown
to man
Etched on a moth's wings
the story of a man's life
powder to the touch
-- Nicholas Christopher
Naked on teh web
de bannanna swells
sticky keys result
Heh.
Some go bananas, some have bananas tjhrust upon 'em, and some let their bananas get over-ripe.
banana wine
in every line
I render thanks
thou art not mine
I rather think
I'd rather drink
the squeezings of some
bristly pine
by that I mean
some turpentine
More then three lines,
awfully wordy gets,
does not a haiku make.
So?
Neither do bananas grow in Japan.
We eat do make banana vinegar here though apparently.
When you write the word
"Banananananana,"
You must know when to stop.
How trueeeeeee.
gomichild, sounds as if banana wine should be an intermediate stage, then, doesn't it?
Fermented banana? They practically do this in their skins when they turn black. Although I haven't consumed any in this condition, notice they sometimes smell rather heady when I'm emptying the compost bucket.
Oh but look who's working on banana wine. And banana liqueur.
effortless fruit
drunk
in two week skin
Welcome back, InsolentChimp!
fallen figs:
wasps drown themselves
in sweetness
Sun-mellowed peaches
Almost-ripe to pick, then gone;
wasp-stolen summer.
an autobiographical haiku there - I went out to harvest the peaches this afternoon and ... *sniff* Bloody wasps.
The sleet falls
As if coming through the bottom
Of loneliness.
-- Naito Josu
The above was translated by Yuzuru Miura.
Oh, cricket!
Act as grave keeper
After I'm gone.
-- Issa
Also translated by Yuzura Miura.
All night long
listening to autumn winds
wandering in the mountains.
-- Basho, translated by Sam Hamill
feet brush roads
from dust, paths
from deer runs
this floating
world
will also
pass
More Issa. Bees started it!
From burweed,
such a butterfly
was born?
A favorite:
Where there are humans
You'll find flies,
And Buddhas.
Haiku
Snowy morning--
one crow
after another.
-- Matsuo Basho
Having slept, the cat gets up,
yawns, goes out
to make love.
--Issa
Japan
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
--Billy Collins
Try some Hip Hop Haiku, Sci-F-aiku, Periodic Table Haiku, Computer Written Auto-Haiku, Horror-ku, Anti-War Haiku, Quake-ku (but can it be better than 'Blue Wizard Is About to Die'?), Camel Toe Haiku and, of course, Porn Haiku.
The sleet falls As if coming through the bottom Of loneliness. -- Naito JosuOh, cricket! Act as grave keeper After I'm gone. -- Issa