The Tweeting Haijin

The grating rises. Inside, great coils sear with redness. The shroud is ripped off and thrown to a side. I look away: grandpa's belly has bloated beyond measure. They wrench my hands away. With a firm push, the trolley races into the coils. Huge flames erupt, licking the seasoned body. A lever is swung, the grating crashes down. Morning. An ashen-faced man scans a shelf. An urn, neatly labeled, is placed on the counter. Ashes and a bone fragment. A priest chants by a river. A brinjal and some white flowers float away. mother's song the pressure cooker hums with her (Published in Haibun Today June 2015)

What the six Brandenburg Concertos do to me is this. They simply fill me with music, surround me, isolate me, gently tease me away from my cares into their Elysium; they permeate every nerve, till each has become, as Khusrau wrote, a taut string vibrating with the sound of the universe itself; they at once excite and becalm, distress and elate, arrest and move; they hurt me, they make me feel small before the universe and then they heal me and make me one with the universe. Add to the experience my hormones coursing adrenaline and testosterone, and sleep deprivation and the flush of success and the inebriation of starvation mixed with coffee—something strange happens, I am at a sudden high of consciousness, at once depressed and euphoric, for a fleeting minute—nirvana. dust patterns . . . the ghostly outline of my turntable (Published in Haibun Today  September 2014)

Cattle are important. And because cattle are important, cowherds are important. There has to be someone to milk the cattle and clean the dung. It doesn't benefit a king to kill cowherds. Which is why, when the rebellion comes, it comes from the cowherd. He may be dark-skinned and wear feathers in his hair and play bamboo flutes and spend the day far too alone to gossip and plot, but he observes. He watches the oxen drag the plough, the crack of the whip behind them. But he also looks at the same bulls in the spring, locking horns in fierce combat. He watches the cow obey the hurr-hurrs as she is led along the road, but he also sees how she becomes a tigress when her calf is in danger. The same bullocks that solemnly drag the overloaded cart, now maddened, gore the drover. The cowherd observes, and he learns that the weak can become strong. He learns that sickles can become swords, that the humble wooden stick can break a spinal cord. He may be a king's human beast; but list...