A ZenTao Roundup

It’s been awhile since I shared some of my daily senryu, which I call “zentao” after the very old joke “that was Zen, this is Tao.”

A senryu has the same form as a haiku, but is used more as a form of commentary – sometimes cynical commentary – on human life. They can be funny, while haiku, which are traditionally about nature, are usually serious.

I’ve been writing one every morning since the beginning of 2015. My intention is to express whatever I’m thinking about that morning. Given the history of those years, it is no surprise that a lot of my verses are political in some way, though weather also works its way in.

I share them every morning on social media, so you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Blue Sky, or Mastodon to read them more often. I don’t seem to be able to stop.

I started this year by putting my New Year’s Resolution in the form of a senryu:

Don’t ignore the bad
but pay more attention to
things that bring you joy.

I will confess that I have not succeeded in living up to that resolution to the degree that I would have liked.

Here is one that came to me after I’d already done the day’s zentao. I’ve never shared it before, but it still amuses me:

A lovely poem
about crows, illustrated
with a cardinal!

As I said, a lot of these are political. Here’s the one I wrote after the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and the felonious grifter nominated by the Republicans (no, I do not use that man’s name).

Taking a firm stand
against toddler strongman works.
Laughter’s useful, too.

And a couple that express my despair with the way things have been going in our country:

Many things don’t work —
tech, drugs, deliveries, law,
the Constitution.

It’s time to do more
than just save democracy
every election.

I am particularly angry about the U.S. Supreme Court:

U.S. Supreme Court
overturns Revolution:
Presidents are kings.

On July the first
the court destroyed the heart
of July the Fourth.

A lot of them are advice to myself:

Whatever you do,
there’s something you’re not doing,
so do what you love.

We generalists
want to learn about all things
and connect them up.

There’s more than one way.
There’s always more than one way.
Time to try new ones.

As I get older, I take the ageism I see all around me very personally:

If you call me “spry,”
you will likely discover
I can still throw folks.

And I gave myself some new challenges this year. I very much like the idea of learning to do something humans have done for a very long time. It would be nice to do more singing and other music as well.

I’m learning to draw
and studying poetry.
Ancient human skills.

I have a lot of thoughts about the way our systems work and don’t:

So much could be fixed
if the rich didn’t demand
to profit from it.

“Efficient” systems
fail when one component fails.
Redundancy wins!

TV at med lab
explains all the ways to pay
while we wait for tests.

Here is something I become more aware of regularly – all the smart people whose work I haven’t studied yet, whose ideas I may never get to. I often find them by reading obituaries.

I stumbled onto
some great people and ideas,
but missed many more.

This matters to me because:

Money and power
don’t interest me, but ideas?
I want all of them.

And to end with, my response to a bumper sticker that assured me everything was okay because God was in charge:

If God is in charge,
it’s past time to replace Him
with a better god.