This month is a Month of Haiku organised by Iscariot-Priest.

Each poet involved starts a new DA art-work and adds to it once a day for a month. At the end we will each have written 30 poems in one month. Whew! What a task.

Well, here goes. This is my entry. I will be updating it daily so check back often if you want to see how it goes.

I am also part of the Solar group who is doing the Haiku-Athon here: [link]

Many thanks to Iscariot Priest: [link]

See the full list of poets involved: [link]

See the Haiku-Athon Stamp made by RetroZombie (which I can't use because I am not a subscriber): [link]

Notes:

1. Although these poems are composed for what is called the Spring Haiku-Thon, over here in New Zealand it is summer. Like “here/there” or “now/then” the seasons are relative to an existential viewer. A season is not a fixed thing, existing objectively for everyone at all times. A season is an experience, dependent on my position in the solar system. Where I live, during summer, there are a great number of cicadas. The noise they make is intense and unceasing. I recently found out that it is a mating call, so cicadas are essentially saying “fuck me” repetitively. Hence, the poem.

2. This was a difficult poem to write. There was so much to communicate. Eventually I had to pick the main idea and go with it. I wanted to write a poem about these three flies which have been circling the middle of the lounge for two whole days. There isn't any food for them and they never seem to land. I watched them for a good two hours last night. All they do is fly around in circles. While I watched them, trying to figure out what the devil they were up to, I realised that they made up the corners of a triangle. The three flies turned into points and I could see a sheer triangular plane shifting through space. It was an amazing thing to see. Like a “square dance” for flies. [many thanks to LivingToxic [link] for the suggestion to place the poem in the shape of a triangle. How could I have missed that?!!??@?]

3. Dedicated to Basho's famous haiku (possibly the most famous haiku of all time) which reads: "The ancient pond/A frog jumps in/Water's sound." [first two lines from Donald Keene's translation; my translation on the final line which is usually rendered "The sound of the water"] The term "brekekekex coax coax" is the onomatopoeic word for "croak" in ancient Greek (a "frog's sound"). This poem was originally posted as "In ancient Greece / A frog croaks / etc." and changed after a day to "In a Greek pond / An ancient frog / etc." To have the frog croak in the second line meant that there was no stillness to the picture before the unusual sound. Now, I hope, there is a serene scene disrupted by the sudden sound (which, for me, better captures the tone of the original, which was my intention). Then I grew unhappy with that version and re-wrote as "In Basho's pond / Sits an old Greek frog / etc." and I still don't know. This one is giving me trouble. Then I wrote the present version (shits) and I am pretty happy now. It has a whole new dimension to do with the rise of Aristotelian philosophy (what became epistemelogical, scientific, legal, moral thought) and the repression and fear of Eastern modes of thought in the West (think the film "The 300"). A modern example of this is Western science's fear of Eastern medicines. The West often claims that herbal medicines are not scientifically tested, and therefore, they are dangerous. Of course, the thousands of years of practical experience which these herbs have behind them is ignored (and the fact that Western medicine kills a lot of people through misdiagnosis). I am not saying that either Western or Eastern medicines should be ignored - both should be used together, in harmony. Often it is said that the Japanese didn't have a metaphysics or physics before they had contact with the West. This is Western scientific (binary based, epitemological) knowledge shitting on the Japanese culture. Japanese people kept their metaphysics in their poetry, and subsequently, an understanding of the universe is alive within their language. Our language is positively dead comparitively. In Japanese poetry taking an old poem and reworking it is a popular form (as with Hollywood films). What the West calls post-modern has been modern in Japan for centuries.

4. Spider webs throughout our house (lattice walls) arranged like camps on the Sahara. An obvious play on the term 'in sect' (meaning in camps, or groups) and 'insect' (caught in the flies web). The association between 'sects' and 'death' is a deliberate (somewhat political) comment on the dangers of dogma.

5. This is a re-working of an old poem I wrote and eventually abandoned. It was part of a longer piece which I have been editing down for years. When I looked at it today I noticed these three lines sticking out of it. I reworked them slightly and this is the result. I love recycling!

6. This poem is meant to engage your body memory of having a wriggling flea between your fingers, to conjur a memory of the skin, of the flesh. The term 'my' is used as a 'shifter' which the reader (hopefully) takes up as their own. In saying 'my fingers' and not 'the fingers' the reader says it as if it were happening to them, and (may) experience an 'intersubjective' moment with the poem, exchanging places with the writer. Intersubjectivity is a term borrowed from Maurice Merleau Ponty. Deleuze argues that moments of becoming are 'affects' (faces). When one experiences the flea between their fingers a facial expression arises showing their emotional response. Hopefully, the body is engaged, rather than the internal-mind.

7. I saw this out my closed window when I was a teenager, half asleep. I couldn't do anything, it happened so fast. It has always stayed with me. This one is written in a traditional 5-7-5 pattern. Note: I have realised that some don't "get" this poem - the sparrow dies because it touches two powerlines at once, and then falls to the ground.

8. This is a simple poem, about a simple feeling. But I believe it is an important feeling. Nuff said.

9. Dedicated to Spike, the cat. This happened to him. The story was related to me by my partner's father - thanks Pete! Made a great subject for a poem.

10. This poem is self-reflexive. New neighbours moved in a few days after the haiku-thon started. I had just decided that I would dedicate my poems to animals which lived around my house. I met the neighbour on the steps which lead up to the house we share (it is one house separarted into three flats up over 100 steps - welcome to Wellington). One of the first things she mentioned was that she had rabbits and I thought "What luck! Another animal for my month of haiku." I think I will write another one for the rabbits later once I know them better.

11. This is dedicated to Aaron Hilton. One afternoon we watched ants gorging themselves on a half-bag of candy-floss. Both of us had the distinct feeling that we didn't mind the ants being there. I used to think ants were dirty. Now I see them as friends, as people. The candy-floss is like an all "you can eat" restaurant for ants.

12. A simple poem comprised of two cliches. I was interested in the idea that cliches are not good subject for haiku, which I agree with. A cliche, or generalisation, should never supply the haiku with its images. But what happens when you use two cliches in a traditional double-image haiku (a synthetic model where two contrasted images supply structural metonymy). Here, the "cats meow" to tell you they will clean up the spilt milk. But a meow is a kind of "cry." Hopefully, the cliches unwind.

13. Not much else to say. There was a moth caught in the lampshade. It sounded like a free jazz drum solo. I listened to it for half an hour or so, discerning various fragmented rhythms and polyrhythms.

14. See: [link] for notes

15. This poem represents a "bind." One reading is "Even in summer / I cannot stand / Cockroaches" but given the reverse reading of "stand" and the bracketed (no) we might also read "Even in summer / I can't stand on / Cockroaches." This the poem represents one statement and its reversal, superimposed on top of one another. This expresses the strange feeings I have toward insects now (both a sort of love which comes from trying to understand and think like an insect, and a culturally structured repulsion). The backwards "stand" is meant to reverse the "no" into "on" (I cannot "stand on"). Reversals are a key concept in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy (which, to my mind, seems entirely haiku, or yin-yang, in structure and ideas - I would highly recommend Vivian Sobchack's reading of Merleau-Ponty in The Address of the Eye, about film theory and existential, phenomenological-perception).

16. This poem marks the centre of the linked-verse (1-16-31). 1 and 16 both refer to cicadas (and I will write 31 in such a way as to finish the narrative). The most common narrative is a three-act structure, with a beginning, middle and end. 1 is the beginning, 16 is the middle, and 31 is the end of the "narrative" which takes place high in the mountains of a house in summer. The house is beseiged by insects and small animals of all kinds.

17. Saw this yesterday while meeting with students to discuss their essays at my local cafe. It charmed me, watching a bird eating a large bit of bread covered in cream cheese and getting it all over its beak. It then wiped its beak on the pavement, but couldn't get it all off. I watched it for a few minutes, and then it got scared off.

18. I think this one is simple enough. To me, and I am sure many others, ducks have always sounded like they are laughing when they quack.

19. We never think how huge we are. We often think of ourselves as "normal sized" and other things as big or small (compaired to ourselves). Here I try to reconsider our size and agility from the perspective of insects looking at us. What would a spider think of a human?

20. A double play on the term "heavy showers flood the basin" meaning "rain in the valley/basin" and "a shower in the basin (of the bathroom). The final line does not clear up the distinction - whether in the valley or the bathroom the spider drowns in the shower. Based on seeing a spider drowning while I had a shower...

21. This is a reworking of an Issa poem: "From the Buddha's nose / comes / a swallow." In English the term swallow obviously refers to an action performed by the throat of the Buddha, hence the re-write.

22. Nuff said.

23. Fat flies in the kitchen; but do I speak of fat frying, and flying from the pan, or flies getting fat (off eating the grease/fat). Do the flies slide down the wall coated in fat, or does the fat slide down the wall. Two complete images which are superimposed and make no sense without eachother. A pure rhizome!

24. This one is for pure fun! Words. Rhythms. To me, the caterpillar always looks like its dancing...

25. First Reading: A surrealist image of cabbages actually fluttering by and playing hide-and-go-seek in the black berries. Second Reading: Hide-and-go-seek suggests that there is something "hidden" in the poem.Go backwards and find the linked word (flutter-by) and exchange the first letters to read b/utter fl/y. Hence when you read "flutter by butter fly flutter by..." (and so on) the letters FL and B play hide-and-go-seek like the white-butterflies do in the cabbages (at least that is what we call them here in NZ, even though they are technically a moth). Third Reading: The white and black are yin-yang. The "butterflys black berries" are their tiny little eyes (the black dot in the the white petal/tear). The cabbages are the white rounds in the black berries (white dot in black petal/tear). This creates a yin-yang image (white-as-white, black-as-black, black in white and white in black). This and "fat flies" are my favourite poems that I have written in the bash.

26. Dedictaed to Tom Waits, drinking and hawks.

27/28. No comment at the moment.

29. Deidcated to Basho, based on one of his poems.




.