Haiku? Gesundheit!

Say it loud and forceful enough and that’s what “Haiku” sounds like…a sneeze.

I’m afraid I can’t contribute to the subject of Haiku, either by writing one or talking about it as a subject.

When it comes to writing poetry, being the dumb, redneck hillbilly I am…my poetry is somewhat limited, one of my better efforts being:

“Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

Butt-holes stink,

And so do you.”

Walt Whitman I’m not.

As for the subject of Haiku itself, I can’t contribute much there either. I just don’t get excited about stuff the Japanese export to the US. Things they send us that are supposed to be good always seem to turn out bad in the end.

Toyotas are good cars, or so we were told. Long lasting, few repairs, run well… Well, as it turns out yes, they DO run well. The problem is they don’t stop worth a damn.

If you have any age on you you’ll remember that the lack of quality in consumer products that we now associate with the “Made in China” label began as “Made in Japan” not that many years ago. When I was a kid the only good thing the Japanese made was cheap transistor radios not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes that you could hang on your belt…the world’s first walkman.

And, of course, If you are from or have lived in the south in the last 20-30 years, there is the little matter of Kudzu.

Kudzu was a “gift” from Japan for US landowners to use as groundcover to prevent erosion. What the Japanese failed to tell us is that Kudzu is FAR more than a groundcover. It is a telephone pole cover, a tree cover, a shrubbery cover, a barn cover, and, if you don’t watch it, a house cover. It grows like wildfire and is almost impossible to get rid of once it’s established.

It is the only plant I know that you can literally watch grow…its vines will grow as much as 18 inches a day!

A “gift” from Japan? Maybe…but I’ve always considered Kudzu a payback for Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

No…I hope Haiku is just a fad that goes away. Can you imagine if it takes over with the young as a way of communicating like text talk has? “How R U? I’ll C U L8er.” Is bad enough…I don’t want to have to learn to decipher Haiku just to figger out what the kid behind the counter at Micky D’s is saying.

Toyota’s are bad,

Kudzu is worse,

I hope Haiku fades,

Not becoming a curse.