Simple Truths Sonnet

Simple Truths
The simplest truths obscure the best lies/
If you think the meaning is obvious/
Look up at the happy blue summer skies/
& know how it covers the blackness of space/

In life what is apparent is rarely/
Even vaguely materially real/
With work and introspection we barely/
Understand the selves we love with such zeal/

Simplicity is the strange, cruelest trap/
That, mesmerized, we willingly fall in/
Like glistening amber, when it’s still sap/
Easy answers delude the strengths within/

So when “simple” is the “best” solution/
Excavate beneath ease’s pollution/

Gatsby Haiku Review

#Baz #Luhrmann’s #Gatsby/
Was surprisingly pleasant/
A pretty good #flick/
#haiku

Production design/
& DeCaprio’s #Gatsby/
Were well worth watching/
#haiku

Fantastic Costumes/
& faux aged New York City/
Were interesting/
#haiku #gatsby

Clever impression/
If not true fidelity/
In this new #Gatsby/
#haiku

#Race’s clever use/
Added a new patina/
On segregation/
#haiku #Gatsby

Ubiquitous #Blacks/
Reminded viewers of #race/
Without preaching much/
#haiku #Gatsby

2 Sad Sights

In the last couple of months I’ve seen two of the saddest things. The first was the paralyzed squirrel that had spent part of the fall scampering around outside of Building 7, pulled only by its front legs. I guess someone must have been feeding it, maybe the nice lady who feeds the cats also brought something down for him to eat, because he was there for a few weeks or a month. The next to the last time I saw him was right by the service exit. He clawed his way out of the bushes and looked up at me as I was heading out with my bike to work, He paused and looked straight at me and I thought, “hope it gets better, you’ve been scrambling like this for a while.” I got on my bike and pedaled off, hoping I’d be able to stay un-paralyzed.
When I was walking Lucky later that day I saw the squirrel about 20 yards from that door pulling autumn leaves up around himself. It was like he was making a little bed by one of the trees he could no longer climb. I guess I knew he was dying then. But why the cover of leaves? DId he want to stay warm? Did he know he’s soon be somebody’s dinner? Did he want to avoid being dinner? The wind blew and exposed his nonparalyzed upper limbs and head and he quickly pulled some leaves back over him. I said goodbye, because I knew this was his end. I was kind of sad, but also happy that I was aware of this struggle for life in nature.

The other calamity I saw was on recycling day on the Upper East Side the day I went to the Whitney with Linda and Mary from California. I was running to the cafe that Lennox and Chandler were sitting at to bring the Calvin and Hobbs book I was carrying to them. On 76th street between Park and Lexington I came across a jumbo clear recycling bad that was full of maybe 30 Kodak rotating slide carousels. I had to know what the photos were of, so I tore a small hole in the bag and pulled out two slides from one of the slide-show carousels that people used to give slideshows before the internet made sharing and collating images so east. (I remember when one of my parents hippy friends came back from some exotic trip (Dan Deitz to Germany? Judy Geisman to India?) and we were all dutifully assembled to see one or two carousels of that trip with their commentary (as the adults got high and drunk). It was boring, though the images were interesting, as they got high and drunk the adults were less and less interesting.
The two slides I got were of Sofia Bulgaria. One was of the “Church Alex Nevsky” (that looked like a mosque), the other was titled “rush hour, Sofia” Both were lettered in sloppy fountain pen writing. I would imagine that the 10,000 slides in those thirty carousels were all also titled in fountain pen. Someone spend their life visiting Eastern Europe (& other places), taking photographs and editing them into slide shows. After each slide was viewed, labeled, carouseled the photographer-traveler, tourguide and slide-show purveyor would invite people to live vicariously though his travels.
Alas, he dies and someone put these slides to the curb to be recycled. What treasures of a life were in those bags? What treasures am I saving for Mason or Chandler or Lennox to throw to the curb some day? Nothing so exotic as a trip behind the soviet Iron Curtain. Sigh.

Contented Sonnet

Contented Life Sonnet II
[RErevision]

I have scaled the dizzying heights in life/
Where style’s premiums don’t matter/
Enjoying simple pleasures with my wife/
Make youth’s sweet conquests trite anti-matter/

Garish achievement of modern excess/
Burnished by wealth & youth’s pneumatic curves/
Are distractions, mere possessions tasteless:/
Undermining dignity and reserve/

Life’s simple common everyday pleasures/
Companionship, comfort, community/
Are destroyed by modern drastic measures:/
(Disgusting excess’s impunity)/

So I will enjoy what I’m enjoying/
Though to wanton desire it’s annoying/

Contented Life Sonnet
[unrevised]

I’ve attained the high plateau in life/
Where style’s premiums don’t matter/
Enjoying simple pleasures with my wife/
Make youth’s competition seem like blather/

Garish achievement of modern excess/
Burnished by wealth & pneumatic youth’s curves/
Those distractions, of possessions tasteless,/
From the straight and narrow will make you swerve/

Life’s simple psychological pleasures/
Companionship, comfort, community/
Are consumed by modern drastic measures/
(Disgusting excess’s impunity)/

So I will enjoy what I’m enjoying/
Though to consumerism:* annoying/
*capitalism

10a. I wrote a sonnet/
On middle aged contentment/
Because I’m happy/
#haiku

10b. I wrote a sonnet/
On middle aged contentment/
To convince myself/
#haiku

Academic Abolitionist Sonnet

Editing Brown Sonnet

Addressing this paper academic/
Re-reading & re-writing ideas/
Illustrates my problems are endemic:/
From the pompous I want the most cheers/

The thesis: “undermined literacy”/
By a bright loyal abolitionist/
Was intellectual apostasy/
Formal language makes Blacks contortionists/

I am like runaway slaves showing off/
With my pompous elevated language/
I want my enemies their hats to doff/
For this approval I am most anxious/

It is no small irony I study/
People from long ago like me/

Dawns

Morning Meditation haiku

13. I love my mornings/
Where I’m alone with my thoughts/
(Seeing connections)/
#haiku

14. The complexity/
Of my cluttered life reveals/
My life’s harmony/
#haiku

15. The mechanisms/
Allowing my happiness/
Are revealed to me/
#haiku

16. Each complicated/
Asset or embarrassment:/
Opportunity/
#haiku

17. The mechanical/
Nature of mistakes & joys/
Grind out my heaven/
#haiku

18a. Smoothing rough edges/
Takes some painful polishing/
Understood alone/
#haiku

18b. Smoothing rough edges/
Requires painful polishing/
Understood later/
#haiku

19. My meditation/
& morning contemplation/
Expose my blessings/
#haiku

The [Annotated] Gift of Today

22. The gift of today/
Arrives before I’m ready/
To savor its wealth/
#haiku

23. I open my gift/
Look at all the small pieces/
& feel overwhelmed/
#haiku

24. We’re all small children/
Christmas morning greedily/
Opening presents/
#haiku

25. Presents we’re given/
Have “some assembly required”/
We don’t want to do/
#haiku

26. We sit on the floor/
Gifts & wrapping everywhere/
Refusing to build/
#haiku

27. This imperfect world/
Requires some assembly/
To become Heaven/
#haiku

28. Pick up the pieces/
& assemble your Heaven/
From what Life’s* given/
#haiku *G_d’s

[annotated version]

22. The gift of today/
Arrives before I’m ready/
To savor its wealth/
#haiku

This is a commentary on how I am distracted by my personal meditations when I should be working on my academic work.

23. I open my gift/
Look at all the small pieces/
& feel overwhelmed/
#haiku

I am correcting my manuscript but I’d rather “play poet” & philosophize my feelings.

24. We’re all small children/
Christmas morning greedily/
Opening presents/
#haiku

Here I return to the “gift metaphor” using Christmas to describe my work as a gift before a spoiled & petulant child.

25. Presents we’re given/
Have “some assembly required”/
We don’t want to do/
#haiku

I place myself in the general flow of ungrateful (western) humans who want a “prefabricated Heaven” assembled by G_d while continuing the modern Christmas metaphor for heaven.

26. We sit on the floor/
Gifts & wrapping everywhere/
Refusing to build/
#haiku

I expand the metaphor of spoiled child at Christmas, thinking of the paper I should be editing. The paper, my work, is a metaphor for Heaven.

27. This imperfect world/
Requires some assembly/
To become Heaven/
#haiku

I think this is my philosophy, that life is Heaven! I remember when I got clean & sober & I went from Hell to Heaven in 90 days. I wish I felt that again more viscerally (90 in 90!)

28. Pick up the pieces/
& assemble your Heaven/
From what Life’s* given/
#haiku *G_d’s

I use G_d & Life interchangeably. Does that diminish or re-enforce my atheism/agnosticism?

Finally, I rather like the invocation-jeremiad to improve your life through work and faith.

Subjectivity of Victims (or why we like the weak)

1. Adorable pets/

Are cute because don’t have/

Subjectivity/

#haiku

2. Modern subjects will/

Protect the most powerless/

To feel meaningful/

#haiku

3. Faraway poor folks/

Tibetans and Fetuses/

Assuage our egos/

#haiku

4. Protect those beings/

Who can’t cut our privilege/

Has to be easy/

#haiku

5. The unborn are not/

Demanding of anyone/

Except the mothers/

#haiku

6. Protecting beings/

Who are not yet born is easy/

‘Cause they cost others/

#haiku

7. Tibetans are real/

In China, Nepal & Queens/

Taking no suburbs/

#haiku

8. Tibetan rights are/

Costs for our rival Chinese/
Not OUR wealth & ease/

#haiku

9. 3rd world Christians are/

Particularly saintly/

(They agree with us)/

#haiku

10. Don’t improve the rights/

Of local people who need/

Because we might LOSE/

#haiku

11. The rights of the poor/

Are reduced to benefit/

The lives of wealthy/

#haiku

12. In China or here/

Giving the poor more freedom/

Costs powerful more/

#haiku

13. Give up your own rights/

limit your own privilege/

To improve the world/

#haiku

14. “Ask not what [the world]/

Can do for you— ask what you/

can do for your [world]/

#haiku

Recipe for Life in Haiku

9. Recipe for life:/
Necessities proportioned/
To needs of ‘your’ dreams/
#haiku

10. Into today’s bowl/
Add wholesome ingredients/
In the right order/
#haiku

6. Sweetened with tomorrow’s/
Dreams of extreme happiness/
This life slowly bakes/
#haiku

7. Life is a pastry/
Of common ingredients/
That hunger seasons/
#haiku

8. This cupcake called life/
Overpowered by frosting/
Is a simple cake/
#haiku

13. Second rate cupcakes/
Are loaded with sweet frosting/
To obscure cheap cake/
#haiku

5. Making a good life/
Takes two full-cups of right now/
Leavened with the past/
#haiku

11. All good confections/
Have deep bitterness, not just/
The future’s sweetness/
#haiku

12. Failure’s sour sting makes/
The sweetness of our future/
Come alive in life/
#haiku

14. Measure your “happy”/
To season your existence/
Portion control’s key/
#haiku

16. A level teaspoon/
Of victory’s strong sweetness/
Should make your life good/
#haiku

17. Adding too much sweet/
Will make life’s cake reliant/
On base victory/
#haiku

enSlaved Metaphor

33p. enSlaved Metaphor/
Tortured for information/
Regarding this man/
#haiku

33a. Slaves to luxury/
Serving the gilded master/
Demanding our ease/
#haiku

33b. Slaves to property/
Toiling in consumption’s fields/
Harvesting desire/
#haiku

33c. Propriety’s slaves/
Seeing appropriate looks/
Approving of lies/
#haiku

33d. Enslaved by desire:/
Beaten at the whipping post/
Of public longing/
#haiku

33q. Celebrity’s slave/
Cool balm of fame glistening/
Upon abject fear/
#haiku

33e. Enslaved by desire:/
Beaten at the whipping post/
Of covetousness/
#haiku

33f. Enslaved by habits/
I ease into middle age/
Beaten by comforts/
#haiku

33g. My hard master is/
The sloth which is my reward/
For working my job/
#haiku

33h. Taking my comfort/
Supplants dreams of greatness/
With relaxation/
#haiku

33i. My relaxation/
Is the mental camouflage/
I hide my dreams with/
#haiku

33k. Until I admit/
I am a slave to habit/
I cannot escape/
#haiku

33l. Freedom’s frightening/
I am responsible there/
For all my actions/
#haiku

33m. I am so enslaved/
In my abject servitude:/
Maintaining my life/
#haiku

33n. My overseer/
Whips with justification/
In the fields of sloth/
#haiku

33o. Still I won’t escape/
To freedom where I can fail/
(“Better the devil…”)/
#haiku

33j. Thank you for the truth/
My writing has beaten me with/
In your presence G_d/
#haiku