Haiku written at Beethoven string quartet concert this Friday:

I. poor innocent bows
dragged by players tired of life
dhoking on music

II. each laxly held box
spits up notes like a baby
nauseous with cholic

III. four bored, slack faces
intent upon sheet music
like factory workers

IV. they bounce up in time
excited to ease the pain
of their flattened butts

V. poets of the note
they burn with all the passion
of a Rent-A-Cop

VI. sat through two quartets
watched two forced rounds of applause
had a cigarette

VII. dear first violin
either resign from your chair
or learn how to play

VIII. with such subtle squeeks
why are they not recognized
as the avant garde

IX. shake it for me now
rock me like a hurricane
kill that Beethoven

X. were it up to me
this last one would rip your soul
right out of your throat

XI. juxtaposition
of unimpassioned faces
and stunning music


Notes: X spoken by Englishman townie who sat next to me at previous quartet concert. He then turned to his wife and said, "Brecht was right."

VIII was perhaps due to the fact that the instruments used in the concert were constructed in the seventeen-hundreds. Regardless, they were getting some sounds uncomfortably close to the Kronos Quartet.

Do not hold my Haiku to the classical standards, e.g., "aren't Haiku supposed to be about nature?" They're supposed to be in Japanese, too. Take the aesthetic and run with it.