Magellan's Log: The Great American Haiku

Foolhardy, some might say, for any American to attempt haiku. The Fugs, after all, reached the summit, the pinnacle of verbal insouciance, the zenith of linguistic pith with their immortal lines:

"I am not source of your knock-up.
The mud elephant wading through the sea
leaves no tracks."***

Still, what am I to do except pass on humbly the syllables that came to me unbidden when I awoke from a deep sleep recently. Keyboard ever at hand by my bed, I typed nervously and went back to sleep. Next day the nocturnal unpretentious brevity beckoned. "Polish me!" the simple words cried out.

Polish I did. The result, while of course nowhere near the Olympian heights achieved by Mr. Ed Sanders of The Fugs, will perhaps resonate with you, reader, and recall, pithily I hope, those wondrous back-to-school memories of yesteryear.

Go to haiku. >>

***From their last, most fully realized album, It Crawled in My Hand, Honest.

Back to Magellan's Log 40

Magellan's Log front page

Send this page to a friend.