Allen Ginsberg

Haiku

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Haiku - form Summary

Short, Conversational Haiku

These short poems use the traditional three-line haiku shape but loosen its rules into conversational, often jagged snapshots. Ginsberg pairs abrupt everyday images—city noise, domestic scenes, bodily details—with sudden mental shifts, mixing Zen-like immediacy and autobiographical urban grit. The compact form intensifies contrasts between serene observation and intrusive memory, making each miniature feel like a lived improvisation rather than a strict classical exercise.

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Drinking my tea Without sugar- No difference. The sparrow shits upside down --ah! my brain & eggs Mayan head in a Pacific driftwood bole --Someday I'll live in N.Y. Looking over my shoulder my behind was covered with cherry blossoms. Winter Haiku I didn't know the names of the flowers--now my garden is gone. I slapped the mosquito and missed. What made me do that? Reading haiku I am unhappy, longing for the Nameless. A frog floating in the drugstore jar: summer rain on grey pavements. (after Shiki) On the porch in my shorts; auto lights in the rain. Another year has past-the world is no different. The first thing I looked for in my old garden was The Cherry Tree. My old desk: the first thing I looked for in my house. My early journal: the first thing I found in my old desk. My mother's ghost: the first thing I found in the living room. I quit shaving but the eyes that glanced at me remained in the mirror. The madman emerges from the movies: the street at lunchtime. Cities of boys are in their graves, and in this town... Lying on my side in the void: the breath in my nose. On the fifteenth floor the dog chews a bone- Screech of taxicabs. A hardon in New York, a boy in San Fransisco. The moon over the roof, worms in the garden. I rent this house.

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