Nicolas Steno, Jan. 11, 1638 — Dec. 5, 1686
Nicolas Steno
Father of geology
His legacy rocks
Check Google’s salute
To this foundational dude
From 1600s
Centuries before
Chuck Berry, Little Richard
The man could dig it
An upper crust guy
Yet he studied all layers
And how strata formed
He was all about
Things gettin’ horizontal
Just like rock ‘n’ roll
Nicolas Steno
Father of geology
His legacy? Rocks!
Roger Miller, Jan. 2, 1936 — Oct. 25, 1992
Why is it jokesters
Aren’t taken seriously?
Laughter’s important
Take Roger Miller
It’s the man’s birthday today
Do you think he’s great?
From “King of the Road”
To “Big River,” Roger wrote
A wealth of classics
“England Swings” took us
On a trip across the sea
Snapshots whistlin’ by
Some were great nonsense
Like “You Can’t Rollerskate in
“A Buffalo Herd”
But he wrapped true pain
In tossed-off titles: “Dang Me”
And “Atta Boy Girl”
“Husbands and Wives” summed
The price of pride perfectly
Forgiveness failing
And he made death’s chill
All too real with “One Dying
“And a Burying”
Roger’s mama died
When he was 1; his daddy
Split up the siblings
Aunt and uncle raised him
He worked the farm, learned fiddle
Dreamed and wrote some songs
Served in Korea,
Ducked jail for stealing guitar
“Clash of ’52”
Sarge told him to hit
Nashville; played with Minnie Pearl
And wrote with George Jones
Detour as fireman
Wife and kid to feed but soon
Nashville pulled him back
Wrote hits for others
“That’s the Way I Feel”
And “Billy Bayou”
And then the time came
He recorded his own hit
“You Don’t Want My Love”
“When Two Worlds Collide”
Was even bigger, but he
Threw it all away
’62 and 3
Were two years lost to excess
But then he rallied
’64 comeback:
“Dang Me” and “King of the Road”
Just two of the hits
That was Roger’s peak
But the rest of his career
Had some fine moments
“Big River” hit big
In ’85, reminded
Folks of Roger’s gifts
The stogies got him
Age 56, the cost of
An unfiltered life
Now his CDs rest
Between “Mellencamp,” “Mitchell”
In my collection
Great company, yes
And I reach for Roger first
For a laugh, or cry
A few of these appeared first as part of an alphabetical string by the Facebook group Bad Haiku, of which I am a proud (?!) member. I felt challenged (Yeah, he’s challenged all right …) to do a series of my own, for which no one else would have to share the blame. These originally escaped in two batches, Aug.23 and 24.
Anything Aztecs
Achieved animatedly
Augmented action
Blake's behemoth
Crude, crass carnivore
Creeps, canters, cavorts, crashes,
Consumes carnally
Debauched demimonde
Deliciously declaiming
Decadent design
Effusive Edgar
Exceeding expectations
Exuberantly
Freaking fast Frederick
Filched filigreed finial
From Fannie’s fiefdom
Gregarious Greg
Gratefully going gaga,
Gorgeously gonzo
Hack’s hackneyed haiku
Hitting horrifying heights,
Haunting headhunters
Iphigenia’s
Ignominious igloo
Incited Iceland
Judicious Jutland’s
Justified jeremiad
Jolts jaded jackass
Kinetic karma:
Kamikaze Kangaroo
Kicks karate kin
Lass, laughter lilting,
Lightheartedly limning lines,
Lightens lover’s load
Monsanto musings:
Mystical mutant mustard?
Manifold mystique!
Native nasturtiums
Octopus orders
Oriental opposite
Occidentally
Pampered pet pooches,
Plump, primped, partake plentiful
Porterhouse platter
Questioning quisling’s
Questionable qualities
Quite queasy quandary
Recumbent redhead
Risks rapidly receding
Reclines recklessly
Sibilant siblings
Steve, Sara, Sasha, Sonia
Sounding simply swell
Tall tales titillate
Tantalize, taunt temptingly
True trash to treasure
Unassumingly
Undulating undertow,
Unfathomable
Venerable van
Vaunted versatility
Valued vehicle
Which witch witchingly
Watches wastrels waste whiskey,
Wishing wistfully
Xerxes, Xenophon
X-ray Xeroxed xylographs
Xenophilicly
Yesteryear’s yearnings
Yellowing yearbooks yonder
Yoke your yesterdays
Zero, zenith, zilch
Ziggy zigzags zealously
Zooming zanily
And from the Squad Squad and the Department of Redundancy Department, one that was censored from the original batch:
Unabashedly
Undulating underwear
Unconscionable!
The old man’s profile
Black marble, jutting white hook
Eagle eye — and beak
The old man’s profile
Darkness, even in full sun
All crags and shadow
The old man’s profile
Stone silent, fixed in sorrow
Gazing toward the end
And if that ending bums you out too much, here’s proof a word or two can make a difference.
The old man’s profile
Stone silent, fixed in wisdom
Gazing toward the end
or
The old man’s profile
Stony silence, dignified
Gazing toward the end
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
Nov. 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910
“Man is the only
“Animal that blushes. Or
“Needs to,” writes Mark Twain.
Few saw so clearly
Or captured so tellingly
Man’s lasting folly
Yet each of us knows
Someone wise, trenchant, witty
Who keeps us in line
A spouse or a friend
A comic or songwriter
A compass and muse
Garrison Keillor,
Neil Young or Bob Walkenhorst
Fill in your own blank
They’re still pointing out
Our glories, absurdities
So rest easy, Sam
The collection of placeholders and zeros on stage for the Republican “debate” last night reminded me of these. I think they came in two groups during April, which is Math Awareness Month.
April, 2011
Math Awareness Month
Guess I could use some of that
Life’s not adding up
Math Awareness Month
If I could subtract my stress
Joy would multiply
Math Awareness Month
Division in our ranks might
Be a good thing now
Math Awareness Month
Used to know this stuff, but now
My brain’s a null set
Math Awareness Month
My checkbook balance beckons
Time to go figure
Math Awareness Month
Budget is fit when I get
My figures in shape
Math Awareness Month
Reminds us that trig jokes are
First sine of madness
Math Awareness Month
Will my kid’s trig instructor
Cosine for a loan?
I dig trig because
Every day I seem to go
Off on a tangent
Math Awareness Month
Makes me admit my haiku
Are derivative
But I wish I had
A good proof to demonstrate
That they’re integral
And pray I can raise
Poetic coefficient
To higher power
Math Awareness Month
Don’t let the geeks fool you they’re
Trying to get sum
Which are the math trees
In the grove of academe?
The ones with square roots
Angling Elvis tells
Pythagoras: You’re so squared
(Baby, I don’t care)
Life is just one big
Variable equation
Solve it day by day
We’re getting new software at work, so I’m in a crabby mood. What better time to revisit haiku about some of my pet language peeves? And why is it so many of us write as if we majored in English — as a second language? With the dates they appeared, in 2011.
March 2
Business buzzwords kill
Clear thought, communication,
Creativity
Business buzzwords kill:
Misusing “actionable”
Ought to get you sued
Business buzzwords kill:
Write “be pro-active” and you
Use no action verb
Business buzzwords kill:
You want to “incentivize”?
Let’s damn your “-ize” first
March 3
Business buzzwords kill:
Don’t write as if Staples had
A sale on hyphens
Business buzzwords kill:
“Client-centric”? What’s that mean?
Just put their needs first
Business buzzwords kill:
“Customer-oriented”?
In China, maybe
Business buzzwords kill:
“Patient-focused”? How about
Helping me get well?
March 4
Business buzzwords kill:
Don’t try to sound important
Just be clear instead
Business buzzwords kill:
Do you use Latinate words
In lieu of English?
Business buzzwords kill,
Or: “Speak in a dead language,
“You Latin lover!”
Business buzzwords kill:
Will someone please help the word
“Facilitator”?
Business buzzwords kill:
Synergy’s a favorite sin
Against plain English
Business buzzwords kill.
Synergy: When fuzzy thought
Meets fuzzy language
Business buzzwords kill:
“Back in the day”? Do you mean
This morning’s meeting?
Business buzzwords kill:
And don’t mix up “strategy”
And “tactic,” OK?
March 7
Business buzzwords kill:
Don’t baffle ’em with BS
Just do some good work
Business buzzwords kill:
“Provide solutions”? I don’t
Have a math problem!
Business buzzwords kill:
Does a Teflon exec have
A non-stick skill set?
Business buzzwords kill!
Core competencies, you know:
That’s what you do best
Business buzzwords kill:
I’d rather feel the Earth move
Than paradigms shift
Business buzzwords kill:
Paradigms? Is that about
My 20-cents’ worth?
Business buzzwords kill:
Paradise? A memo with
All paradigms lost
March 8
Business buzzwords kill:
End torture now! Starting with
The English language
Business buzzwords kill:
Is your “core competency”
Abusing English?
Business buzzwords kill:
Writers’ shift to “transition”
As a verb? Bad move
Business buzzwords kill:
Use “leverage” as a verb;
Write on borrowed time
Business buzzwords kill:
De-leverage your use of
Good nouns as bad verbs
Business buzzwords kill:
How to measure the rampant
Misuse of “metric”?
Business buzzwords kill:
And what measure tells us when
“Cutting edge” grew dull?
Business buzzwords kill:
Writers who can’t kick buzzwords
Really should buzz off
Marie Curie born,
Joni Mitchell, too: This day’s
Radio active
Brilliant but modest
Madame Curie coined the term
Radioactive
Won Nobel prizes
Both physics and chemistry
Nobody else has
There was nothing half
About her life, discovered,
Named two elements
Radium research,
Isolating isotopes
Saved lives, cut hers short
Her legacy lives
Her dedication inspires
Google her — you’ll see
Joni Mitchell turns
68 today, complete
Artistic package
Songwriter deluxe
“Both Sides Now,” “Woodstock”
Were hits for others
Her albums scored, too
Overflowing with romance,
Poetry, protest
Lilting melodies
Lyrics playful and painful
Confide and confess
You could do much worse
Than “Blue,” but it’s really hard
To do much better
Joni pushed the sound
Branched into jazz though some folks
Hissed her “Summer Lawns”
Distinct guitar sound
Forged when polio forced her
To chord differently
A fine painter, too
As her album covers show
Yeah, the whole package
Joni says she’s through
Except for painting a bit
Sure, we all decay
Like those isotopes,
Though, her music, influence
Will glow on and on
On the cusp of the Daylight Saving Time switch-over, here are some for the longest day of the year.
From June 21, 2011
Daylight, each day’s gift
To walk in the sun and feel
Its warmth on our skin
Daylight, each day’s chance
To go around again, flip
The next page of life
Daylight, each day’s spin
Revolutionary yet
Too subtle to feel
Daylight, each day’s breath
In and out, the dance of life
The rhythm of hearts
Daylight, each day’s lick
Of ice cream, sip of red wine
What pleasures beckon?
Daylight, each day’s tricks
Of solid, shadow and smoke
Memory’s missteps
Daylight, each day’s bits
Of grit, soil, salt and sweat
Elementary
Daylight, each day’s gold
To be measured and burnished
Squeeze every last ounce
Daylight and with age
It dawns on us to cherish
Each wrinkle in time
Daylight, and today
A few extra ticks, just like
My last camping trip
Daylight, yes today
We get a few seconds more
— To be spent beaming
These came to me around 5 a.m., a day I woke up before everyone else and just imagined some scenes from the previous few hours.
From Feb. 27, 2011
The wee small hours / Street sweeper washes away / What yesterday left
The wee small hours / Streetlamps dim as if to ask / Why are we still on?
The wee small hours / When rodents and roaches do / Some of their best work
The wee small hours / Cigarette turns to ashes / Dying like the night
The wee small hours / Bourbon melts ice cubes the way / She melted his heart
The wee small hours / Action’s harder to find than / A ghetto cabbie
The wee small hours / Train whistle marks 1 a.m. / All is on schedule
The wee small hours / Siren says it’s 2 a.m. / And all is not well
The wee small hours / An ER doc wearily / Stitches up some kid
The wee small hours / Scratchy Sinatra platter / Still spins its magic
The wee small hours / Couples drunk on love and wine / Can’t tell which is which
The wee small hours / Her fingers linger on him / Take their own sweet time
The wee small hours / Cramming guy’s midnight oil / Is three hours gone
The wee small hours / Exhausted student looks up / What “nocturnal” means
The wee small hours / Scribbler sketches the darkness / With some wee small words
The wee small hours / Agnostic insomniac / Can’t believe in sleep
The wee small hours / The owner then the dough rise / At the doughnut shop
The wee small hours / Life is primitive B.C. / That’s Before Coffee
The wee small hours / Jazzercizers rise early / Slap on the Spandex
The wee small hours / Do their disappearing act / With coffee, the dawn
Greg's Hack-u 