haikai

from

ILLUSIONS
IN THREE PARTS

by

Okami
Journal of a Twelvemonth, 1998

The Northern Lights:
the old dog shakes himself.

A damson falling
brings leaves and wasps
down to earth.

 After the Sauna
night-breeze on our nipples.
The Northern Lights.

 Huge and friendless
above McDonald's:
the Harvest Moon.

 
Pond beneath a moonless sky:
Start and finish of everything.

Every year the leaves
are deported by the wind
to the camps of rot.

 
Its last blood-red leaves gone
how stiff the creeper
on the graveyard wall.

 
Hoar-frost on the hair
upon the hot chests of the
[magic] mushroom gatherers.

 
In my autumn groin
mist and rain and river
are indistinguishable.

Dead tree slanting athwart the stream:
Ivy-stems entwine my life.

 
After the storm, apples pass
from wasps to slugs to me.

 
Another robin in my mousetrap:
few of us fail to give humanity
a bad name.

Superhuman sound:
a rat gnawing the steel grille
with snow-white teeth.

 
Wagtail on the roof:
the wise man combs his beard
with a fork.

Seeming to do little
the fossil has survived
a hundred million years.

Full midwinter moon -
a new coalescence of
an ancient coldness ?

 
A winter morning:
the soap is crenellated
by the teeth of rats.

Snowflakes dancing down
on the men who are digging
another mass grave.

December foghorn:
yet another beckoning
from beyond the grave.

 
The weather forecast.
Millennia of wind and rain
- and now people shave.

Snail-trails in frost:
'A painter should study
the stains on walls.'

 
The crotch of a winter birch:
love, like the Unicorn
is conceived here.

The skin of the wino
is a beautiful silk palace for lice.

Locked ward
and sunless winter day:
Home is where the mind is.

 
Neat path. Neat lawn.
Neat visitors.
Neat concentration-camp.

 
The moon in a veil
as if it had coldly evolved an ego.

Frost Kings were crowned
again last night: my garden
is bedecked with lace.

 
Digging: a fine red worm.
Wisdom: to see everything
as from the grave.

Thinking about my death
I enthusiastically clean out
the septic tank.  

Dogshit on pavements:
the unconscious calligraphy
of prisoners.

Rotting leaves
lie on each other lovingly
in hecatombs.

 
Morning. My erection
does not belie regret
at my father's.

The day in silence.
At night the telephone rings.
It's a wrong number.

 
Winter solitude: gorse-bush
flowering in a muddy field.

Red sky at morning:
the blood of global greed
has reached the very clouds.

 
Between life and death
I am always hoping to climb
Out of myself.

Winter sunlight:
trying to pull my shadow
out of the shade...

Water on the knee...
Water on the brain...and now
Water on the moon!

 
With my dog: a cold wet day
is an oceanic experience.

 
Our lives intertwined,
Oscar and I check up on
each other's fæces.

 
Community of luxury:
I drink the wine
while Oscar chews the cork.

 
Quiet rain. My dog expresses
so much silently - why must we
make so much noise ?

 
Every night, before
we go to bed - a brief
strip-show for my dog.

 
Ice on a puddle:
the brittle transience of wisdom.

 
Richly-ploughed field:
its beauty makes me weep
for the earth's flaying. 

April in Ireland.
A field of mud. A black calf
licks a beige bull's balls.

 
Zen of orgasm:
the not-having is more
sensual than the having.

.


'Soul' is integrity.
Thus few humans - but all
animals - have souls.

Torn old coat-lining.
The April wind also nests
in a stained pocket.

A haiku: so what ?
So many haikai -
So what ?

 
Headless chicken:
creatures just as maimed think they're
masters of the world.

 
Fighting for comfort
in front of a screen:
The American Dream.

 
Security camera
shows me my Other
going the other way.

 
Bluebottle in confessional -
not proclaiming its sins
but dying to escape.

 
An icy puddle:
It took me fifty years to realise
how shallow people are.

 
Moon - those who walked over you
are half in darkness
half in blinding light.

 
Full moon naked
above the naked tree
O for a naked mind!

A piss before bed
while admiring the night's bright
navel in the sky.

 
The silence between wars:
The science that is false.

 
Visiting the psychiatrist:
like intimacy with a fridge.

Disliking people
I enjoy the cheerful caw-
cawing of the rooks.

Milky Way.
Stretching almost to infinity
the spaces between people.

A raindrop twinkles -
Betelgeuse upon a bush
for just three minutes.

 
Hunchback woman
with long wattle wistfully
appraises my long beard.

 


Our comfort: measure
of our disrespect for many creatures,
many things.

Amphisbæna:
making love is not an act
- but an animal.

"Aggressive Begging" -
a hundred times more gentle than
aggressive wealth.

 
Pulling June nettles
it is I who am living
in the wrong context.

In my summer garden
my only feeling:
how much longer.

 
Check-out. Capitalism:
the religion to end
all religions.

 
Miru tokoro. Places to see.
Kita michi wa The road I came
Hakkiri chigairu. Is clearly different

 
The joy of breakfast.
The best Java coffee-beans
pass through a cat.

Summer-night party -
the vomit on the grass re-
flects the Milky Way.

Renewing themselves
in spite of all they know
they gulp down the stars.

A trembling poplar.
A hen shakes out her feathers.
I think of winter.

Yesterday's picnic -
only a bite away
from the grave.

Suburban evening:
the full moon in a frog's eye
squashed by a jogger.

Autumnal thicket:
shitting on fresh-fallen leaves -
'natural painting'.

 
Cobwebs in fog.
I can't tell my end from my beginning.

An old man ploughing:
the blade cuts the last furrow
and his faint shadow.

Cotoneaster
berries fall in the moonlight :
blood-drops of winter.

Full moon, December...
pale men in a sauna look like
ice-creams ovening.

December mud:
from it the old potter will
create his last pot.

 
Dying: no longer
missing the boat in the dark
night of the soul.

more
 
 

Non-haiku postscript:
The Internet:
the greatest triumph
of form over content ?

The snow falling
tells me to stop thinking...

Seven
syllable
haiku.

download most of the poems on this page as a printable document file

find a copy in your nearest library

A handsome edition of this collection was published in 2019 by the Meat Poet Press,
Emporia, KANSAS 66801 USA
gerede AT gmail.com

more recent haikai by Okami >>>