next S-s-startle

“Haiga [paintings] are typically painted by haiku poets (haijin), and often accompanied by a haiku poem.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiga

Creating photo-haiga is a central part of my daily art practice: I find it both invigorating and meditative, an often odd, but for me, happy combination. I have found that my photo-haiga can bring some readers closer to the poems. And please note that sometimes I find the photos to match poems sitting in waiting. Also included in this sequence are visual poems and lyrics and prose sentences that I believe tie well together to help create a world of pandemics, both medical and social. I have merged all of the pieces into a longer narrative that tells a meta-story, but also presents a flow of images and words that magnify and transmit thoughts, feelings, and dream-traces.

This is also available at: Mercurius Magazine

dedicated to the first many hundreds thousands
dead
in the first round of new pandemics & in the old

next   startle

If this is the
Quiet before
What is next
And where the
Sound of noises?

and within our extremely old pandemic of racism:
Malcolm X— then Detroit Red— & friend Shorty
used Red Devil lye to lay on Malcolm’s 1st conk
and rinse it very well until the burning stopped
but even now Who did shoot Malcolm X dead?

[next

n-xt S-s-st-rtl-

startle]

pretending
everything
terrified choice

We keep waiting for the sky

For things to get better but we

We keep waiting for people to get

They get worse and worse and fall a

We keep waiting for things to

But worse and worse the happenstance

we cannot tear
hear or see apart
the unmasked fall

leaves on chairs 

wide circles
narrowing

last in-breath
will blow out

the winds round
leaves on chairs

human frames
fall hard down

snugly sit
cannot rise

from the chairs
late autumn

leaves cover
all the chairs

figure sits
in one chair

skittering
bird eyes close