Friday haiku 22

Does it bother you,
my dear friend, the persistent
cry of the cicada?

A sailor’s epitaph.

Rest, you say, in peace,
rust away in peace!
All I ever did was rest into pieces;
I’m dead of it.

I know, I know, too late,
the clock has struck
and my mortal wisp is doomed
to eternity, slowly descending
into elemental
entropic stupor.

But even Achilles, brave Achilles,
would rather have risen and returned
as chattel than rule over
those resting in peace.

I want trouble to get out of,
love to fall into, happen to stance,
luck to stroke, good or bad,
it’s all the same to me.

If I’m doomed to rest,
let it be fitful, at least, full of
desire unquenched, fortune
unclaimed.

All these trials, these wounds,
are closer to heaven
than moldering nothing
without light or darkness,

changeless.

True death is the
timeless, the changeless,
the big zero.

Friday haiku 20

A smell of spring
from afar.
Just a feint?

If I fail to contradict myself

If I fail to contradict myself,
It’s because I’m small,
My multitudes have fled
For better quarters
Among the heebie-jeebies,
The great Coalition of the Willful,
Squabbling interminably
For the sheer joy of it.

These days it’s not enough
To be inconsistent, but it must
Be done with a vengeance,
With a truculence matched only
By contempt for all
That is reconcilable.

I’ve heard it said that
We are but shadows
Of some inescapable ambiguity,
And to pretend otherwise
Is pathetic.
So say the shadows.

Friday haiku 18

Sparrows in the lilac
argue loudly
about the weather