that elephant over there?
oh, yeah, I like to tell myself
it can fit in my pocket
*
don’t yell at me
I yell at him—
dead sunflower in the vase
*
do you think
this elephant in my pocket
makes me look fat?
*
too hot for my fingers
this piece of steamed carrot so I throw
it in my mouth
*
just before the snooze
alarm goes off again, a whole
dream in three minutes
*
I don’t know
if truth becomes visible but
elephants do
*
that scar, I pick
it even as I say out loud
stop picking it
Your shorties are some of my favorites! Do you know Cid Corman’s work? Yours reminds me of his sometimes and sometimes of Kerouac’s bop haiku. Here’s a Corman:
JUST FOR NOW
Remembering how
much I’ve forgotten reminds
me of this moment.
And one of Kerouac’s:
The sound of silence
is all the instruction
You’ll get
See what I mean? What a wonderful lineage!
Thanks, Joe!
I have not heard of Cid before … But I will look him up! And of course I know Kerouac. I am very much influenced by Jim Tipton, who was the first to get me into short poems, and Daniel Ladinsky, who I used to correspond with in short poems for a year or so … And then of course Izumi Shikibu and Ono no Komachi … And Ikkyu, and … Gosh, so many japanese greats …
On 3/10/14, 12:18 PM, “comment-reply@wordpress.com” wrote:
>
#3 is the gem for me, but the whole series is unforgettable — or is that what the elephant says?