So I said to myself, that I would only
write haiku if they're dirty.
[LAUGHTER]
So I wrote, yeah, a bunch of haiku.
Yeah, I'll read those, and then I'll
read my new series called "Lockdown Impromptu."
They're haiku, but they're not really haiku.
But I'll read the ones from my Selected first.
Yeah, my Selected came out 2019, and the paperback came out
during the pandemic, so I didn't really
have a chance to celebrate it that much.
Let me look at the haiku.
OK, where is it?
Where is it?
OK, there they are.
OK.
So.
"Twenty Five Haiku."
"A hundred red fire ants scouring, scouring,
the white peony.
Fallen plum blossoms returned to the branch.
You sleep, then harden again."
Sir, I think you're too young to to be listening to these haiku,
right.
I'm just teasing, he's really sweet.
OK.
"Cuttlefish in my palm stiffens with rigor mortis.
Boy toys can't love.
Neighbor's barn.
Grass mat, crickets, Blue Boy, trowel handle,
dress soaked in mud.
Iron-headed mace, double-studded halberd, slice into emptiness.
Oh, fierce Oghuz, tie me to two wild elephants,
tear me in half.
Oh, my swarthy herder, two-humped bactrian,
drive me the long distance.
Forceps, tongs, bushi, whip, flanks, scabbard, stirrup,
goads, distaff, wither, awl.
Black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's lace, bounty of cyclamen,
mown paths erupt.
Gaze at the charred hills, the woebegone kiosks,
we are all God's hussies.
I have not fondled the emperor's lapdog,
whose name is Black Muzzle.
Urge your horses into the mist-willed Galilee, O sweet
Bedlamite.
Her Majesty's randying up the jewel stairs
to find the pleasure dome.
Ancient pond, the frog jumps in and in and in,
the deep slap of water.
The frog jumps into the ancient pond.
She says, No, I am not ready.
Coyote cooked his dead wife's vagina
and fed it to his new wife.
I plucked out three white pubic hairs
and they turned into flying monkeys.
Let's do it on the antimacassar, on the antimacassar."
That's a nerdy reference.
"Little Red drew her teeny pistol from her basket
and said, Eat me.
Chimera, Madame Pol Pot grafting a date tree onto a date tree.
His unworthy appendage, his mutinous henchman
grazed my pink cheeks.
He on top now changes to bottom, Goddess welcomes her devotee.
Fish, fish, fowl, fowl, mock me Mistress Bean Curd,
I am both duck and essence.
Sing, sing little yellow blight rage,
rage against the dying of the light.
Don't touch him bitch, we're engaged,
and besides he's wearing my nipple ring."
[LAUGHTER]
[CALLPING]
The last haiku is a found haiku because I heard it--
I heard one of my students saying something to that effect
into her cell phone.
So it's a found haiku.