Forward

36. I struggle with fear/
Doubting my abilities/
& accomplishments/
#haiku

37. Fear keeps me from life/
Scaffolds insecurities/
Paralyzing me/
#haiku

38. I can do this job/
It is not beyond my skills/
I WILL push forward/
#haiku

39. Worst that can happen/
Is I look a bit stupid/
I should care less/
#haiku

40. Dawn’s iridescence/
Blends today’s optimism/
With yesterday’s fear/
#haiku

42. Poems together/
Inspiring myself on/
A #haiku pep-talk/

http://bit.ly/XxoInV

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

Ambulatory Surgery

2/19/13

12. Ambulatory/
Hand surgery with hardware/
I’m a bit afraid/
#haiku

13. Pre-surgery fast/
Difficult because I eat/
Habitually/
#haiku

14. Waiting room TV/
Game shows: American greed/
Fight for un-needed/
#haiku

15. Loud television/
Drowning out humanity/
Easing their function/
#haiku

17. Stripped of belongings/
Ev’rything vouchered like jail/
Sit waiting for Doc./
# haiku

18. Climb to the table/
Painful IV under skin/
Drift off to warm drugs/
#haiku

19. Post-Operation/
Dizzy nausea from drugs/
Confused and cold/
#haiku

20. Nurses & Doctors/
At your most traumatic times/
Are simply workers/
#haiku

21. I am in some pain/
It is the pain of healing/
Life keeps improving/
#haiku

16. Surgery went well/
Discomfort is unpleasant/
I will be just fine/
#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/

[Annotated] Dawn

[Annotated] Morning Meditation Haiku

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

A. I rise painfully/
Early existing alone/
Where I contemplate/
#haiku

B. This time before dawn/
Where I can think for myself/
Is precious to me/
#haiku

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

C. The contemplation/
Morning alone time gives me/
Permits me to see/
#haiku

D. The plain facts require/
Insight and contemplation/
To be clarified/
#haiku

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

E. When I examine/
The components of my life/
I see I am blessed/
#haiku

F. Blessings aren’t magic/
Or some gift given by G_d/
They’re just perception/
#haiku

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

G. Particular facts/
Can be opportunities/
With some adjustments/
#haiku

H. When I step away/
And ignore disappointment/
Life is always good/
#haiku

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

I. Events examined/
Should be interpreted well/
To find the blessings/
#haiku

J. Possibilities/
Fail to materialize/
To bring more chances/
#haiku

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

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

K. Remediating/
Life’s problems are sometimes gifts/
The work is the gift/
#haiku

L. It is with distance/
That we can see benefits/
Of life’s small problems/
#haiku

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

M. My observation/
Transforms as if alchemy/
Life into Heaven/
#haiku

N. Find your alchemy/
Of optimistic thinking/
By contemplating/
#haiku

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

Suspended in Now

11. Visit principal/
Over our suspended son/
Angry at school, boy/
#haiku

12. Defiance conforms/
To the personalities/
Confined by the rules/
#haiku

13. Supporting your child/
Sometimes means backing his school/
‘Gainst his righteousness/
#haiku

14. Resent procedure/
Of institutional might/
Still we require rules/
#haiku

15. Lines between “Ego”/
& organization’s needs/
Blurred by insecure/
#haiku

16. Rules offer guidelines/
But can be crude instruments/
When Ego’s involved/
#haiku

17. Papers need grading/
Though some students aren’t learning/
No matter the score/
#haiku

18. My Ego’s involved/
My prejudices stirred up/
Obedience rules/
#haiku

19. Accepting the rules/
From both sides of equation/
Will repress* Ego/
#haiku *stifle

20. Life is a blessing/
That is too hot to contain/
In neat containers/
#haiku

21a. Suspended in Now/
We struggle with G_d’s agar/
That keeps us alive/
#haiku

21b. Suspended in Now/
We submit to G_d’s agar/
That keeps us alive/
#haiku

Ending at the Start

I want to take a break from FB & Instagram (& Twitter?). Starting next year, tomorrow, I will not be a FaceBook presence. I want to be less present in all my digital social media. I really want to be looking at my iPhone less. However, I like to hear what others are thinking, saying, seeing, and doing. Strangely, I do consider my FB friends, “friends.” So what I hear of you, whether the LaGuardia student from years ago, friends from Copley Square HS, the decade I spent at Hunter College and my California Graduate School sojourn, I really do want to hear what you’re up to. But I can’t seem to keep this “right sized:” I look too often, and I don’t think I can rein it in any other way than taking a hiatus from Facebook.
I find the process of being a Facebook Citizen (which is to say digital citizen: Twitter, Instagram and Twitpics all belong here) fragmenting. I think my mania with haiku is a perfect sign of it.

Haiku are poems/
In A.D.H.D. Format:/
Quickly completed/
#haiku

In this digital format I get the germ of the poems and ideas down but I never return to savor the thoughts as long as the desire to check and publish so instantly. (HMMMM, I think I just talked myself out of keeping twitter, which I was hoping to just post with, along with my blogs todayeye and wqueens7 [which publish on FB].)

   Instead of immediately posting everything I think I would like to write on paper and think about what I’ve written a bit longer before I share them with the world.
The other thing is that I want to spend more time looking at books and the world. I realize that I have probably spent an entire day or more waiting for things to load while I was trying to see how you were doing, where you were, or what you saw (your pictures, poems and check-ins [Foursquare is another one to drop!]). I walked into a room over the holidays and I was confronted with a number of people looking down at their phones, some were still talking to the people closest to them, but I was struck by the oracular nature of the smartphones. People were looking into them like Narcissus into the pond.
So I think I will try to spend the first weeks of the year off of Facebook and Instigram and Twitter and post on my blog when I really need to say something. This is just my first cry for help, let’s see how it works.

-Finally, I want to spend less time looking at my phone, even though you are hidden in the digital folds and I AM INTERESTED in you.
-I want to spend less time trying to capture my moments in haiku to share with you instantly, you’ll do fine without my constant barrage of “poems.”^[1]
-I want to hear from people in a more personal form. So I will be trying to write more letters and postcards to those of you whom I do contact. The act of sitting down with paper and pen pleases me to no end. You are worth it. I would love to get a letter from you. You can write me at work if you don’t know my postal address:
Stafford Gregoire
LaGuardia Community College
31-10 Thomson Ave., E103
Long Island City, N.Y.
11101

 

---

^[1] I still don’t consider haiku “real” poems. I like their efficiency, but they don’t rise to the level of Emily Dickinson and Theodore Geisel.

Random Haiku Journal

12-22-12
(Haiku found in journal)

38. Introspection and/
Self-reflection are trouble/
To good consumers/
#haiku

39. Exploring ourselves/
Both conscious and sub-conscious/
Is how to find G_d/
#haiku

40. Rote repetition/
Won’t uncover any good:/
Just bury virtue/
#haiku

41. I need to escape/
The echo-chamber of “me:”/
Rejoin life’s spirit/
#haiku

42. Prayers are like Ego/
“Right some wrong that I perceive/
Omni-potent world!”/
#haiku

43. Doing chores is love*/
I prepare food to “say” love/
Things done to show love/
#haiku
*laundry (pronounced laundERy?) is love in notebook

44. We can give them love/
In daily domestic chores/
(Even teens accept)/
#haiku

45. I cook to show love/
It is the cuddle & hug/
That they* still accept/
#haiku *teens

46. Laundry and cleaning/
Do the same for their mother/
Love that they accept/
#haiku

47. Elaborate meals/
& meticulous cleaning/
Are part vanity/
#haiku

48. “Forgiving others/
Is a [small] gift to yourself[:/
Escape] resentment”/
#haiku via @JonathanLockwoodHuie

49. Freedom is unarmed/
& Peace needs no peacekeepers/
Weapons are problems/
#haiku

50. Guns become weapons/
When they are aimed at people/
It is all intent/
#haiku

51a. Gun Utopias:/
Very bad for Living things/
Heaven doesn’t kill/
#haiku

51b. Gun Utopias:/
Very bad for Living things/
Heaven lacks power/
#haiku

52. “Powerful’s” “Heaven”/
Is hierarchical Hell/
G_d needs no power/
#haiku

Grading Black Lit Finals Haiku

Grading Haikus

16. Reading Endlessly/
Final exams showing much/
(Of their distractions)/
#haiku

17. Lectures and readings/
Turned into raw sausages/
Squeezed into Blue-Books/
#haiku

18. Some evade learning/
Like the startled trespassers/
Avoiding the light/
#haiku

19. Then I read a test/
That defiantly points out/
I could have taught more!/
#haiku

20. S/he takes my lectures/
Builds an elegant thesis/
That outshines my own/
#haiku

21. Some students clearly/
Overstand literature/
And have been waiting/
#haiku

22. Harriet Jacobs/
Wrote *Incidents* way back when/
For TH!S young person/
#haiku

23. Race Repression in/
One-Hundred-&-Fifty-Years/
Have not changed at all/
#haiku

24. When Jacobs declared/
“Pity me & pardon me”/
She predicted now/
#haiku

25. Students are still moved/
By prejudice & the truth/
Of so long ago/*
#haiku
*Written so long ere

26. Reading this brilliance/
After seven hundred words/
Of summary: great/
#haiku

27. S/He revives my soul:/
Insight & Understanding/
Validate my work/
#haiku

28. I hope one day you/
See your work validated/
By a students’ thoughts/
#haiku