week 52 (!): garden state parkway, christmas

false ceiling hangs red
and pink, lights flash to stop me:
is this earth or mars?

week 51: ahhhhhhhhhh!

work is done, for now.
a pillowy couch calls me,
"it's time, now, to read"

froggy haiku ekphrasis!

My co-worker, Melissa, made this beautiful collage (fabric, paints, drawing...the works!) based on a haiku I wrote about the froggies living behind the Alumni House last summer. How cool is that? It's a little hard to read because of the flash (I'm a terrible photographer), so here's a link to the original haiku.

Weeks 49 & 50: Buzz! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Buzz!

up! then down. then up!

in a fit, drinking stolen

minutes: coffee high

will keep me awake

through five xmas parties, but

just barely. burnt out.

weeks 47 & 48: sexy fireman with a boy band face

they can grease their hair
but they cannot gel it, no
shaping products, no

carefully maintained
face hair, firemen should not
be fancy, they said

week 46: the moon from 295, 2:47 a.m.

slicing through the trees,
hide and seek, as if on wheels
following us home

week 45: fall

dried and given up:
i fall, withered, to the ground,
ready for springtime

week 44: redwhiteblue

baracking the vote
stuffing our faces with subs
lit up by laptops

oils

paint on wet concrete,
feathered like water creeping
through a towel's creases

weeks 42 & 43: oops, i did it again

even though i had
the answer to the biggest
question, i still failed

to post my haikus.
forty-two: how exciting!
and now it's gone. whoops.

week 41: poconos

crackling fire
plaid and Jesus on each wall
small pleasures, good times

week 40: lentil soup

tap tap tap, kapow!
boiling seeds sink, then rise up,
squeeze air from water

Week 39: seeds

dots in white packets
guarding silent secrets, still
until i say so

week 38: the firestarter

curly blonde ringlets
she'll burn it all down, baby
commands it: back off

haiku kitty's response to week 37:

robbee:
"Take my cookies and
take my drink - but have pity
leave me the cat's food "

robbers:
" Listen to this fool!
Crazy old man! But why not?
Catch! Here's your cat food!

cat:
" I see you've brought food
and none too soon -- for tonight
I would have killed you "

special thanks to haiku kitty :)

week 37: in response to the police blotter account of teens vs. man with cookies, drink and cat food

teens:
we needed some "food"
so we got a "gun," for fun,
stole not all, but some

robbee:
they took my cookies!
they took my drink! what am i
to eat: my cat's food?

cat:
meow, crunch, crunch, crunch
i was hungry, now i'm not
crunch, crunch, crunch, meow

week 36: begone from my brain elvis c!

echoing refrain
ev'ry day i write the book
it's too damn catchy

bureau burning, 1992

embers glowed, windows
of a sideways building, razed
for our amusement

week 35: this makes it significantly more difficult to type

i wove my fingers
basket-like, some warp, some weft:
procrastination

frankenstein toe at the crab feast

smashed toe on pavement,
bloodied birkenstocks, paper towels,
crabs still tasted good

week 34: onion scars

ear-shaped lobes, left side,
fingers like two knobbed carrots,
sliced with juicy haste

week 33: yummmmmm

i heart miss shirley's:
eggs and scrapple neatly piled
with a side of cool

Weeks 31 & 32: Laziness meets Beyond Re-Animator!

ghoul without a mouth
tries to drink a glass of milk
unsucessfully,

we laugh on the couch
(which we do not plan to leave)
pizza and "horror"

week 30: the tadpoles didn't die after all!!!!!

tiny, tan, hopping
centimeters from the drain:
careful, my sweethearts

Week 29: dave is gone

who will break things now?
who will fill the far corner,
dreaming big ideas?

week 28: it's hot

my toes are sweating.
they dig into the sand, like
worms beneath the heat.

week 27: cheek chomp

summer peach, fresh, a
bit(e) too enthusiastic:
pulpy, fleshy mess

things i do to make myself feel better

play some E.L.O.,
wear my ladybug ring, and
laugh at the phonies

trouble trying to be level-headed

the world is crooked,
tipped one day half empty, the
next full of promise

week 26: woke up, made a haiku

My boy still sleeps, his
eyelids trembling with dreams
too fleeting to share

Week 25: really, really exciting lists

login requests - check.
start working on donor roll.
home page updates - check.

Week 24: it's magic!

i made my pencil
beautiful beyond belief
with stickers and tape

Week 23: poppies! poppies will make you sleep, sleeeeep...

which wide-brimmed witch would
fill my thoughts with poppies and
their crimson poison?

Weeks 21 & 22: because i'm a bad girl

i'm late! (and not in
the shotgun wedding sense.) i'm
pregnant with haiku

twins, in fact: born of
vacation carelessness and
laziness of brain

Week 20: why can't you bleeping use your bleeping blinker, buddy?

you make me soooooo mad.
how many syllables is:
%#%&! *^*&@%!&??

Week 19: weak nineteen

if vessels were made
for this, then i am that, full
of air and no more

Week 18: tadpoles!

wee commas racing,
darting between rocks, tricking
fish with silver backs

Week 17: whoops, i missed week 17!

where did the time go?
was i chasing tadpoles or
simply in a daze?

suicide at a funeral, kirkuk

forty-two people
laid down by a trip-wire vest
and an empty heart

Week 16: brain, brain, go away

mystery scent, a
synapse snaps to attention:
i'm a little girl

sounds of spring outside my door

chirrrrrr-krrrrrp chirrrrrr-krrrrp krrrrp
bubble-throated frog sunning,
singing to a friend

Week 15: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sweet relief!

i can think again
the knocks have stopped knocking, the
voices stopped voicing

Week 14: in appreciation of one of my favorite rock poets

accidentally
like a martyr, words tender
and excitable

ompletely-cay uent-flay

ay-may accent-ay
eeks-ray of-ay orcine-pay
etention-pray

Week 13: Unlucky, Lucky

for what it's worth, a
daffodil bloomed this morning
between concrete cracks

two farm-kus from my mamacita

Black, white, yellow mixed
Offset by green
Cat in daffodils.



Sled down a white hill
Cheeks red with cold
Exhilaration.

a blustery tune

between metal rails
a hundred music spirits
puff their cheeks and blow

Week 12: Go DAWGS!!! Beat those Hoyas!!!!!

because success = soooooo much more work:

greg (heart)s basketball
even when all the balls are
in the air at once

Week 11: looking down upon the pogues concert from a stairway above

heads dyed green and pink
pulsing bodies surf the crowd
'tween pints of Guinness

a contribution by my little sister, cakey, on an unsavory discovery in her back yard

true story

i found a taco
just a shell in the bushes
lost my appetite

Week 10: a suitably cheesy ode to my boy on our 8th wedding anniversary

march fourth into love,
two hearts on the dance floor say:
"you light up my room"

So much to do, I can barely blog-ku!

papers to my nose
precariously perched and
waiting to crush me

Week 9: My web is taking a snooze today

this magical tube
has tied itself up in knots
fast fast!!!!! is now sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

future mbas taking up space/polluting the grammar of the world in the student center

the dudes are all here

they will become businessmen

they will own us all

Week 8: it's official: my brain is permanently fried

the wrods come out worng
i can barely count to seventeen
see? that was nineteen

Week 7: Maryland Counts...Sorta

i voted today
and i count (!) but for those damned
"super" delegates

Week 6: Pictures of Lily

behold babe, beheld
by arms stronger than strength, eyes
soft with instant love

Week 5: Rest in Peace: Gregg, 1/26/08

memory: laughing
boy with paper donkey's head,
midsummer night's dream

Week 4

i can't count
it's really week four, people
send me back to skool

Snowy Day: Why we should be allowed to leave work at once, I say!

ice is nice in tea
but slush and snow underfoot
make me crash my car

Week 2

on tackling multiple piles of administrative paperwork that must be finished in order to teach at ub

egg versus chicken
versus egg trapped in a maze
of fill-in-the-blank

for two birthday girls

a special birthday haiku from pat benetar to my pal, megan

from pat to megan:
birthdays are a battlefield
but 30 rocks on

Week 1

i (heart) haiku

what economy!
all worldly beauty reduced
to seventeen beats

2008 Haiku Challenge!

This is the year, folks!
One haiku a week, even
if I'm sick of it!