On one hand I am irritated with efforts to define haiku.
That means kill the butterfly, shove a pin through its abdomen and put the dead beauty in a museum display case.
On the other hand I have a most beautiful butterfly sitting on my bookshelf.
No formaldehyde or such preservative, so the throrax and abdomen have been eaten away, leaving a gap like some monstrous vagina.
To praise a gruesome image (lets make pacts with the dark things inside us – after all it is the shadows that give form to colour) it means my butterfly cannot now be pinned down.
And to return to the lines in the palm of the hand, they do speak of the bones and muscles underneath, and even speak of the embryo’s first clutching.
My perspective is not so much any belief in being able to convey the butterflyness of the butterfly. My case is that artifacts are a state of mind,
And artifacts may be eaten away like my butterfly.
& so to my non-definition of haiku:
Haiku are a deep faith in language, ritualized in brevity, a belief that the omissions of brevity can contain more than is said, a desperate and joyous attempt to convey the felt in what is seen. Despite their supposed expression of here & now, what you don’t see is what you get. How much of
that is the knotting of our delusions is an inextricable conundrum.
Each haiku is a small anxiety – a hope that connection at a distance is real
cycling
into the motorbikes
backfire
