Because
Lennon/McCartney – 1969

because
the world is round
it turns me on

because
the wind is high
it blows my mind

because
the sky is blue
it makes me cry

Happiness is a Warm Gun
Lennon/McCartney – 1968

a soap impression of his wife
which he ate and donated
to the national trust

the man in the crowd
with the multi-colored mirrors
on his hobnail boots

She’s well acquainted with
the touch of a velvet hand
like a lizard on a window pane

It’s Only Love
Lennon/McCartney – 1965

I get high
when I see you
go by          my oh my

is it right
that you and I
should fight         every night

just the sight
of you makes
nighttime bright        very bright

I’m Only Sleeping
Lennon/McCartney – 1966

keeping an eye
on the world going by
my window

I’ve Got a Feeling
Lennon/McCartney – 1970

Long Long Long
Harrison – 1968

it’s been a long time—
how could I ever have lost you
when I loved you?

She Said She Said
Lennon/McCartney – 1966

she said, “I know
what it’s like
to be dead”

Good Morning, Good Morning
Lennon/McCartney – 1967

Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and my Monkey
Lennon/McCartney – 1968

everybody’s got something
to hide except for
me and my monkey

The varied writing and lyrical styles of the Beatles make for an interesting group of haiku that are able to reference and draw from several different traditions of regions, genres, and generations of the Japanese haiku tradition. The constant reinvention of the Beatles—from their pop rock Please Please Me phase, to their psychedelic Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band period, all the way to the heavy jazz and rock stylings that closed out their Let It Be episode—parallels the continuous changes made in the concepts and contributions to haiku.

Don’t Pass Me By
Starkey – 1968

you were in a car crash
and you lost
your hair

on the mantel shelf
I see the hands a moving
but I’m by myself

Old Brown Shoe
Harrison – 1969

I want a love that’s right—
right is only half
of what’s wrong

I want a short-haired girl
who sometimes wears it
twice as long

While John and Paul were the most prolific writers of the four, the songs of George Harrison and Ringo Starr are not without their own charm. The two teamed up on several occasions to produce their own work outside the shadow of the juggernaut that was Lennon/McCartney.

Though Ringo has several songs credited to him, Don’t Pass Me by is a piece that was written by Starr completely solo. His lyrics are and simplistic and playful to the point of being absurd and nonsensical at times. The latter two haiku transcribed from Starr’s work depict the anxiety and impatience in waiting for his lover to come home from possible shady dealings, as is the focus of Don’t Pass Me By. The first haiku is then the unveiling that the narrator is wrong in his assumptions and his lover’s tardiness is due to a supposed car accident – however the reference to the unbelievable result of a car crash being the loss of the victims hair, maybe an indication that she is lying. Beyond his simply rhyme scheme and odd lyrics, there may be a surprising depth to Ringo’s Work

Though the number of songs written by guitar virtuoso George Harrison is small, what he lacks in quantity he definitely makes up for in quality. Harrison was very critical of his own work, so much so that after writing While My Guitar Gently Weeps and finding he was unable to play lead guitar and sing simultaneously, and not trusting McCartney or Lennon to play the part to his standards, unbeknownst to the rest of the Beatles, he made a deal with friend Eric Clapton to stand in and play lead guitar. The image presented in the above haiku from Old Brown Shoe, present paradoxical images which, I feel, indicate the time he put into his work and the enjoyment he derived from it

Blackbird
Lennon/McCartney – 1968

blackbird singing
in the dead of night
take these broken wings
and learn to fly

blackbird singing
in the dead of night
take these sunken eyes
and learn to see

The difficult aspect of drawing haiku from a song is the lyrics’ tendency to be even in an effort to adhere to a specified meter and rhyme scheme. These factors usually lead to an even number of lines when being transcribed; and, while a two or a four line haiku is acceptable, I felt it was too easy and opened the door for any song lyric to be passed off under the guise of the Japanese art form. While, some Beatles songs easily made the transition, other chose not to go so quietly.

Blackbird is an example of the latter. I originally assumed that a great deal of the evenness that resulted from the Beatles’ lyrics came from the even time signatures; nearly all of the Fab’s songs are written in 4/4 time, while a few are in 2/4 time. I set out in search of a song that had an odd time signature, finally setting for Blackbird which is written in multi-meter (the signatures range from 3/4 - which is odd – to standard and cut times – which are even).

The constant shifts only made it harder to distinguish between line breaks in the lyrics alone, and nearly impossible to transform the words into a three-line haiku. Having such a strange rhythmic pattern, I’m surprise that the song is backed and driven by the metronomic cadence of a floor tom, yet, I’m unable to break the lyrics down any further than they already have. So, above lay the tattered, little remains of what nearly became a pair of Blackbird haiku – four lines in each.

Mother Nature’s Son
Lennon/McCartney – 1968

all day long
I’m sitting singing songs
for every one

listen to
the pretty sound of music
as she flies

swaying daisies
sing a lazy song
beneath the sun

This 1968 piece, written and sung by Paul McCartney made possibly the smoothest transition of any of the Beatles’ songs into the world of haiku in both form and content. Aside from fitting very well into the tradition of the three-line haiku, these lyrics also perpetuate the naturalistic themes and elements often associated with the haiku art form. All the pieces above are clearly depicting summer; the cheerful and carefree attitude is one typical of the late summer months, when the rebirth of spring is still an awe-inspiring sight, but one which we have grown accustomed to over time.

The playfulness of the poems also make them extremely appealing, despite the fact that the actual instrumentation and rhythm isn’t quite as bouncy as the lyrics would lead you to assume. The alliteration of “sitting singing songs” and the midline half-rhyme of “daisies” and “lazy” add to the very lighthearted feel of the haiku.

Book of Haikus, pg 69
Jack Kerouac

Me, you—you, me
     Everybody—
He-he

I am the Walrus – 1967
Lennon/McCartney

I am he – as you are he         hahaha
as you are me and             hehehe
we are all together                   hohoho

The blatancy of the similarities between this haiku by Kerouac and the song “I am the Walrus” by The Beatles verges on eerie. The song, having been written just two years prior to Kerouac’s death in 1969, could have conceivably been written based on this haiku. The situation would not have been completely unheard of, as the Beatles’ song Golden Slumbers was inspired by a poem of the same title by Thomas Dekker, McCartney quoting the poem almost verbatim in his song. However, in a 1980 interview with Playboy, John Lennon (though the song is credited to Lennon/McCartney because of a longstanding contractual agreement between the two and record executives, the song is mainly the brainchild of Lennon) confessed, “The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend.”

The laughter included on the end of The Beatles haiku appears later in the song, following the lyric, “Expert texpert, choking smokers, don’t you think the joker laughs at you?” The lyrics parallel nicely with the He-he that concludes Kerouac’s haiku, but also add a feeling of euphoric (possibly drug-induced) enlightenment, as was intended by the use of the laughter that concludes George Harrison’s Indian-inspired 1967 piece, Within You Without You.

A Haibun Composed of the Journals of the Beatles’ Late Manager, Brian Epstein:

I secured them an audition at DECA on New Years Day, 1962. They came to London and stayed at The Royal Hotel paying twenty-seven shillings a night for bed and breakfast. They were poor and I wasn’t rich, but we all celebrated with rum, and scotch, and coke – which was become a Beatles drink even then.

Well, the recording desk came and went:

The people who decide about these things at DECA said no. Well, you can image I was more worried about what I was going to say to the boys having built up there hopes. So, I allowed myself a final twenty-four hours to exhaust the remaining disc companies, and I booked into The Greenpark Hotel. In the morning, I took a cab to the EMI office block in Manchester Square, London to meet the man who would, within less than two years, produce sixteen number-one discs by my artists.

incipient buds
the blooms of success
await the spring

I Am the Walrus
Lennon/McCartney – 1967

sitting in an
english garden
waiting for the sun

if the sun don’t come
you get a tan from standing
in the english rain

English Tea
McCartney – 2005

        miles and miles
               of english garden
                       stretching past
the willow tree

The above haiku are drawn from The Beatles’ 1967 piece I Am the Walrus, and Paul McCartney’s English Tea, a song released on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, his twentieth and most recent solo album on which McCartney has written every song and plays nearly every instrument. It’s just a simple comparison of the imagery that is still present throughout the works of the Beatles, whether is it through mere creative happenstance or actual allusions to their past works.