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(from) AUTHOR'S NOTE:
For anyone unfamiliar with them, the following are brief working definitions of the originally Japanese forms used in this work:
Haiku: a one-breath perception of a ‘moment’ in the seasonal/natural world, with a twist of correspondence to the human; objective; in English, 17 or less syllables and (usually) 3 lines;
Senryu: like haiku, but concerns more funny/sad human nature and/or satire;
Tanka: a bit longer (maybe two breaths), with twist, but personal/emotional and ‘poetic’ devices allowed; more subjective; in English, 31 or less syllables and (usually) 5 lines;
Haibun (‘haiku-prose’): combines haiku and prose in a travel-journal/diary (classically) or in a shorter, sketch-like format.
The main characteristics of haiku-related literature include: empathy; ‘touchingness’; an ambiguous sympathy; showing a thing or event ‘as it is’; and the beauty of the ordinary, the subdued, the austere, the ascetic, and the mysterious.
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(from) WOLF WALK:
(excerpt from) Tract 179: August:
It took them two weeks to tear down the block-long trestle and remove the track from the top of the embankments where coca and poppy now bloom but where we played "army" the tanks and jeeps on flatcars returning from Korea and the Red Menace Yellow Peril depicted in war comics "Sarge they just keep comin' wave after wave of evil crazy faces with bayonets they like to stick you just to save bullets Sarge they ain't human!" this the Pennsy...
Doppler couplings
of a slow-backing freight
then silence
(excerpt from) Equinoxe:
When the mailman came I was frenzied juggling too much ever-expanding luggage in an underground railroad station in Prague somehow. I'm late. What track? I'm asking everybody. Where is it? I saw the sign and just made it Track 19 to Paris...
two dreams
about past
lovers
the violets stay open
this dark afternoon
(excerpt from) JazzHaus, Philly: December:
and the sun is rising now pink on the dome of Sacre-Coeur and maybe even a light snow has fallen as evanescent as a dream and maybe there too last night a cornily pretty young blonde called My Romance in G and the piano player rolled his eyes and maybe those two couples from Wisconsin are finally at home on the Champs-Elysees and maybe the two high-mileage but still-beautiful whores in the brasserie of La Coupole have fallen in love again and maybe young Tony in the Cafe Latin went back to London to become a square and maybe Dominique is back in Bahia for the winter yes and maybe the walled mysteries of the Ile St-Louis are being solved and the sweet promises of 10,000 illumined things are being kept one by one and counting
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(from) HAIKU:
the fog
just as true as
the truth it hides
black cat
blue moonlight
no words
open blinds
she lotions one long leg
then the other
October night rain
one faint cricket
maybe two
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