Time Travel is for Lovers
I rarely write love poems…
Hello, Beautiful People!
I rarely write straightforward love poems. It’s just not my vibe. The two poems today are as close as I come. (Last year I posted this pirate love haiku extravaganza.) If love isn’t what you want to read about today, I got you. Here is an Instagram post about Oregon’s Birthday, which also happens to be February 14th, and a post with haiku around the theme, “These are Not Love Poems”.
I also have a new article published in the Medium publication, The Taoist Online, called How to Pay Attention. It’s all about how I use haiku and walking as mindfulness practices. It’s behind a paywall, but the link above will sneak you past the pesky paywall. Think of it as a Valentine’s gift from me to you.
I’m also in the process of putting all of my books and zines on Substack for paying subscribers. I just put up my most recent zine (or you can think of it as a chapbook if you prefer.) There is a free preview of the first handful of pages if you’re curious what my work is all about.
Haiku Comic
I time skipped back to the summer rain where we met watched us fall in love
Two Old, Twisted Trees
Give me middle-aged love,
not young lust. Love like two trees
planted too close together
by fate, or god, or an ignorant
arborist. Two trees who grow intertwined
after the fierce winds of their youth have wrapped
their once supple bodies around each other. Trees
who grow tall and crooked together
forming an immovable wall while each still strives
for the stars. A beautiful paradox of independence and
dependence. Give me a love like the roots
of those trees. A network of support and
mutual aid, hand-holding hidden from the world. Pop stars
have never sung of the glories of middle-age
love because they’ve long burnt out
before arriving. But let me tell you
no love is sweeter than the clinging of bodies that are
hard and soft in all the wrong places. Nothing is more erotic
than the touch of comfort and safety. Keep your
spring flings, summer dalliances, autumn romances,
and winter one-more-times. Give me a
lover who has faced the storms and shouted
down god’s own thunder with me. I want the scarred
bark of a wild forest tree
not the skittish softness of a greenhouse sapling.
I am so grateful for all the support you have given me despite my inconsistencies over the past few weeks. This week I will be sending out a free post on Friday and a free haiku Robot comic on Sunday. Exclusive paid subscriber posts will go out on the 19th and Wednesday the 21st.
Here are a couple of other updates about other Weirdo Poetry happenings:
APBC Update
I’ve decided that weekly book club posts weren’t working very well. I think there’s just too much to read and cover. Instead, I’m going to experiment with bi-monthly Asynchronous Poetry Book Club Posts, which means the next post about Alicia Cook’s Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back will be on Monday, February 19th.
Here is the book we will be reading in March:
Here are some links if you want to buy a copy:
3,500 Haiku Project Update
I am woefully behind in writing haiku and in updating the spreadsheet. Here is the link to the spreadsheet. I will be doing some catchup this coming weekend.
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
I loved the Two Old Trees poem. That's me and Jeff. He told me a year or so ago that a workmate asked him if he felt any loyalty toward the company. He said, "why would I feel loyalty toward something that would lay me off without cause? My wife has been with me for forty years and stood by me through layoffs, sickness, poverty, all kinds of bad times. I would give my loyalty to her before any company."
You invariably bring your best - by which I mean some of the best - work to us (and through your books and forwarded pieces to my family). The piece you wrote of the twisted trees growing together personally resonates and I find deeply true. Love all you do.