This was meant to be a haibun. After the
first sentence, I folded the list of rules into a sparrow.                   I go for a walk,
pass by the place where people write haiku
and roll juxtaposition into irony
as they eat their meals with the wrong
ends of their chopsticks.

he lifts gari with his left hand—
a slot machine jangles

A patron’s nearly full dish of wasabi sits amongst sushi platters that, except
for the left behind rice-explosions,
have been emptied. Around the corner,
a shaman stands near the clocktower
where the grass has died from a winter’s salting. The shadow of a ginkgo leaf flutters on his face like the wings of Buson’s moth. I want to turn off all the lights so that it can see.

The systems are broken. ****. The systems are failing.

Further up Beverly St., an autistic boy
plays with Lego on a front porch. I try to remember his true name, and hope that
he can help break down the foundations, raindance his mind around the blocks’
angles and lines to solve an equation with a variable that is the shaman understanding
why the boy pretends to not see us.

Turn off the lights so that we can see.