T Shirt Of The Week

Message on T-Shirt
seen in Wynyard train station
during the rush hour

“Haiku Are
Interesting But Do Not Make
Refrigerator”

Flexing My Kigo

Haiku Of The Week tell me: “Great Haiku poems are designed to create strong emotions and within a few short lines evoke a similar experience in the reader to what the poet was expressing.”

and Red Ravine (recommended) says:

“Characteristics of haiku:

Simple, direct, non-metaphorical language
Captures a transitory insight or moment in time called satori or the aha moment
Contains a kigo, an image of nature that evokes a particular season
Contains a cutting or pivot word that turns the movement of the poem
Based on experience, speaks of the common, in the moment, just as it is.”

So:

A blurred T-Shirt
Crystallises through the sweat
Cacking myself stupid

or

A T-Shirt message
Stills Wynyard’s sweaty rush
Cacking myself stupid

Rate me out of 575.

Personally I enjoy the ironic conjunction of Australian boofheadery with traditional Japanese forms, and ‘cacking’ is perhaps unparalleled as a ‘cutting’ or ‘pivot’ word, though perhaps the Kigo is not sufficiently subtle. If this were a wine it would be a McLaren Vale Chalk Hill Cabernet Merlot strained through a Shearer’s Crutching Brush, left standing in Oak for serveral minutes then drunk with gusto and a few snags. Basho would roll in his Cherry Blossoms … and then probably cack himself stupid.

But the T-Shirt, yes it was a ripper. You know who you are.