What comes down to us?

Issa’s 20,000 poems

Don’t contain the man.

Hot sparks of the mind -

Small, brief illuminations

Expressed from darkness.

What can be said in 140 characters?

Some old Zen masters advised students:
“If you see the Buddha, kill him!”
Let’s use this technique on “haiku”,
particularly the “true” ones.

MANIFES-TOE

Micro poetry is not haiku,
or even taiku.
A new medium evolving to adapt to the twitter.com environment.
I call my tweets (not a word that my barbaric yawp should utter over the roofs of the world)
TWITTERKU
only in flattery to my micropoetry heros and lovers.
I write in the 5-7-5 format, not in ignorance or bondage, but because I enjoy chaffing
(& in homage to Issa).
Other micropoets
(perhaps even nanopoets operating at the atomic level)
may call their tweets whatever they please.

Verse comes unbidden,

But not without receiving

Warm invitations.

openmicro:

First snow:
not even enough to hide
all the dogshit.

hatsu yuki ya furi ni mo kakurenu inu no kuso

Kobayashi Issa

Invocation of Issa

Issa please come talk

Of the ordinary mind

In 17 vowels.

“No one goes down it

Basho wrote of Autumn roads.

Not Spring Interstates

(via Twitter / John Hicks)

At a rest stop break

Snacking & reading Basho

Ants get into it too

(via Twitter / John Hicks)

All of poetry

In Basho Buson Issa

Seeker Artist Man

(via Twitter / John Hicks)