introduction to a requiem

when i am no longer then sing me a song. you can make it up or steal one from some hip hop group or the church. take your pick.

this world or the next
the dime i flip
hangs in the air

hoagy carmichael blues

‘kicking old buddhas gong’. that was slang for smoking opium in the thirties and forties. where did that come from i think to myself. was buddha a drug addict. not by a long shot. jazz was fed and grew up on dope though. but the best of them never partook or shook it off in the end. many of those that could not move back from drugs were lost to us. funny that the seduction of music led so many to lose themselves in it. when i went straight edge and cleaned up the real meanings came through to me. the long handwriting on the sheet music of my life stopped being blurred.

simple
but with a loud wail
baby wakes to a jazz tune

defining the form

i have all the lyrics to my favorite miles davis songs. i made them up of course. and i forget them and put on the music again (and again). reinventing them. and so it goes. each moment moves from one old joke to another. bad jokes. the stuff of life they are.

when   exactly
did this haiku become
a senryu for you

bye ya

when i as a young man i had an old car and drove crazily through the streets of milwaukee wisconsin. a friend put a bumper sticker on my car that read DON’T MISTAKE ME FOR SOMEONE WHO CARES. at first i was offended but then i realized he was only warning the other folks on the road to stay out of my way. that seemed very humane. so i left it on.

chewing gum comics
the stuff
that brings us together

ginsberg/burroughs and the facebook algorithm

two old beats smoking cigarettes eating watermelon and talking about philosophy and societal ills. i wonder if they had a phone that could do a live video if they would have made more sense. nope i figure. they made all the sense i needed then or now. car salesman could not have ‘sold’ me quicker than they did with their words. when you become just a little open to openness you are like that watermelon on their table. eatable but at the same time capable of spreading the seeds of a peculier religion. like a perverse johnny appleseed apostle.

spitting rocks
the heat of words
at a book burning

just dots to my eyes

the universe is in perpetual perfection. humans have difficulty grasping this fact. and yet it is easy to see if you just stop looking.

a startled crow
blocks my view
counting stars in the milky way

straight no chaser

i dont drink much. but when i do i drink sixteen year aged scotch. made in islay in scotland (obviously). it smells like peat moss. that might be because the water they use in the distillation process in islay is from a peat bog. ok. it ‘is’ why it smells like peat. anyway the only way to drink scotch is ‘neat’. if you spend that kind of money for the good stuff then pouring it over ice or diluting it with soda just seems outright dumb to me. life is best straight up not watered down and good scotch is just part of being alive for me.

life lessons
the dizzying way
a cherry blossom flutters

its not too far to never never land

time moves on without me. i am stuck in memories and it seems just perfect to me. the present moment holds the entire past in its hands. cupped and filled to overflowing my youth just runs down the drain. all of my childhood was spent daydreaming. now that i think about it all of my adulthood too.

binge watching
star trek episodes
the pointed ears on my cat

cognitive dissonance

i was born in detroit michigan. some people might regret that fact but i never have. it is a bit of a snake bit town on many levels. but it also has a sort of club like feel to the residents. i was in the club. we took great care not to mess with other ‘members’. we knew who belonged. only got robbed once. some guys broke into our house on the east side. we had a dog that loved the kids and hated strangers. she was locked in the kitchen when they came in. she chewed the doorknob off and chased them out of the house. a blood trail ended at the fence in the backyard. after that word spread i guess that we were not a ‘soft’ target. my long hair and beard was most likely a deterrent. Those crazy hippies. they might just let their dog kill ya.

what plant is that
i dunno
lets smoke it and find out

everybodys jumpin

listening to jazz. thinking about bakers keyboard lounge in the ‘d’. any bar that is shaped like a giant piano starts with a firm head start for me. more than once when closing time came they just locked the front doors and kept right on playing. being law abiding they stopped serving liquor at 2:00am. i know jazz listening while high to some folks might not seem religious. but to me even the memories are spiritual.

sweet smoke of jazz
the piano player
never looks up