Haikukachoo

“I lost my marbles, I puzzle at your cross words, your games a maze me”

“Holding auditions, brains a packed talent office, of hammy haikus”

I remember the first time I ever truly understood what death was. I was about five. I don’t know what triggered the understanding in me, but I was sitting on the front porch of the house crying. My parents came out on the porch and asked me why I was crying. I said that I didn’t want to die, they tried to console me by saying ” It’s Alright, You’re not going to die”  I said I knew that, but I now also knew I would someday. My dad said something to me I thought was really extraordinary and I still remember to this day.

He said “You know Darryl how you look up at the stars at night? Did you know some of those stars are so far away it takes thousands of years for the light to get to where you can see it? And you can look up at night and see starlight from a star even though the star may have burned out a very long time ago because the starlight is so strong. Love is like that, and love is Life.” Even as a child I understood what he meant and it made me feel better. I hadn’t thought about that for a very long time, but I woke up this morning and it was fresh on my mind for some reason. Maybe someone needed it.

“Precarious girl, dancing on the rim of the world, I watch you with love”

I going through some old Poetry notebooks and I came across a poem I wrote back in college. I just wanted to share it with you. It’s called “The unknown poet and the poet-pretender”.

It was kind of a reminder that I was taking myself too seriously and was trying too hard to impress people. Which meant I was not being my authentic self.  It’s written in a tongue in cheek manner. 

“The unknown poet and the poet-pretender walked on the beach at the end of the winter.

He spouting poems he thought were quite wise, she slyly smiling with only her eyes.

Here’s my latest opus, he proudly did say,  Can you believe it took nearly a day?

It’s really quite good she said with a wink, then changed the subject to cleaning her sink.

But she loved the old fool and suffered his prose and poems in silence despite what she knows.

Other pretenders and benders of rhyme, lose their first love in a matter of time.

despite all his folly she truly did feel, beneath all the treacle, something was real.

Who’s your favorite poet he asked of the dame, hoping the lady would mention his name.

No special poet she said to the man

but dropped in his palm a pellet of sand.

“Her eyes are full of ghosts, modern-day Miss Havisham, jilted by her past.”

Grey brown circus squirrel/on a telephone tightrope/walks without a nut’

“Cold Earth behind me/the precipice of rebirth/the nexus of next. ”

“Empty and alone, dead mall of insomnia, vacant shells of gone”

“My cruel alarm mock, each tick a beating bass drum, laughing with each boom”

My brains on dial-up, my mind keeps pushing “enter”, to download some dreams.