dilletante

I crave art, music, theatre

but make none of my own;

talent and skill combining 

only in my ability to feel

to respond 

to delight

words are my private territory

my interior land

enveloping 

and exposing

every sense

which is bigger?

we compare our bulging muscles
lay cards on table
hers trumping mine
mine trumping hers
ad nauseum
(her tears are louder,
my indignity fiercer)
I limp
she pouts
next round
8 hours

the day after

no sleep
though the apnea scores show that when I do sleep
I might as well not have
I go through the day almost mechanically
missing by the gears that slip
and the ideas that drift away before I can press them
between my pen and my paper
just a vague sense of what's to come

but I lost my keys
had two friends and a locked car
in a midnight parking garage
didn't panic
(nearly didn't engage)
slowly pieced together the single weak link
that I had executed flawlessly
called a friend
rode home
no crisis

I have the same sense of non-crisis now
could it be the non-attachment I have lusted after
(that, in itself, belying my understanding of the state)
but just the same
I don't need to panic
just plod along when that's all I can muster
allow inspiration to sneak in when it can
fill in most of the blanks
set out a plate of cookies for serendipity

then off to New York
hit the hard reboot
start over
refreshed
ready to jump in again

mother's day

they did remember
to insult me with the card
but bought sweetest gift

sleepless sunday night
staring through dry, squinty eyes
dreading tomorrow

my stomach is full
of old foods and bile
my mouth a dry desert

pittsburgh spring evenings
inspiring with dull and damp
guilt from no desire

Senryū

Senryū
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Senryū (川柳, literally 'river willow') is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 or fewer "on" (not syllables) in total. However, senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are serious. Senryū do not need to include a kigo, or season word, like haiku.

Form and content
The form is named after Edo era haiku poet Senryū Karai (柄井川柳, 1718-1790), whose collection Haifūyanagidaru (誹風柳多留) launched the genre (and hence his name) into the public consciousness. A typical example from the collection:

泥棒を dorobō wo
捕えてみれば toraete mireba
我が子なり wagako nari

The robber,
when I catch,
my own son

This senryu that can also be translated "Catching him / you see the robber / is your son" is not so much a personal experience of the author as an example of a type of situation (provided by a short comment called a maeku or fore-verse, which usually prefaces a number of examples=senryu) and/or a brief=witty rendition of an incident, from history or the arts (plays, songs, tales, poetry, etc.). In this case, there was a historical incident of legendary proportion.

Some senryu skirt the line between haiku and senryu. The following senryu by Shūji Terayama copies the haiku structure faithfully, down to a blatantly obvious kigo, but on closer inspection is absurd in its content:

かくれんぼ kakurenbo
三つ数えて mittsu kazoete
冬になる fuyu ni naru

Hide and seek
Count to three
Winter comes

Terayama, who wrote about playing hide-and-go-seek in the graveyard as a child, thought of himself as the odd-guy out, the one who was always "it" in hide-and-go-seek. Indeed, the original haiku included the theme "oni" (the "it" in Japanese is a demon, though in some parts a very young child forced to play "it" was called a "sea slug" (namako)). To him, seeing a game of hide-and-go seek, or recalling it as it grew cold would be a chilling experience. Terayama might also have recalled opening his eyes and finding himself all alone, feeling the cold more intensely than he did a minute before among other children. Either way, any genuinely personal experience would be haiku and not senryu in the classic sense. If you think Terayama's poem uses a child's game to express in hyperbolic metaphor how, in retrospect, life is short, and nothing more, then this would indeed work as a senryu. Otherwise, it is a bona fide haiku. There is also the possibility that it is a joke about playing hide and seek, only to realize (winter having arrived during the months spent hiding) that no one wants to find you.

Some modern haiku is more similar to senryu than to traditional Japanese haiku. Most Western haiku and senryū poets no longer adhere to the 5-7-5 form, which is suitable for the Japanese language but which may lead English poets to produce over-long and sometimes stilted poems. A humorous example of senryū in English is an advertising tagline attributed to Lew Welch:

Raid
Kills bugs
Dead