horrible haiku
by strannikov
Carthage, Rome subdued:
itself, Rome never long tamed.
Memento mori.
one pendulum swings
its narrow arc between truth
and thick horrid dark.
out of Africa
Dinesen and Conrad saw
horror, not evil.
terror, not evil,
from which joyous maggots writhe
with emerging truth.
preservation or
putrefaction? life is not
saved but extended.
extend the slow swing
of a halting pendulum?
both ends of its arc?
the Ebola bats
and the Zika mosquitoes
spread terror and truth.
the weights of mere wings
flatten us, grind us to pulp,
pestilent pestles.
our worthy ethics
cannot clothe us from terror,
fit us for our graves.
our brief times grow short
with ev'ry pendulum swing
from terror to truth.
from the truth of rot
and the solace of our stench,
does our truth emerge?
republics as flat
as the screens depicting them
and almost as small.
sudden death lingers,
lingering death springs sudden:
is surprise valid?
where can we hide truth?
when horror comes to swallow,
where do we hide truth?
truth is not horror,
it's a limit permitted
by our gravity.
our truth's no higher
than horror: what we inflict,
with which we afflict.
perfectly flat arcs
are illusions: does horror
bend our truth outward?
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Author's Note
Perpetrated this only after convincing myself that a proper set of haiku merits a length of seventeen times seventeen.
I could be wrong.
Other stories by strannikov
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Some of this sounds a bit like death metal lyrics, but I really do like this, and it has a lot of verve and novelty, and there's a good deal of wit to it. The last six haiku bring it to an excellent conclusion. Very good.
republics as flat
as the screens depicting them
and almost as small.
This one especially.
terror, not evil,
from which joyous maggots writhe
with emerging truth.
Almost Elizabethan.
The two Gary mentions, yes, and
the weights of mere wings
flatten us, grind us to pulp,
pestilent pestles.
our worthy ethics
cannot clothe us from terror,
fit us for our graves.
I like this but feel it suffers from the haiku form, none of it tells me it needs to be a haiku, it's too fixed.
Now if it were a sonnet?
I like his set as well. Good.
Your project here brings to mind Kerouac's American Haiku.
*
The first sixty-odd readers may observe that I replaced the petulant pose of the first haiku with something close thematically to the remaining haiku. Apologies.
I noticed the change, it's much better :)
It's a lot better. I think so as well.
truth is not horror,
it's a limit permitted
by our gravity.
**