Thursday, January 26, 2012

Mississippi Haiku



36 Views of Mount Fuji Below Ryogoku Bridge in the
Eastern Capital Katsushika Hokusai


Mississippi Haiku
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Magnolia blooms—
First sign of Southern springtime
Mississippi night

Ka-plunk on the beach—
My nude young Southern friend
The whole night is still

Biloxi boyfriend—
His Pascagoula girlfriends
He picks me instead
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Basho's own preferences at this time are vague; he recalled that "at one time I coveted an official post with a tenure of land," and that "there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love." Was he referring to real obsessions or just fictional ones?

“He was still young and ambitious, confident of his poetential. He must have wished above all, to get a good education that would secure him some of the wide world outside his native town and to mix with a wide variety of people. With the curiousity of youth he may have tried to do all sorts of things fashionable among the young libertines of the day. Afterward he even wrote, “There was a time when I was fascianated with the ways of homosexual love.”—Makoto Ueda, The Master Haiku Poet, Matsuo Basho, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 22.

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