Haiku of Issa

  • sin is not possible without talent, on a winter day…
    • if talent is lacking then being lazy on a winter day isn’t a sin?…
  • four or five pennies for the poor, evening rain…
    • the scene set, it is melancholy…
  • a cuckoo singing to the poet and the mountain, the poet and then the mountain…
    • like an echo?…
    • summer harbinger, summer poem…
    • mourning, melancholy, longing… these are the things the bird symbolizes, though, not being Japanese, i don’t naturally pick up on these implied feelings…
  • holes in the wall whistle flute like on an autumn evening…
    • imperfect human-verse…
    • there is a without and within to this poem… without, winter is coming… holes in the wall need fixing… but for now… a pleasant song…
  • a fat priest with one foot out the door on the last prayer…
    • even priests can be half assed…
  • skinny mosquitoes, skinny fleas, skinny children, stupid world…
    • why is the world stupid and not wondrous?…
    • who would think up such a world?…
    • mosquitoes, fleas and children, all in the same world… imagine that…