california state fair haiku

ah!  that summer evening delta breeze

blowing over the tarmac

the noise of rollercoasters & penned cows

how i love them 

me at this age 

& in pictures i stand in the frame

with my buddha belly at center

who is this old fat man in the picture

who am i

where is this place

i am lost 

i am lost

where i search

i am found again

at the CA State Fair: sunset

 

at the CA State Fair: monorail

 

at the CA State Fair: elvis juggles on a unicycle

 

at the CA State Fair: keep me hanging on

 

at the CA State Fair: go low & slow

 

at the CA State Fair: every day is Halloween

 

at the CA State Fair: this is a dark ride

 

drive-in movie speaker haiku

the chunk of steel in the driver's side window how a walk to the snack bar is an experience of dopplered sound with each car while the crunch of gravel underneath my feet & the ambient air of a hot summer NorCal night oh where is it now where can i purchase that tinny music

haiku at LACMA

where i learned to see beauty in the boxing paintings of george bellows

where the day was bright & long & green

where students sat on the floor copying the masters

where i knew somewhere near bukowski was living & writing

where the coolest dude i would ever see sat outside 

dressed in black jeans black button-down shirt & motorcycle boots

where music & line & color opened a trapdoor under my feet & mind

where still, even right now, i am falling in love

suburban haiku: that ineffable july evening sun

 

buzzcocks haiku

walking midtown late afternoon at 100 F

dog walkers on every corner

houseless citizens setting up for the night

roasted meat smells at the corner bistro

hurly-burly

horror & beauty

the beat of a city felt in the palms of the hand

it seems so real

so why can't i touch it?

anti-anti aging haiku

the next life-ending solar flare is predicted to happen at. . .

pay attention

pay attention

no don't, but 

say

hello!

it's a summer friday nite & you want that drive-in feeling so you watch the opening credits & intro to escape from new york [1981]

i fucking love this movie.  sheer cinema brilliance by the writer/director, & film composer, john carpenter.  i so loved this flick that i convinced my parents to take me to see this movie at the Sac 6 Drive-Ins [still showing films to this day!] during that summer of 1981 as often as their sanity would allow.  i loved this score so much i took my cheap ass tape recorder & recorded this opening theme by sticking my tape recorder under the drive-in speaker.  you know that kind of speaker that you attached to your car window & had that very tinny sound?  yeah!  i wish i still had that tape for i am sure i also captured the ambient sounds of a summer night at the drive-ins.  the crunch of the gravel under footfalls & rolling truck & car tires, that doppler effect of many speakers playing the same movie, people walking by going to & from the snack bar.  a whole world of movie-going that is not quite lost in time but rarer today.  for those were hot summer nites!