the haiku commute project

shame is the shadow of love

2008-08-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

This morning I received the following email from Andrew, jetlagged, somewhere in the British countryside:

New car spells silence
commute becomes easy now
haiku dies, friends weep.

in which I'm mistaken for a lifeguard

2008-06-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

A and I were riding our bikes to a party in West Oakland. Close to midnight, we careened toward the lawn crowded with beer cans and people dressed in black and dirt. In that context we must have looked like a snake-hipped Flossie and Freddie, both in our favorite red hoodies, our blond heads cutting down the middle of the street like headlights. A tall, gloriously drunk guy with old school metal hair stood alone in the middle of the lawn, a drink in each hand. As we cruised up to the house, he raised both beer cups to the sky and called out to us:

"Baywatch! Save me! I'm drowning!"

June 4 pm

What cherub babies
I'd lick like tiger cubs. If
you weren't arrested.
-for AT

2008-06-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

June 2 am

Still life shadow holds
wolverine, aprium, thorn--
held shadow lives still.

June 2 pm

Piano concert in
a closet. When Frank Zappa
died, you took to bed.
-for MH

near miss, Peppermill

2008-05-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

May 29 am

Central Park Whole Foods,
your face still tired. At Milton
your eyes sagged like plums.
-for PS

May 29 pm

Animatronic
hot tub mascots, mirrored walls,
a year for snake eyes.

happy birthday

2008-05-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

I'm a dilettante. I start things and don't finish them. The only thing I have a consistent, high-level of interest in is my cats.

Easily enough put off course that the fact of running out of paper in my Festiva notepad left us haiku-less for a month. I also returned from the Grand Canyon with a blissful, relative quiet in my mind where all those syllables had been lurking. That's pretty much gone now.

May 28 am

Rattlesnaked dizzy,
forehead to the cool floor, wound
held below the heart.

May 28 pm

A melt of vodka
tears, I'm wrung out on your old
cure: a cool Thai heart.
-for KF

Kiki, happy early birthday.
You always took care of me.
I love you.

2008-05-02T08:07:00.001-07:00

May 1 am

Adored with a cool
offering of wrists, I wept
into bandages.
-for ST

May 1 pm

Unearthed by sleep,
slim slate mannequin, forgotten
books, artifacted.

Coachella '08

2008-05-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

You can't make this stuff up.

April 30 am

Pool bus capsized on
drowned piñata. "This dive is
called 'Call 911.'"

April 30 pm

3 am hangar.
Malt liquor half-mustache bar
kept. Car on the moon.

break from form, chair out the window

2008-04-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

April 23 am

All July I baked
perfect loaves, bold gifts stood in
when I could not eat.
-for MH

April 23 pm

On the way home, I was thinking of this lovely moment that I was trying to syllabize into a haiku for my entire drive, and I just couldn't make it work. It was perfect exactly as it was:

The night T and I met, we were in his apartment above Bush Street, it was very late, I guess we were looking at one of his chairs. "I hate that chair," he said.

"Let's get rid of it," I said. "I'm going to throw it out the window right now."

His face lit up like a beautiful child: "Do it!," he said. "so I can always remember you as the girl who threw my chair out the window."

2008-04-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

April 21 am

Evening sidewalk cracks.
Soft-eyed, you told me you dreamed
I'd turned into rice.
-for JC

April 21 pm

Tiger, that silk purr
betrayed you. Untie your howl,
free your roar in fire.

haiku ennui

2008-04-18T15:03:00.001-07:00

leads to haiku hiatus.

April 14 am

Juniper campground
winged Corvettes peacock eastward,
vultures drift in wait.

April 14 pm

Either it's the wind,
or my car is about to
fucking explode. Fuck.

summer in SF and in Providence

2008-04-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

April 10 am

Sangria sundown--
next day we'd lost your truck, roamed
Mission streets, howling.
-for LP

April 10 pm

Thin as June crickets,
Jack and me, asleep out back
with the bicycles.

2008-04-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

April 9 am

Minor trail burrowed,
ghosts unleash to the backseat,
slimmest sadhana.

April 9 pm

Norse runes ring my mom's
gift--"to ward off evil." Not
all years are good ones.

further archive recovery!

2008-04-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

June 12, 2006 am

An egg from your mouth.
Swallow wings trilled in my chest
and a snake crawled out.
-for TI

June 12, 2006 pm

Wait in the closet.
Reread your maps. Trace hard lines
on sheet twisted legs.

2008-04-08T08:04:00.001-07:00

April 7 am

Four car pile-up. Seals
sleep below, not sirens, not
at all. Stop. Go. Stop.

April 7 pm

Guts sea-bottom sunk.
Eyes full of rogue waves. Lightless,
viewless chrysalis.

enough already

2008-04-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

April 3 am

Car still creaks, dishes
stayed dirty.Once plucked my harp
dealt lonely echoes.

April 3 pm

Guts to the sun, field
mouse raced to fate's ditch. A small
life at last unnamed.

2008-04-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

April 2 am

Soft octopus arm
threads the steel sea, my red raft
seldom unraveled.

April 2 pm

Buttons eye the moon.
My shirts window-spy you, their
chest a flayed suitcase.

special goal for the week edition

2008-04-01T07:31:00.001-07:00

Goal: No tow trucks.

March 27 am

Bloom's words of wisdom:
"Headaches are temporary,
hair is forever."
-for RB

March 27 pm

The governor's house
thicketed in mist, our quilt
knots with wet June fawns.
-for JK

don't brush and drive

2008-03-27T08:32:00.001-07:00

I can do lots of things while driving my manual transmission, no-power-steering Festiva at 75mph, including but not limited to:

-making and receiving phone calls (limited due to prohibitively loud ambient noise);
-sending and receiving text messages;
-writing haiku;
-drinking green vita-drink out of my Klean Kanteen.

But don't we have to draw a line somewhere? In the past week, I've seen two people brushing their teeth while driving on the freeway.

March 26 am

You toothsome Tony!
Dislodged parsley shift. Blind me
with your gleaming gums.

March 26 pm

Two of me would make
three! "Corduroy (nylon); pay
(don't pay). Talk (don't talk)."

2008-03-26T07:31:00.001-07:00

Mar. 24 am

Bruised ribs scaffold my
sternum-nested slip of a
finch. Feathers all rest.

Mar. 24 pm

Musky caps, wires, drum
kits blue walled-in. My own guest
defenestrates me.

2008-03-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

June 1, 2006

Meadow grass leans long
eastward. I left the sun in
the road behind me.

best line overheard at the anti-war march on Wednesday:

2008-03-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

"If we get separated, I'll meet you by the Palestinians."

March 20 am

Jazz-seized neck, hands full
of flour. Your knotted spine
my lone untying.
-for MH

March 20 pm

Leaping ankles belled,
like a rare sweet I'm driven
to your night kitchen.
-MH

still life with surfboard and Poppy

2008-03-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Mar. 17 am

Salt rapt neoprene
skinned, I emerge seal-faced, all
eyes, humming with light.

Mar. 17 pm

Twelve years chopsticked: my
organs swapped soft spots, your arc
of stars trilled henna.
-for PB

Jose and the Big O

2008-03-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

We have no haiku from yesterday because there was no commute yesterday.

There was, instead, a tow by the golden-toothed Jose, who reassured me that Dusty and I would be just fine, and took me to "this guy he knows" who charged me $5 cash (you are reading that right--$5) to fix my wheel up enough to get me home, and later on, to W Macarthur's Big O Tires, and, it's official: I love those guys. Everyone I dealt with after yesterday morning's freeway fiasco was so thoroughly pleasant--I can't even shed a tear for my shredded tire. I'm going to spend more time hanging out with mechanics.

I did unearth more haiku from the 2006 archives, buried beneath a small stack of maps in the front seat:

June 29, 2006

Siren's Flash, shock of
white hair, licks salt from fish scales,
legs, teeth, neck whispers.
-for Flash

2008-03-13T08:07:00.001-07:00

Mar. 12 am

Pterodactyl hawks
in your false news. Wait while I
gunpowder my face.

Mar. 12 pm

Smiling, traffic thick
cars merge, then turn on you like
your lover's sisters.

before Leslie

2008-03-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

Forgot about these. Two days pre-Leslie-era. Unimportant.

Mar. 6 am

Unshuffled justice
brightly suited. The last drawn
card calls her answers.

Mar. 6 pm

You and ten thousand
chicks in the dark, sightless. "What
can they think?" we pray.
-for ST