Highku

Dear reader, I trust you've been enjoying the shit out of National Poetry Month.

Don't even tell me you haven't been celebrating.  The sacrilege.  I can't bear it.

If you've been a Poetry Month agnostic up to this point, open your heart and mind and consider my humble offering here.

As I have previously stated, we librarians have our fingers on the pulse of holidays and monthly recognitions that lend themselves to thematic book displays.  Last year, I was preparing just such a poetry display when I came across this absolute gem.   It’s a book of cat poems, because obviously.  But that's not what propels this book into the literary canon of my gnarled and tainted heart.  Look closely.

The illustrator.

Trina 

Schart 

Hyman

What the fuck, Trina?  Your agent couldn't talk you into doing a middle initial?  You had to go Full Schart Hyman?  That sounds like Yiddish for "how to get a UTI."

My favorite kind of poem is the limerick, for obvious reasons.  But the haiku is right up there in 2nd place, mostly because I don't actually know the rules for any other kind of poem, despite possessing a very expensive English degree.  But I have a strong affinity for the ancient Japanese art of saying weird shit as succinctly as possible.  For those of you not into the high brow vibes like me, a haiku is a three line poem where the first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7, and the last line has 5 again.  

Why are we having a salty English lesson now, you might be wondering.  I didn't sign up for this, you're thinking.  It's ok, stick with me.  We're on a journey together.  Not only are we in the thick of National Poetry Month, but today just so happens to be the twentieth day of April.  420.  Doth sayeth the olds who are trying to sound down, because I'm pretty sure the kids don't say it.  They're too busy making vape juice in an InstaPot or rolling their faces off on Molly or doing some other drug that was just invented five minutes ago.  

But I digress.  It seems that 420 is kind of like Cinco de Mayo or 4th of July, in that the holiday is lazily named after the calendar date.  Similarly, people tend to celebrate without having a firm grasp of the significance of the holiday, and "celebrating" pretty much implies that you're on a mission to forget your own name before the stroke of midnight.

So in light of this fortuitous overlap of poetry month and marijuana’s birthday or whatever, I thought I’d share some of my favorite highkus.  It would help if you were in a celebratory state of mind, but I think they hold up regardless.  If I'm not named the next Poet Laureate of the United States, the system is rigged, is what I'm saying.

At your weed guy’s house 

Wishing you had brought some snacks 

Flaming hot cheetos

Here’s another, it’s kind of a cautionary tale:

Smoking from a roach 

Breathing fire in my lungs 

I’m a dragon now

This is about using responsibly:

Smoke weed second hand 

Shotgunning is kinda hot 

More bang for your buck

Who can resist a highku about loving animals:

Hotboxing my dog 

Think he might just be a narc 

He’s on prozac now

The follow-up, about hindsight and the futility of existence:

Who smoked all the weed? 

Why is the dog throwing up?

Guess he's not a narc 

And finally, we bring it full circle:

Weed guy's at my house

Glad I vacuumed yesterday 

He has high standards