e pluribus haiku anthology: 3487 haiku

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Available on Kindle $4.99
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This volume combines all the haiku from e pluribus haiku 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and the original, e pluribus haiku (2011). The 3487 refers to number of haiku, not kind, as they are all 5-7-5, given a somewhat unique style. This single volume will ultimately replace the others, as it contains everything that is in each of them, with an updated style.

 

socked in here; they call it "back to back storms" but mostly i call it just a lot of snow, with very cold wind, blowing all over the place. i am enormously grateful that we still have power. i don't even walk the puppy as the snow is probably higher than he is.

in this weather the family stays home; we haven't gone to town in a few days. i like that. i want nothing to do with the roads. we are still traumatized from last winter and now i have to admit, i just want it to be over. i don't want to be on those mountain cliffs with all that solid ice.

the other thing i dread is using the generator in a blizzard. i can do it, but i don't want to have to. i just want winter to be over, so we can have spring. spring is dry, clear, and windy here, until the fourth of july. no rain at all. just sunny and a little warmer.

in fact, this kind of moisture, in late february, is unusual here. generally i think we get about zero, between january and the fourth. the way it is, it could be because the whole weather system has become unhinged. but in a place like this, that is ordinarily so dry, we don't quibble about an extra snow storm. we need the snow.

i guess the difference between the people who have lived in this remote mountain valley of southeast new mexico, for a long time, and those of us who just got here, is that we who just got here are traumatized about the driving, whereas those who know how the system works say, of course it's hazardous driving, but we need the snow. the snow seeps into the ground, replenishes the water table, puts some water back in that we've been steadily pulling out. the snow is necessary, and increasingly rare.

i've been taking a break from politics for a while. it's good to have a grownup in charge. one can trust the government, sometimes, to do what governments are supposed to. if one can trust, one can go about living one's life.

rage will subside. let the proud boys yap about how some pedophiles stole the election, or whatever. people say what they'll say. but somebody has to keep the world going, no matter what the weather, and dig us out of this blizzard. thanks to those guys, who are out there plowing, and who will put up the power lines, if something should blow them over.

a son wanted to go to football practice, and we agreed; it's outside, and we've both had first rounds of vaccines, so we thought it might be ok. the stadium is up against the highest mountain woods in the area, though, almost 9,000 feet. deer and elk poop all over the place. i was sitting in my car, since the field is so far from our home that someone has to wait for him.

anyway the problem is, no internet. the place takes phone batteries and drives them to zero because they have to search so hard for a signal. More serious is that i can no longer use word unless i have the internet, so i couldn't even work on my work. my computer loads up 3000 e-mails on a backwater program, but i didn't have anything else, kindle, word, nothing.

but the 3000 e-mails were very cool, and i actually looked at about a thousand of them, throwing away at least 950. what i had done was to tell google to send me any news about "haiku" or "link poetry." and i'd let about five years of those sit there,

what i found, since i got back about fourteen months, was that haiku was very useful to people in the pandemic. there were collections of pandemic haiku, election haiku, that kind of thing. i should say that i too found it useful in expressing my rage and my general political angst. but because i'd ignored these 3,000 emails i didn't really know what the world was up to.

now i also found out about a bunch of other random things. one is, i know a little bit more about the haiku valley, in hawaii, which is on the windward side, kind of mountain hollow neighborhood, or at least the hawaiian version of it. there is also what's known as the haiku steps, a metal stairway often called the stairway to heaven, which takes people through this remote mountain area with this fabulous view of the sea and everything. the haiku steps is changing, so it's in the news. it used to be closed and guarded. but they are making moves so that it can be open, and can be a park. and that's actually fabulous news, if i understand it correctly.

the problem was, i couldn't open any of the emails, because i didn't have the internet. i could read the headlines, and i could delete them, which i did almost a thousand times, but i couldn't read any of this good news.

hawaii is one of the only two states i never made it to, traveling (north dakota is the other). now i am compiling all my travel haiku, and i have at least sixty for each state. it's a compendium, an anthology, a major collection. my only problem is, i pick over them a little too much, and it overwhelms me. same problem with the novel. i'm almost done, but it's not quite right. and this might go on for a while.

life goes on at a much quicker pace. i have figured out how to finish my novel and publicize it; because people are reading my work i no longer feel like i am dropping my work in a sea of self-published work (basically, i am dropping my work in a sea of self-published work, but now i have a plan to rise out of this hazy purgatory)....so basically, with my work cut out for me, and having my first stab of vaccine behind me, i'm on my way.

the first stab of vaccine was actually kind of cool, because my favorite substitute teacher was there right in front of me in line. it took them a long time to get organized, and explain everything to me, and run people through the system, but she was doing the same thing, and i talked to her a while. she grew up in carrizozo up by where they dropped the bomb on new mexico in the forties, and she is probably old enough to have been alive when it happened, though probably just barely. she was a great substitute because she didn't let it get to her. she just did what she was supposed to do and the kids all liked here because she wasn't excessively mean or punitive. she liked the kids and they liked her.

she's not in great shape now, so that was hard, to see her in one of those wal-mart go carts and really not all that good at maneuvering it. that's how my dad was at one point. he really needed the go-cart to get around but kept having trouble backing up, etc. that was sad. but i felt like it was my role in life to tell her caretaker that she was the best substitute the alamo schools had ever seen. the caretaker totally believed me.

my first novel is almost done. hallelujah, it's been a whole lifetime trying to finish a single novel; this is actually my third, but all three had gone unfinished and finally i just up and finished this one. i had to conjure up the urge to relate the true story of the nineteen seventies in iowa city, iowa. but i did. it documents both the actualist poetry movement, and the earliest days of stone soup restaurant and morning glory bakery. i left a huge part of my heart there, otherwise i'd have trouble finishing that novel.

it's a crime novel, so i had to make up some crimes. the place is full of petty crime, it being a student town, so i put some of those in there, but in my mind, the biggest crime in iowa is allowing the state to be soaked up with roundup in the process of trying to pull more corn out of the land. now this is only a crime if you think roundup is bad, but i do; i consider it nerve gas and i think everyone will pay the price. i didn't want to hit the reader on the head with it, so i threw in those other crimes just to throw them off track a little.

not to give it away though. if you like it, watch out for it....The Corn State, it's called tentatively, and should be out in about a week.

 

i'm all stirred up these days because i have work to do that actually gets me somewhere. when i write, people read it, and people care. so when my novel is done (soon) it will have an audience, i hope.

i found my voice writing about my own coming of age, in 1975, when i was 21, at a vegetarian restaurant in iowa city. because it's so personal, i have trouble distinguishing truth from a superimposed crime that makes the novel passable, but i don't have any trouble conjuring up the feelings of being a kid in a big world and trying to make the best of it. there were wonderful people back then, but of course i have to throw the criminals in there too, or i don't have a novel. and it has to be believable. some of what i did was just plain downright not.

ah but the feelings of 1975, I think it's fun. and i'm almost done, and i actually have a marketing plan. hallelujah!