Global Haiku • January 2015
Dr. Randy Brooks

Time Travel Haiku

by
Jess Brooks

There are these moments, sometimes they are strange and sometimes they are beautiful and sometimes they are ugly but they are all so nice to be enjoyed in the simplicity of a haiku. It is refreshing to take flourishing words out of the equation and to just see this moment bright and clear through the lens of another human being. I think that is why I love haiku so much. It is a way for people to connect and to remember all these human experiences that shape us. These snapshots and glimpses of life fade very quickly in the mind, but a haiku can preserve them and document them in a way that really makes you remember that moment. It brings all of those moments back through your senses. I have a terrible memory for only being a 20 year old and I want to use haiku to bring me back to those moments and completely immerse me in them but with simplicity. I don't need the haiku to tell me exactly what happened every second, I just need it to jog my memory and help me to go back to that place. Haiku is my time travel, through my own life and through other haiku writers all over the nation, or even the world. So, time travel with me.

first day of work
beanie babies
line my desktop

abandoned plastic bag
her cat tail
           resurrecting it

a toddler squirms
at the word no
         one salt lamp lick

empty wooden frame
she wonders
who's nose he would have had

she steps on the scale
her hope
          at her feet

zxfv56-po
kitten paws
a-c-r-o-s-s my keyboard

runaway glasses
I zombie walk through
my living room

skinny jeans
inserting yourself
          requires a jumping dance

2 a.m. bubble bath
she splashes the candles
         to go to bed

one single strand of hair
he knows
             she stopped by

three paint swatches
yellow
just in case

haiku project - haiku on being an artist

wet canvass
paint as tempting
as peanut butter

orange cat prints
map across
my canvass