the suburbs 
turn purple
- jacarandas

Here among the thirty thousand days 

of a long life, 

a single day stands still.
-Donald Hall

Senryu

Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.
-Senryu, 1826

Ryokan

This world
a fading mountain echo
void and unreal.
-Ryokan

Borges

Is there or not
the dream I forgot
before dawn.
- Jorge Luis Borges

Buson

one line of wild geese -
stamps the moon
on the mountain’s edge
- Buson

What makes good art

Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. I know this doesn’t sound hip at all.

- David Foster Wallace

Togyo

When autumn winds blow
not one leaf remains
the way it was.
- Togyo

Yosa Buson

Coolness,
the sound of the bell,
as it leaves the bell.

Besieged without warning.
I surrender without a fight
- rain in the deep of night

Kerouac

Bach through an open
dawn window —
the birds are silent

Jack Kerouac, “Book of Haikus”

The frog's call sounds like
hard river stones struck together
in the soft water.

Alarm going off somewhere.
What world have I broken into,
at this ungodly hour?

Basho

Winter solitude—
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

-Basho

Chosu

Broken and broken
again on the sea,
the moon so easily mends

—Chosu

The Two Cosmoses

Everything that is out there is also within. One might say there is a cosmos without and a cosmos within. In the haiku moment they are drawn together as one, each and every time. And, over time, the distinction becomes less and less. What a great gift is this grace we call haiku. Do accept it.

-Gabriel Rosenstock, Haiku: The Gentle Art of Disappearing.