Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

artist: AO Fischer


"The wnd howled on and the sea leaped and the ship groaned and dived." Moby Dick, Melville

Following the bloody denouement
the big crack up most would
prefer to Ahab than to Ishmael;
or that's the hierarchy
I choose. Chronicler-castaway
Ishmael has no abode
except perhaps the world
viewed from his Crow's Nest;
a Captain of perception
somewhat unsure that
the waves, the clouds
the criminals milling below
are even there, and if so
what they to the glass
unfolding in gray and azure,
interpenetrated with
that fiery eye, like Stubbs'
fever within a fever,
Ahab zebraed betwixt
Beezlebub and Moses,
scorn fixed at the Eye
of his bonewhite maelstrom.....

dammit matey
you can inform and inspire
when the maelstrom moves you

trade winds zipped you out
sargasso sea left behind
moved into the wilderness
became an archer
married up
forsaken yet blessed.

ship, sky and sea
the same & fighting
Moby Dick somewhere.

Ahab doesn't fit in haikus
nor does a spinnaker,
Ishmael, sperm whales,
aleutian harpooners
or Nantucket preachers:
haikus are reserved
for like sake and plumtrees,
polite samurai scribblers
who would exchange
a greeting card image
for Shakespeare,
a watercolor for
the crystalline
massivity
of ocean

AS FOR POETS

As for poets
The Earth Poets
Who write small poems
Need help from no man

The Air Poets
Play out the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies
Poem after poem,
Curling back on the same thrust.

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire Poets
Burn at absolute zero
Fossil love pumped back up.

The first
Water Poet
Stayed down six years.
He was covered with seaweed.
The life in his poem
Left millions of tiny
Different tracks
Criss-crossing through the mud.

With the Sun and Moon
In his belly,
The Space Poet
Sleeps.
No end to the sky-
But his poems,
Like wild geese,
Fly off the edge.

A mind poet
Stays in the house.
The house is empty
And it has no walls.
The poem
is seen from all sides.
Everywhere
At once.

(Gary Snyder) Turtle Island

polite samurai scribbler

haikus are reserved
for like sake and plumtrees,
polite samurai scribblers

Gary Snyder's Haiku


Hiking in the Totsugawa Gorge
pissing
watching a waterfall

---------------------------------------------------

the boulder in the creek never moves
the water is always falling
together!

This morning:
floating face down in the water bucket
a drowned mouse.

leaning in the doorway whistling
a chipmunk popped out
listening



a butterfly
scared up from its flower
caught by the wind and swept over the cliffs

Skirt blown against her hips, thighs, knees
hair over her ears
climbing the steep hill in high-heeled shoes
http://www.terebess.hu/english/haiku/snyder.html

high-heels and life-jacket
screaming for respect
woman overboard