BASHO SKETCHES

RAINIER BEACH HAIKU

BUNGALOW SHACK

PUGETOPOLIS HAIKU

THE GATES MANSION

CABANA MORNINGS

FLOATING WORLD

LAKESIDE LIVING

MONSOON SEASON

DAILY ROUTINE

WINTERTIME 

_______________________

RAINIER BEACH HAIKU 

BASHO 

The narrow road to—

The interior is there

Deep inside one’s mind

THE FROGS

I take a long toke—

Sitting on the dock one night

The frogs stop croaking

THE LAKE

Lake Washington is—

In constantly wavy motion

Nothing stays the same

BUNGALOW SHACK

BUNGALOW SHACK

I sometimes wonder—

If Basho would’ve liked it

Here by the lakeside?

ROADWAY

Along the roadway—

Blossoming azaleas

Down the long hedgerow 

HYDRANGEA

The perfume of the—

Hydrangea clings to the

Frail Butterfly’s wings

PUGETOPOLIS HAIKU

SEATTLE

Seattle has been so—

Accommodatingly kind

To me a poet

JAPAN

Like Japan was to—

James Kirkup after all

That English angst

RAINIER BEACH

Named after the great—

Mount Fuji down to the South

Looming in the sky

THE GATES MANSION

MEDINA

Bayliner floating—

Offshore of Medina while

They build the Gates home

BUNKER

It’s a huge bunker—

Sunk deep into the shoreline

Concrete, old timber

LANDSCAPING

Then suddenly it—

Disappears as they landscape

It all beneath trees

PALACE

It was so amazing—

Watching them build a palace

That didn’t seem there

FLOATING WORLD

FLOATING WORLD

This old floating world—

Let it wash away my tears

And all my worries

ROYAL TOMB

It’s a royal tomb—

But what does it remember

Other than the Now?

NO MORE JOURNEYS

Somehow still alive—

The end of all my journeys

Summer evening

LAKESIDE LIVING

SEAGULLS

Across the dark lake—

The high seagulls are calling

Looking down at me

RAVENS

Gathering in the—

Highest branches of the fir

Playing at sunset

SUMMER CONCLUDES

Autumn is coming—

Soon I will have no other

Name but cold mornings

MONSOON SEASON

MONSOON SEASON

She’s girding her loins—

Chilly ferns & cold rice cakes

The morning fireplace

THE ALOOF TREES

The aloof Cedars—

Above it all Douglas Firs

Once a Rain Forest

TAINTED TUNA

Is my tuna safe—

Will Fukushima fuck me

Will Mount Fuji blow?

DAILY ROUTINE

MORNING

Reluctantly like—

A bee out of a flower

I crawl out of bed

GETTING GOING

A nice little fire—

Warming me in the morning

My cat and some tea

HERMITAGE

Recuperating—

Dreamland’s otherworldliness

Into this Other

Haiku Homoerotics

HAIKU HOMOEROTICS

“Today, high poetic value placed 
upon originality remains ingrained 
in the Western literary culture. This 
fear of unknowingly writing similar 
haiku or the reluctance or disuse of 
allusion proves that the poets live 
under the “fearful legacy of the 
Romantics.” Those poets & editors 
who are constantly worried about 
“not being original or fresh”
—Chen-ou Liu, “Read It Slowly,
 Repeatedly, and Communally”
______________

I don’t feel tres plagued—
With the fearful legacy
Of the Romantics

James Kirkup opened—
Up the gay haiku for me
Japan his new home
___________________

His early English—
Poetry full of the same
Old usual guilt

But there in Japan—
So much for Anglo-Saxon
Butchy Beowulf

Basho's Frog Haiku

Frog by Getsuju Japan, late 18th-early 19th 

century 90.3 x 167.8cm Ink on paper Kaikodo

BASHO'S FROG HAIKU

“Imagine that a poet deliberately 
using a direct quote as the first 
two lines of his haiku can achieve 
a great poem?”—Chen-ou Liu, 
“Read It Slowly, Repeatedly, 
and Communally”
___________________

HAIKU FLASHBACK

The old frog haiku—
From Basho to Miss Ginsberg
The same old Kaplunk!!!

BAYLINER

Here I am again—
Enjoying Lake Washington
In my Bayliner

RAINIER BEACH

Basho my teacher—
Gave me his bungalow shack
Down here by the lake

SEAGULLS AND BLACKBIRDS

Living down here—
By the lake amidst cedars
And tall Douglas firs

AN ANCIENT RAINFOREST

Downhill from Skyway—
Down thru old Dead Horse Canyon
A creek by my shack

DEAD HORSE CANYON

Old growth last refuge—
Tall giant cedars and firs
The rest all clear-cut

LAKESHORE PARK

Across Rainier Ave—
A City Park, baseball field
And some tennis courts

THE RED CLIFF

Late August Sunsets—
Volcanic pumice reddish
Faulknerian glow

BAYLINER HAIKU

No Kaplunk for me—
Writing down there in the boat
But I did see it

THE FROG

Swimming in long strokes—
Deep past the boat & the dock
Pushing and gliding

KAPLUNK

My Basho moment—
Me underwater like him
Pushing and gliding

Kinokuniya Bookstore

KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORE 

—for James Kirkup

COMIC BOOK RACK

Leaning over me—
Your young cruel lacquered thin lips
Your bulging flower

PREPUCE 

Your foreskin petal—
Oily with KY just for 
My adoration

SAMISEN

You look at me like—
Like a classic geisha boy
Your face a white moon

ELEGANT NECK

Your elegant neck—
Elongated there in bed
Your long slim teen shank

PACIFIC HEIGHTS 

A quickie Yaoi—
Japantown haiku romance
Guttural young grunts

LAFAYETTE PARK

Walking downhill from—
Pacific Heights to the now
Gone bowling alley

THE BOWLING ALLEY

I used to cruise there—
What Bashō would think about
Modern Japantown?

CRUISING JAPANESE BOYZ

I hung around the—
Bowling alley cruising the
Japanese young studs

SACRAMENTO STREET

I’d take them back to—
My apartment on the hill
I loved their armpits

JAPANESE GUYZ

Nothing like low male—
Japanese guttural groans
Letting it all go

Japantown Haiku

JAPANTOWN HAIKU  

                 —for James Kirkup


KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORE

There on Webster Street—
Between Geary Boulevard
Downhill from Post Street

MANGA FLASH

It seems the shorter—
The better no sentences
Just a manga flash

NINJA SNAPSHOTS

Reading comic books—
San Francisco Japantown
Quick Ninja snapshots

CRUISING COMICS

I can tell by the—
Hardons which of the manga
Comics turns them on

CARTOON CULTURE

Japanese culture—
Seems so visual to me
Just like their comics

OCTOPUS

There’s this cute young guy—
Turns me into Octopus
My suckers puckered

MISS MISHIMA

So very S/M—
Describing the torturous
Tricks of gay haiku

AFTER SEX

With his neat grimace—
The thin corners of his smile
Nostrils still inflared 

TREMBLING LIPS

He oozes a bit—
His soft peachfuzz moustache kiss
How his lips tremble

DROOPY EYELIDS

His sleepy eyelids—
The way they droop down
Like his nice nutsac

HOMO HAIKU 

—for James Kirkup

LAKE WASHINGTON

Thirty-four years now—
Living down here by the lake
What would Bashō say?

SEAGULLS

The seagulls flying—
Slowly up there high above
Down below the lake

BLACK BIRDS

The blackbirds flying—
Over from Dead Horse Canyon
They like the lake too

JAPAN

Japan came to me—
The son of my first lover
Japanese mother

MARINE

A handsome Marine—
He survived Afghanastan
Then succumbed to me

YOUNG STUD

A mountain climber—
Suicidal skydiver
So tres butch male

LOSING IT

And yet when he came—
All of his male strength squirting
Exquisitely fem

SMART-ASS

He was tres smart-ass—
Not college material
He liked to show off

BREEDER

A breeder, of course—
Soon married & then a kid
Hets make real hot sucks

BASHŌ

Probably Bashō—
Would approve since his lover
Was a cute young Prince

EXILE

Exile for Bashō—
That’s how a poet becomes
A gay wanderer

OUT THERE 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n43htQtrle4&list=PLFECA16070644D57B

Lying there in bed—
In the dumpy Garden City
Wheat Land Motel

It took a bottle—

To get asleep and more
To realize who I was
________

I was as much a—
Nonfiction novel as
IN COLD BLOOD was

Maybe even more—
Because the people in
Holcomb, Kansas
_________

They were just as—
Alienated as I was back
In the chic Big Apple