It\u2019s been awhile since I shared some of my daily senryu, which I call \u201czentao\u201d after the very old joke \u201cthat was Zen, this is Tao.\u201d<\/p>\n
A senryu has the same form as a haiku, but is used more as a form of commentary \u2013 sometimes cynical commentary \u2013 on human life. They can be funny, while haiku, which are traditionally about nature, are usually serious.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been writing one every morning since the beginning of 2015. My intention is to express whatever I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t seem to be able to stop.<\/p>\n
I started this year by putting my New Year\u2019s Resolution in the form of a senryu:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t ignore the bad
\nbut pay more attention to
\nthings that bring you joy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI will confess that I have not succeeded in living up to that resolution to the degree that I would have liked.<\/p>\n
Here is one that came to me after I\u2019d already done the day\u2019s zentao. I\u2019ve never shared it before, but it still amuses me:<\/p>\n
A lovely poem
\nabout crows, illustrated
\nwith a cardinal!<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAs I said, a lot of these are political. Here\u2019s 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\u2019s name).<\/p>\n
Taking a firm stand
\nagainst toddler strongman works.
\nLaughter\u2019s useful, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd a couple that express my despair with the way things have been going in our country:<\/p>\n
Many things don\u2019t work \u2014
\ntech, drugs, deliveries, law,
\nthe Constitution.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s time to do more
\nthan just save democracy
\nevery election.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI am particularly angry about the U.S. Supreme Court:<\/p>\n
U.S. Supreme Court
\noverturns Revolution:
\nPresidents are kings.<\/p>\nOn July the first
\nthe court destroyed the heart
\nof July the Fourth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nA lot of them are advice to myself:<\/p>\n
Whatever you do,
\nthere\u2019s something you\u2019re not doing,
\nso do what you love.<\/p>\nWe generalists
\nwant to learn about all things
\nand connect them up.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s more than one way.
\nThere\u2019s always more than one way.
\nTime to try new ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAs I get older, I take the ageism I see all around me very personally:<\/p>\n
If you call me \u201cspry,\u201d
\nyou will likely discover
\nI can still throw folks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd 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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m learning to draw
\nand studying poetry.
\nAncient human skills.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI have a lot of thoughts about the way our systems work and don\u2019t:<\/p>\n
So much could be fixed
\nif the rich didn\u2019t demand
\nto profit from it.<\/p>\n\u201cEfficient\u201d systems
\nfail when one component fails.
\nRedundancy wins!<\/p>\nTV at med lab
\nexplains all the ways to pay
\nwhile we wait for tests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nHere is something I become more aware of regularly \u2013 all the smart people whose work I haven\u2019t studied yet, whose ideas I may never get to. I often find them by reading obituaries.<\/p>\n
I stumbled onto
\nsome great people and ideas,
\nbut missed many more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis matters to me because:<\/p>\n
Money and power
\ndon\u2019t interest me, but ideas?
\nI want all of them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd to end with, my response to a bumper sticker that assured me everything was okay because God was in charge:<\/p>\n
If God is in charge,
\nit’s past time to replace Him
\nwith a better god.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been awhile since I shared some of my daily senryu, which I call \u201czentao\u201d after the very old joke \u201cthat was Zen, this is Tao.\u201d A senryu has the same form as a haiku, but is used more as a form of commentary \u2013 sometimes cynical commentary \u2013 on human life. They can be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[814],"tags":[186,185],"class_list":["post-3600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-senryu","tag-zentao"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3601,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600\/revisions\/3601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}