Global Haiku • Fall 2012
Dr. Randy Brooks

Lava Lamp

by
James Farris

Introduction

In his collection of haiku, James Farris attempts to demonstrate the qualities that make haiku great. By incorporating an element of memory/personal reference while leaving room for interpretation, it is the goal of his haiku to both express something relevant specifically to his life but also to share these experiences in a way that allows the reader to insert him/herself into the memory experience of the author.

By combining elements of his life including loss, pain, joy, quirkiness, and sarcasm, Farris's collection, Lava Lamp, is contemporaneously strange and relatable.

opening the front door
aroma du cat shit
MY cat shit

briefly a hummingbird
resting
on a tree's spring finger

skipping I'm
home from school!
empty bottles

November demolition
the projects make way
for a soccer field

pumpkin patch
you pick the ugly ones
picked me

cold oak floors
we're our warmth
together

after three years
same red swing
I'm still your son

undergrad assignments
"you have the weekend"
and three jobs

to the parents of . . .
ripping paper
a letter to no one

cigarette smoke
d i s s i p a t i n g
finding his own path