Haiku is a very popular form of poetry. It is simple in structure and yet forces the mind to care for words and syllables. I often use it as an introduction to poetry when I am working with kids in grade schools because it is less intimidating than many other forms and yet still gives them a sense of structure. (Three lines, five, seven and five syllables).


Originally, haikus usually focused on nature and the seasons, but in recent  years there seems to have developed a sense that any subject matter can apply. Red Sox fans spent weeks, a few years ago, sending in baseball haikus to the TV announcers. It was a slow season and everyone had fun writing about it.


In Sensory Haiku ( In the Cat's Eye, 2009) I chose four haikus that dealt with our senses. Although they deal primarily with sight and sound, they also provide a small message for that "sixth" sense that makes poetry so much fun.


Glenn K. Currie

 

Sensory Haiku

 A lonely bell buoy

Searches in the silent fog

Tolling for lost souls.

 

Flags fly everywhere,

Burning the air with color,

Red, white and blue fire.

In the morning mist

Everything is beautiful.

Misterious light.

 

The clap of thunder.

Applause for lightning’s flashes

Of striking brilliance.

 

There are sections of the large cities where gentle breezes fear to travel. Neighborhoods are close but neighbors are not. Air conditioning is putting a small mattress on the fire escape and hoping the star's cold light will find a way through the haze and break the heat.

This is the part of the city that most of us pretend isn't there. It is the place where residents sleep to avoid being awake and where dreams are cut short by sirens wails, or the frustrated screams of couples trapped together by the bars they put on their windows.

Cities are fascinating because they are like intricate machines filled with  millions of moving parts that all must function to make it work.

Wealth and poverty coexist short distances from each other, but the canyons are deep and the bridges few.

Canyons (In the Cat's Eye, 2009) is about life for those living in the those narrow spaces where the light seldom shines.

Glenn K. Currie

Canyons

 

The sun never visits

In these canyons.

It avoids

The shadowy places

Where buildings die.

 

The heat will come

Late in the afternoon,

Soaking the evening

With the sweat

Of the day.

 

An old white bra,

Built by a construction crew,

Hangs resignedly

Beside an out-of-shape

Muscle shirt.

 

The breeze they seek,

Lost its way

Two blocks from the river.

Mugged

By skyscrapers.

 

Soon the owners will gather

On iron grilles,

Above the dumpsters.

Hoping the darkness

Will shorten the night.

 

While we are on the subject of screwed up relationships, (see my last entry),I thought it might be useful to point out that sometimes girl/boy relationships are doomed from the start.
In my newest book, Surviving Seventh Grade, (Snap Screen Press, 2013), I deal with several new relationships. One is an evolving, love/hate duel with Snobby Donna, and one is with Becky, who actually seemed to like me until we "got off on the wrong foot".

The following entry explains it all.

Glenn K. Currie

 

The Dance

 

The dance didn’t turn out so good.

When I got out of the car

To pick up Becky

I stepped in dog stuff.

 

I had on my new white bucks.

The dog stuff was pretty noticeable

So I scraped my shoes off on the steps.

Becky stepped in it when she came out.

 

We tried to get it all off

But when we got in the car

We could all smell it.

Dad made us get out and try again.

 

It was a good thing it was a sock hop.

But Becky was still pretty mad.

She said only an idiot

Would wipe dog stuff on her steps.

 

Billy didn’t help. He told Becky

Her perfume smelled like farm animals.

She still had some on her socks.

I called Dad to take us home.

1967 was a wonderful year to be young and to be in Boston.
The Red Sox were in the middle of the "Impossible Dream" season, college students were everywhere, and my shipmates and I had six months of shore duty as we readied a brand new ship for Vietnam.
Those of us on my ship knew it would end in 1968 when we would find ourselves in the middle of the war.
I spent part of the summer with a lovely young woman who looked at the world with a naive sense of joy. She thought it was a world where you could dream and plan. I knew it was a world filled with infinite uncertainties.
We talked past each other for weeks. Finally, the conversations stopped as the war began to close in on me.
It was a time when, all over the country, people were travelling the same roads but crashing frequently as lives took sudden turns. The injuries bruised our bodies and minds, and sometimes our hearts.
Purple Hearts (In the Cat's Eye, 2009) is about the injuries that happened to many of us as the seedlings of war blew across the country.

Glenn K. Currie

Purple Hearts

 We lay in the summer,

Sheltered in tall grass.

Our resting place,

Not yet turned to straw.

She talked of futures,

In a world without one.

I watched a hawk circling above,

Seeking prey.

 

She was the sweet corn,

Picked fresh from the field,

Tasting of salt

And butter and sugar.

We passed the season

Pretending the winds

Would never grow colder,

 The days never older.

 

We didn’t really say goodbye.

We just stopped saying hello.

I sold my car in the fall,

And packed away my childhood,

Burying part of myself.

She phoned one day,

Just before I shipped out.

She called me a bastard.

We are all faced with surprises in life. Some are pleasant, wonderful moments. Others are things we never saw coming that can change our lives, for good or bad.

We live in a world where people say "nothing surprises me anymore", but it does.

Many of us spend our lives trying to be in control, when we live in a world determined to show us otherwise.

Sometimes we surprise ouselves when we strip away the covers and look at who we really are.

I wrote Surprises (In the Cat's Eye, 2009) as a commentary on just how little control we really have.

Any good magician can quickly show how little we can trust our own observations to prepare us for what is really happening.

A voracious reader will be constantly surprised by the world that is revealed between the pages of books.

But for all of us, the biggest surprise is always saved for the end.

Enjoy the journey.

Glenn K. Currie

 

Surprises

 

The surprise is in the magician

Who makes the elephant disappear.

The audience lined up

Like candles in a cake,

And blown away in a breath.

 

The surprise is in the boxes

Opened by performers in a play.

Colorful wrappings of paper egos

Stripped away in joyous haste,

Revealing naked children dancing.

The surprise is in the alphabet soup

Served in the sideshows of life.

Words eaten by hungry students

Hiding from the bullies

Who rule the world’s playgrounds.

 

 

The surprise is in the audience

When they learn they are the show.

When the dancing stops,

The magicians run out of tricks,

And the Earth stops turning.

 

In keeping with the Super Bowl tomorrow and all the endless hype that we have suffered through for the last two weeks, I thought it might be timely to put up National Anthem. This is a poem that I included in my collection In the Cat's Eye (Snapscreenpress, 2009). I wrote this one day when I was particularly disgusted with the attitude of a lot of our sports heroes who seem to forget that they are part of a team. it can easily apply to a few members of the teams playing in this year's superbowl.

Glenn K. Currie

National Anthem

 

It’s all about me!

It’s all about me!

Indubitably,

That’s how it should be.

Speaking candidly,

I’m in love with me.

Me! Me! Me!

It’s all about me!

 

It’s hypocrisy,

To didactically,

Preen endlessly,

About humanity.

Just turn on TV,

And you will see,

The reality.

It’s all about me!

 

So when up you stand,

With heart in your hand,

Prepared for the band’s

First song of the land,

Please sing after me,

“Oh say can you see,

The land of the free,

Is all about me”.