Giggles and giggles
And giggles and giggles and
Giggles and giggles.

Lemuel Reilly's Brief Dissertation of Haikus, in which both their brevity and foreign composure mark them as an important poetic form

Most people formally know the haiku as a contained and epigrammatic poetic construction, limited to a first line of five syllables, a second line of seven, and a final third line of five. This form allows the haiku to contain thoughts of multitudinous size, limited in what it can say only by the extent to which its composers are willing to dispense with grammatical encumbrances.

For example, taking the above statements, an example of rich and varied—if rather rotund—prose, and watch their translation into haiku form:

Haiku, the short poem
Of multitudinous thought
Abbreviated.

Notice the exponential increase in profundity that comes with the decrease of syllabic expenditure. This is a wonderful device for poetic thought and should be liberally employed when ideas need a poetic flourish to send them along on the eastern wind.

Indeed, the notion of the “eastern-ness” in haiku should not be quickly forgotten because to be eastern implies the strange and distant, an “other” that persists today even in our more rapidly circulating globe. The very foreign-ness of the haiku is directly imbedded in its name, which means nipple blossom, and for its oral peculiarity marks any composer as a cosmopolitan with appropriate taste. Indeed, to say “I have composed you a haiku” has an air of education far brisker than “I wrote you a poem” because one: you have demonstrated the knowledge of a specific genre of poem, and two: you have shown that your artistic reach can grope the distant shores of inspiration.

But, one may stop and say that the foreign is ugly and frightening. Ah, true enough and true forever, but the foreign of the east has the special property of being a particularly distant foreign, not the imposing monster that gnaws bones in your bedroom closet, but rather the smoke-nostriled dragon that slumbers worlds away, licking coals and gouging screams that evaporate after the tip of a tongue gives such fantasies air. The eastern foreign is a spectacle of the sublime that we can handle safely because the core of its power is insulated by the rolling pacific, rolling and rolling and rendering our fears to soft and pleasant rock and sway, that takes us away to wonderful and far dreams,
As such, haikus are
Distant, sublime, and juicy
Nipple blossoms.*

* here, we count the period as a “full stop,” functioning in the meter as a syllabic beat that can fill in for the missing syllable and allow the most succinct re-emergence of the profoundly appropriate, four-syllable, definition of haiku.

A Vision, from inaugerated contributor Lemuel Reilly, Taken from the Museum of Modern Art in the enlightened providence of New York, New York

Dear listeners, greetings and nods to your respect and deference. I come here humbly, waddling my way to the podium to propose a vision that late came to me.

Now, hold now. For moments and implorings I understand the right-held skepticism that so folds the creases in our time. “Vision?” you scoff. And more, you say, “Who can claim to be the heir of vision? Nonsense and foolery. He should set that power back on the alter from which it was stolen.” And so you then sit and wait to hear me lie.

But vision, dear listeners, when it comes, cannot long be silent, and it refuses deference. My vision comes on shallow wings, not so much glowing from above, but rather sort of tattered and rolling along the sidewalk, rather like a bird, coughing down its last worms, with its talons caught between the pavement. It was, long before, a lofty vision, as any of the loftiest of birds, but lately it comes in its most low and penitent form.

The vision which I propose came in the galleries of art, landing a pilgrimage away in the distant reaches of New York. My younger wanderings had brought me there with all the electric mind of a jitter-hearted sparrow, bursting with eyes that groped for vision. And what better place to get such vision than at said gallery, the place of looking to see and subsequent, abundant inspiration.

And first, in the galleries of geometric wall-wear, I paused and pondered at the curious shapes and colors, free of narrative and tutored in the most obscure of symmetries that transposed and rotated common kindergarten math practices into the intricate and beyond the sublime. And again, at first I, eager looker, was calm and complete to look on and survey. But slowly, a disquieting notion passed between the pieces, stranded there, somewhere, in those white-walled spaces between. It seemed to me that as looking on, I was nothing more than a looker, just a seer of things to be seen. But simply looking? There is no vision in that! No, there is always more to grasp, if only we can seize it for our own fists and hearts and minds. So, turning to my travel companion, I ordered the camera and arranged for his hand to record my presence.

The picture was composed as follows: the piece of geometry, still except for tilting in the camera’s uneasy pixels, bobbled with red and blue and gold and black in iterations of an uneasy pattern whose brilliance boggles along the eye. But more, in the fore-space of the piece, was me, with a pleasant smile and a raised hand, waving to my travel companion and, by extension, waving to all other picture-viewers who would grace my recording.

And, as the picture was taken, there were visions bursting in my sparrow’s heart, visions of wonder jabbering through the wide nature of seeing. Yes, these were visions on seeing, and they followed something as such:

“As man, and woman, and child, take it upon themselves to see Art, that largest ‘A,’ we find ourselves treading the narrow paths of museums tread many and over a time after time. Indeed, one must only look down to the floor and see the scuffs of the treaders that have come so long and many before. And look down on those marks, mark them well, see that they are not of the most random and strange sort, no, they rather have the look of a patters, measured and calculated, if only you would look to the edges.

I shall explain my meaning more clearly:

"Imagine for a moment the floor of a museum, taken from its low and trampled ground and hung on the wall. Then, see what you will. I suspect you will notice the pollockian patters of scuff and rough and maybe even the most faded lick of a dropped lemonade (snuck past the security guards and sipped with the most guilty of surreptitious sips). And there, for all its intricate record, an Art piece alone and entire. But look more, what other patter is on our suspended master piece? There along the border inches, notice where the marks and scuffs are less numerous, almost non-existent, see that practically pristine floor. Is it simple inconvenience that keeps these scuffers and walkers away form the extremities? Are they, in that big ‘A’ American way, grown so bulbous that their dollops of girth hold feet at a distance from the wall? I say no, it is nothing of the sort. Rather, think you for a moment about the art that lined the walls when our piece was formerly a floor. The art of this floor’s walls cocooned the edges of the room in intangible gravitas that subdues and suggests our distance and reverence. How low for thinking and wonderment. There is no vision there for art, so insulated from our scuffed and common feet.

So, I, in a fit with broader-than-average vision, took the camera as a tool to collapse said space in an instant. There, in the photograph, a flat image places only the illusion of space between my friendly form and the abstract picture behind me. Indeed, a photograph is fit for flattening such space and showing that me, a man of flesh and feeling, can indeed congress with art, that biggest ‘A.’”

And so, my piece of purely unique brilliance was had, and a nod and pat warmed my gut with agreeable vision. Pure brilliance, as such that only a lofty, podium-minded fellow might occasion.

And yet, strolling and satisfied, scuffing the floors as I went, I saw the many other walkers of the museum, they too standing and picture-taking their bodies along with the art of all around: everything from simple smiles to exaggerated poses of pointing and thumbs-up and silent gasps. Indeed the abstraction of the surrounding art seemed begging to be something of a backdrop, and the vision so grandly conceived in my own conceit must have soon dissipated to the millions around. See them wonderful and flocking over the grand podium I would have had all my own entire. And such the sparrow comes down to cough its worm, heart a-flutter, if not its wings.