My older brother Davinda
owns a shiny laundromat
in a city so big it’s
a land of it’s own.
I go visit him every
few years to help out
during his busy period.

His place looks real nice
from the outside.  It’s
all glass with a light
copper graduated tint
that slowly fades from
dark at the floor to
clear under the sign.

This Texan from the
Mexican crematorium
next door hooked him
up with free hot air
and this glass.  All Davinda
had to do was shave and
wash little-league shirts
at least twice a week.

Looking out is like that
Rihanna video where you
can’t tell colours right
without looking at the
haircut.  Davina says
people won’t look you
in the eye and anyway
the tint makes the
sidewalk look clean.

The hot air has
overheated most of
the driers so there’s
only one working for
the four washers.  An
old lady is drying her
horse hair blankets and
smiling at the queue.

There a young black guy
from the upper PJ’s
washing his dads suit
next to a tight lipped blond
checking her husbands shorts
for lingering stains.
They don’t notice
each others handshakes.

An army man is removing
dry cleaners wrap from his
uniform and washing it again
because his tattoo has run
into the sleeve.  Another guy
threw in a dead duck and
stood guard as the first read
GQ inside his white bible.

I told Davinda about the
duck but he said that he
never goes out front and
anyway a Jewish guy
washed one a while back
in a cold wash with super
spin and it didn’t stick.
So it’s better to sit still.

The dryer has stopped
but the blanket isn’t dry.
The old lady doesn’t have
any more quarters and
everyone is very sorry
about their shoes.  I go
out and give her a couple,
but she isn’t grateful.

I ask Davinda why he stays.
He says that uncle Ravi
(on his second wife’s side)
incorporated him in
Delaware where they
take anyone’s quarters
for just a nickel each. This
happiness makes him thin,
and me homesick.

Why do I feel obligated to enter into hopeless things that afterwards make me feel unhappy.  I visit a number of sites (including some that I run myself) and post things not because I want to or need to but because I think others expect it of me.  It’s like as a long standing “community” member I have some sort of duty to get into various things.  Do things, read things, write things.

When really I just want to delete my account and go outside.  I’ve seen a trend in people deleting their accounts instead of not posting.  I think about the whys and whats of them leaving for almost several seconds.  It will not be different for me.  Only I’ll be outside so I won’t care.

After the entering the haiku contest I took my dog out and walking in the local woods for an hour in the rain.  This was far more fulfilling and filled my head with better images than any written word.  Nature isn’t a series of 5-7-5 moments, not even in 16C Japan.  Really.  Anyway you can’t possibly read my haiku and see what I see, only a representation of what you’ve seen, or if you know me maybe what you think I’ve seen.  This isn’t like 16C Japan.  A time and place where all readers had a common structure, rituals and rules.  The view out of a readers window was not that different from your own.  This is not at all so now.  That’s why I like senryu.

Haiku means boiling down or dumbing down nature to a thin film of itself hopefully to represent some abstract truth or beauty.  Read too many and you see the shallowness of this.  There is no shared context.  So why pretend you see a deeper meaning?  Noone likes to appear stupid.  This is the Japanese trick of Haiku.  It’s more about saving face than about inner truth.  Thus it is with website posting.