Haiku
by beighartman
Beneath warm covers.
(this restless world never stops)
I could sleep forever.
despite having the best time,
i find a strange ambivalence
thinking about the cost,
not to myself,
no, but to the onlookers,
the waiters and waitresses,
the bellboys and barkeeps,
the deckhands and drivers,
watching me drop in a weekend,,
casually and with unmistakeable style,
the earnings of their entire
month?
quarter?
year?
thinking about what they could do
if only they had the
luck,
chance,
fortune
of a middle-class American.
these feelings
of things crawling
on me fighting
the burn of
sunlighting on me
smells just like aloe
a moist awkward fellow
people refuse to be
looking at me
and he followed her
all the way to death,
coming in the form of a
bite sized fish,
cast from a stick
into the swirling ocean,
looking too good to pass up
despite the imminent death
of his wife (or perhaps girlfriend),
hooked through the jaw
and then through the gut,
to be tossed on the boat,
taking his last vengeance
by bloodying my shorts.
Whistling aurora encases
Ears in a shuddering
Presence of imminence
Sound of sand spilling
From precipitous heights
Hissing as it treads closer
Surrounding every angle
Reaching coarse cement
Smashing liquid bullets
Leaping chaotic harmony
Shifting spectacle of pixels
Translucent humming static
Vibrating peacefully overhead
open fields
chasing butterflies
city streets
chasing butterflies
staring at the clouds
floating in the sky
but every time i
catch them they
die.
To find yourself at home at night
wishing you were elsewhere
is to hope to sleep, to hope
to dream of another place
To recall
for a moment
the absolute
Power
of a storm
the absolute
Terror
as it rips the sky
in half,
and it fools
the street-lights
into thinking that it’s
morning.
the absolute
Beauty
while the world,
for one split second,
is in perfect,
clarified
focus.
The absolute
Sense that,
as senseless as
it would be,
the thought of
dying
on the hood of
a ’91 Bronco
in the middle of a
school-yard,
with your best friend,
Doesn’t seem so bad
when you think about it
Above my head
Clothes of varied colors hang
Nearly suffocating
From cocoon to brilliantly speckled night
Bursts shooting stars from champagne bottles
A splash of sequins on construction paper
We could count to infinity on our fingers
And hold eternity in our hands
We held forever in our eyes
And each other in our arms
When the distance and time
Meant only when we would arrive
They said reach, and when we were finished
We had stardust underneath our fingernails
It feels dis-correct
that is, it’s probably
incorrect, but I’m
sure I misused at least
one prefix somewhere
but I digress
Something feels like
it should feel right
but it doesn’t,
does it?
Is it time to take a
wrench to these fine works
and hope that
in the process of
dismantling this thing
we find the bit that
made me switch
the ‘in’ with ‘dis’
and switch it back?
Or maybe someone
will just come out
and say something,
like they should have done
a long, long time ago
the sky was turned a slightly darker
shade of gray as you jumped from
your bike to the railing overlooking
the pond and dance back and forth
yelling fond cries of joy though i
for the first time
feared for your life that you yourself
might take it right before my eyes
that night
a fear i’ve never felt with anyone and i looked
you in the eye and told you i was scared for you
but now you’ve gone and left the only friends
you possessed and now i fear again
your cry
“DO WE HAVE A PROBLEM”
will fall on deaf ears and people will think
maybe you dont.
Yesterday I played a song
that someone else had wrote
about an owl at the nature center,
really freaked him out
and then tonight I spent
an hour on the phone
with my instructor as I
lept upon the tables
and I hoped I didn’t hurt
myself and now,
My legs are tired
and my ear’s a little sore
and my eyes are drooping
despite the POP I
picked up at the store
and I feel a whole lot better
than I did a bit before
But tonight,
I really wish I knew
the owl in the song
that someone else had
wrote, that I had played
last night
down inside,
in the deepest, safest place,
grows an alien, devoid
of thought,
of knowledge,
waiting to burst forth,
after a proper gestational period,
in a shower of
blood,
placenta,
flesh,
splattering any and all
in the line of fire
with the accompaniment
of life,
of birth,
of becoming
human,
of being
human.
you expect to know me
but only spend thirty minutes
prodding and poking
with pointed questions
that don’t really tell you anything
about me or anyone,
other than that i know
(or perhaps not)
what you want to hear
and will gladly tell it to you
no matter what i really think
because i’ll do just about anything
for 40 grand a year and benefits.
aching gnawing
pressing joints squeezing
cartilage free from places
it was never meant to leave
Green light
And I can’t move,
Asphyxiated by fear
I’m hardly breathing.
The glint of the street light
Reflects off a basement window.
The signs say, One Way
And Do Not Enter.
Red light,
Breathe and let go.
The headlights shine into hazy dusk.
Turn signals flashing
I’m not going,
Green light
in jail they slip your
food under the door
and the gaurds only
walk around as many times
as they absolutely have to
and
i lie on the floor,
points of pressure failing
to pad the solid concrete
that is my bed.
keith has a wife,
he’s lying next to me
because he beat in
her ex’s door because
he was keeping her kids
and they called “breaking
and
entering”;
tony is from detroit and
got caught driving without
a license and all of his
people left him here,
he tells me about his
cars
and
females
and
houses
and how they caught him slipping
caught him slipping and
he shouldn’t even be stayin’
here for no three hunnid dollas
god,
aint this some bullshit?
this phone only calls who it
wishes,
this cell sits harder than
all of humanity…
lets no light in
lets no one leave,
lets no statements
be made of it or on it
except for “help me!!!”
which tony wrote on his
concrete bed with the pen
that i stole from the clerk
that we also made playing cards
out of with our pieces of
papers given to us by the
man;
these papers containing important
information about the number
of dollars we are to give
to the man for our offenses
against public safety.
Despise
is such a strong word
yet I like it in this instance
no, I love it in this instance
as you’ve created for yourself
an enemy, and I insist
that if you make one more mistake
you’ll make a meeting with my fists
so please be wary
as I despise you
very much
if i sit here another minute,
i very well might explode,
littering the surrounding computers
with little bits and pieces
of what was once me:
brain matter, bones,
flesh and blood,
and of course fecal matter,
coating the ground
and hopefully making it to the ceiling,
that i might rain down my essence
on friend and foe alike,
bestowing a final blessing
on all these other working stiffs.
there’s something simply perfect
about the cold kiss of cut blades of grass
on bare but caloused feet
around a country fire ring
in the middle of the night
How it cuts,
but doesn’t cut you;
how it chills you just enough
so you remember just exactly
how alive you felt that morning
when the sun rose up above your bed
and ice cold water sprayed down
like a demon from the shower-head
incititing,
nay,
demanding,
that you rise.
You didn’t like it then,
and you’re not quite fond right now,
but you must admit,
the main effect was
perfect.
May I sing to you a beautiful song?
And if you know the words come sing along
A sweet melody like the minstrels sing
This lullaby, a warm zephyr in Spring
The trees give shade as they hear me play
Wind ruffles branches, applause as they sway
The birds will halt their chirping and listen
In the sun, the body of insects will glisten
As this lyre plays of longing and of love
The angels look down from heaven above
But ‘tis true I needn’t play such a tune
For you outshine prettiest days in June
For your beauty holds unending mystery
And when with you my heart’s a symphony
in the eleventh grade my spanish
teacher made us read a poem by
pablo neruda about his dead
dog and i could not have cared
less but now i find myself contemplating my
furry companion’s inevitable
end sure that when that day
arrives i’ll seek solace in mr. neruda’s
perfect verse:
Some day I’ll join him right there,
but now he’s gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I’ll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
and i’ll probably stay home for days.
sitting for hours
on hard chipotle benches,
barely noticed in the reminiscence
of times past,
of times to come,
of everything in between,
enjoying the moment
although we all know
that it won’t last,
that it will fade away
like a song from the past
that slowly disappears
and then one day is found
on a shuffled ipod
and immediately suspends time
for four minutes or so,
taking everything back
to the idealized past,
in which everything we shared
is remembered fondly,
improving on the reality,
which was good already.
Sultry, almost plentiful
the star-specked sky sits,
becoming,
only partly blurred from the
toxic city lights beneath it
We lay on the concrete
pretending we know which
sets of stars have names
and which stars are just
stars
The air moves slowly over us,
cool for one,
cold for another,
and thin, webbed clouds cover,
just for a moment,
the sultry, almost-plentiful
star-specked sky
In those moments I miss you
i awoke to find my hours
still at bay waiting for myself
to catch up as i ran to
lose the fear i knew awaited
should i not endure some pain to
soften the blows that followed
endurance came more out of
necessity than some personal triumph
i could no more attribute to myself
than my own salvation
light comes with the morning filled with
things so sweet, tranquil, mundane as to
hardly be poetry
but a donut cannot lie
and a burrito brings you the same joy
no matter what the flavor or the cost if its
been a year since one touched your lips
lying jetlagged on the floor i look back on
six months of answered prayer for courage
through the one thing i lack the strength and
pride is nowhere around as i held you in my
arms and you refused sleep in the way i refused to
give up hope
and you humbled me
