That is a title of a haiku book I plan to do and have roughed in.  Another title is: 

Buddha After-Hours In A Bar

Haiku & Musings

And think that might solve a whole bunch: being with an Enlightened One when all the kids are in bed; and maybe the language getting more gritty to emphasize some key  points. 

Then want to do a children's haiku book, or all ages-book, called:

A Haiku Jumped Over The Moon 

Cause a haiku really can, and let you tag along. You might call that tagging along, hitching a ride --  a satori. Be it maybe only for a sweet second or two. 

I have written out some -- must be around -- 7,000 haiku. About one in ten i think is worthy of being published and about one in 20 might even get Basho lifting a glass to; toasting. I now have a goal of 3 a day, and glad to often do more.

I feel I got interested in haiku back in the 1990s from spending time around a man who I felt was as much a Zen Master as I would ever meet. And to honest, I felt this man, had reached such a potential (that someday we all will) he could even out-cool, out-zen, out-know the Dalai Lama, or Thich Nhat Hanh, both who I have great, great respect for.

I think the awareness, a profound awareness, that a few people always know on earth is really rather inconceivable. The word ONENESS comes to mind in trying to describe that True Knowledge. But a Oneness that could make someone more ONE with you -- than you are with yourself. But don't want to get into such esoteric jazz in this blog, besides saying what I already did. Cause … cause we got haiku worthy of a Harley Davidson's Saddlebag to chat, and other whatnots. 

I have bought many copies of these two haiku books over the years and given them to young writers, and others, who may of wanted to learn more about haiku, and start to write some. Those books are: Haiku Mind, by Patricia Donegan and, The Classic Tradition Of Haiku, An Anthology edited by Faubion Bowers. 

Donegan is a remarkably credentialed person in the haiku world and as a teacher of meditation. And Donegan, besides very much endorsing the classic 5-7-5 approach to haiku, also encourages and endorses a free style of haiku that can be just (basically) any short 3 lines. And I am personally definitely a free styler. 

Something that any real cowgirl or cowboy -- Harley rider might like to know, who wanted to write some haiku, but wander away from the 5-7-5 approach to haiku (needing more freedom), is something I was told Jack Kerouac said about haiku. And Kerouac wrote some fine ones.

This was told to me by a very interesting, basically homeless man who lived in his car for many years in Taos, NM (USA), where I have been living for some 8 years. He would often sit in this same coffee shop for a couple hours in the early morning working crossword puzzles, always at a corner table by the window if he could, and if I was there first that day, that spot was a favorite of mine too. His name was John, and John was an old beatnik poet who had met Jack Kerouac and spent time with Allen Ginsberg and some in that lively gang.

So John one day in a coffeeshop tells me: “Jack and I once got talking about haiku and we even shared a couple with each other. Mine were all the 5-7-5 gig, and Jack’s were not at all. So I say to Jack: ‘Why aren't yours the classic haiku?’ 

“And Jack says: ‘I don't need any 17 syllable anal schizophrenia in my life. I have enough problems.’”

Okay. So to any haiku purest still lurking about the planet, maybe contemplate that. 

To me, poetry is a service. To my ken, poetry and art is all about engaging and giving (as I talk about in the BBC piece I offered a link to in my second blog post). 

How many people who ride a Harley have ever even written any kind of haiku? Writing haiku can be like learning, like taking part in a new dance step, and once you do .... you are glad you did. It could be like drinking a shot of a new whiskey, or kissing a new pretty girl or boy, or dog, or frog. It could be fun and bring a spark into your eyes, and I am all for that.

Here is a haiku indeed worthy of a spot in some saddlebag I would think. It gets a little risque, but ya just got to engage and give to the planet -- crowd -- your on, with. It goes, and it gets a tad mystical, in the second line, as I just don't seem able to avoid … in most of the poems I have published:

perfect handlebars 

    sun and moon and my

        sweetheart's ass

                    ***

Then, thinking there might actually be a teaching moment in any haiku book I might muster out into the world. Why not slip in the word Rumi on someone like with this. Expand the range of the book.  That is part of any haiku book I do would probably also be annotated; and some of the verse have little forewords to it. And then even give some historic bio info on someone like Rumi; and sure mention Basho somewhere in the book too. An example for Rumi could be:

These are the very first lines of the great 13 century Persian poet Rumi I ever read, over 50 years ago; and never forgot them. Years later i did a book on Rumi for Penguin, and the lines reprinted here are from one of the poems in that book; and slightly revised here.

Then one day I found myself writing some haiku and it dawned on me (actually a year or so later) the haiku could be presented as a nice bounce-addition, even expounding as it were off these Rumi lines; though at the time (of writing those haiku) that was not in my mind at all.

So here is that Rumi verse and about such a relevant subject, as surely dying is:

I died as mineral and became a plant.

I died as a plant and expanded my being.

I came to know the demise of creatures

with fins and wings and hoofs.

But look, look, I became a beautiful man,

I became a beautiful woman,

what should we fear my darlings, for when

were we ever less by dying.

--Rumi

   from the book:  The Purity of Desire, 100 Poems of Rumi

I love those Rumi lines, which is just part of the poem. And getting a little theological, and having studied Rumi throughout some 30 years: it is very, very rare he ever made a reference to anything like a doctrine of reincarnation, or evolution of consciousness, as far as I know.  

And then there were my little bounces off those lines it seemed in two of my haiku. They might seem so trite in a way compared to those marvelous Rumi lines. But I have now used them to follow those lines at some poetry readings, and they seems to add a bit ... so here there are, and see I can expound-annotate nicely on this second one. They being:

the frog in the 

   blue heron's mouth says

      'no big deal'

the deer

  in the lion's jaws

      winks knowing

Indeed, life in part can seem all about knowing more and more. 'Winking' more and more at everything, the way I think a real Zen Master can; but then knows she/he has to play dumb, has to play the game of right and wrong (with most) until we can stop throwing sand in each other's eyes in this cosmic sand box where we live.

And here is a little haiku I wrote just yesterday, that I think could speak about some aspect of Enlightenment. That is in— seeing or realizing:

so glad buddha's feet 

    everywhere these days

         so i keep bowing*

*bowing: Honoring. Which I think is such a natural part, natural reaction, of real seeing, real knowing, and true compassion and thanks. 

A personal note of my mind's workings is: I personally like the word 'everything' to be where the word— ‘everywhere' is in the above haiku, but think that could then limit access to the verse. But guess now you get your choice.

And then this, in four lines:

'a sun can rise into you' 

   from the heart of the earth 

       when your spirit touches it

            on its knees*

*on its knees:  In prayer or thanks or seeing

bowing can be

   an alchemy

       stone

And in proofreading this— and adding to it with tads— some six times today. I started writing this yesterday. This just popped in, well the one below and two just above. And I remember also of Kerouac, he called haiku 'pops.'

needing less darkness

   I climbed out 

      of buddha's pocket

And a thousand suns were there. 

***

Yeah, who is to say that ALL is not in the pocket -- or was -- of  the great world teachers. And ALL in our own pocket tooooo!

climb out 

   of your own pocket

       why not?

And, once in a while it really does seem that Hafiz basically says to me, something like: 'Step aside kid, hand me the mic.'  And then I hear within myself a line, that can  seem beautiful, that seems for really everyone, like now expanded:

'Let the sun rise in you, let the suns rise in you.'

It is just ALL in a saddlebag on a Harley Buddha rides. And we are meant to sit there too, so close to EVERYTHING we become ONE. KNOW.

the moon asked about

   her luminosity said,

       'i know' 

the exquisite wonder

    on a child's face says,

          'i know."

A big hug to all, and love,