to a real master

[tom.d.stiller]

Some of you will remember my old friend Jack O'Hartz who posted for me when I was in bondage. I don't want to remind you of all the pleasures and sufferings the lousy little poets had when they lived in the concentration camp set up by a fellow poster, but Jack really was of help in those days.

Soon after those events he retired to Barcelona to spend the rest of his life as a poor guitar player accompanying beautiful singers in less beautiful bars. He was, as far as I know, quite successful with the singers...

Enormous changes came to his life, when last year he really made it in the Spanish State Lottery. About 25,000,000 € suddenly crowded his bank account. He bought a nice house near Granada, where he settled with one of the singers studying the life and works of Federico Garcia Lorca.

Unfortunately he doesn't have a reliable internet connection there, so I have to send him a CD containing most of what's posted to this forum every week. So, in a way, I am his computer guy.

Yesterday I received an express letter from him containing his latest poem, and he wanted me to create the screen name "haiku3" for this forum. I called him, and I refused to do so. I explained to him that to my mind already too many screen names around here are used by too few people, and reluctantly he agreed.

Actually he told me it could be lots of fun to break all records, and simultaneously post under 150 screen names. Of course I had to tell him his goal probably was obsolete, because someone will surely have broken this record before he could even think of enough different names. (After all, I told him, he's from Barcelona.)

Jack and I agreed that I should post his poetry using my well known tom.d.stiller account, but - it goes without saying, p., that I won't post other people's work without crediting them, neither Larkin nor O'Hartz - in a way that everyone will be able to clearly distinguish between what's his and what's mine.

So whenever Jack O'Hartz gets out of the suntanned slumber induced by love and liquor with a poem on his mind, he'll send it to me, and I post it using the screen name he chose. His first forum poem is an experimental triple haiku which personally I can't relate to.

But I'm not the judge in this case. I'm just the inter-whatever's-the-word-of-the-season. So don't let your judgment get influenced by my preconceived preferences.

Cheers
tom

to a real master


pick peek pack peek pick
pack pick peek poke peek pick pack
peek pick peek pack peek

the un-ex-pec-ted
hole ......
six syl-la-bles short.

the mas-ters teach you:
al-ways fol-low clas-sic rules.
now shut up, po-et!