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On Monday, the Washington Post reported the following:
“Roughly one night a month, [Mayor Marion Barry’s top staffers] gather in nondenominational “spiritual meetings’ to pray, swap aphorisms and poetry, and reinforce what they say is a shared belief that Barry has been touched by a higher power. They open the evenings holding hands. They order Chinese food. [Barry lobbyist Bernard] Demczuk, who often hosts the events, sometimes reads his original haiku verse.”
Demczuk says that the Post misinterpreted the gatherings. “I thought it was very unfair to take my personal life and make it look like…administrative policy.”
Official business or not, these evenings of kung pao poetry sounded like such a good idea that the staff of Washington City Paper decided to do the very same thing. A few beers and an order of pork lo mein later, we were reciting our own municipal haiku.
So much depends on
The red schoolhouse, glazed with rain
Filled with asbestos
Flame-gold leaves tumble
Into a coal-black pothole
They’ve moved to Fairfax
License renewal
A bureaucrat yawns at me
Behind safety glass
I’m on hold again
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick
Answer the damn phone
Besieged leadership
Retreats from reality
Into New Age crap
Quick! Hop the Red Line
Fleeing the District for my
Suburban retreat
Couch in the alley
Six rats gnaw a Hefty bag
DPW
Back in a minute
Pink slash across my windshield
Fifty dollars more
Home rule under siege
Coffers empty, vendors peeved
Someone get Chinese
Monroe Street alley
Forgotten blue cans bulging
My lunch from last week
One man, no millions
Barry stands all alone in
Farrakhan’s New Math
The stoplight changes
Green, yellow, red—nothingness
Who turned off the lights?
Stoplights stuck on red
Half a billion short of cash
Call the Third Wave dork
An old dashiki
A limo, a grin, a trick
Marion Barry
Winter’s keening wind
Give me your tired, your poor
Not in my backyard
A dreaming Jim Walsh
Saw a rich and happy town
Ooops, that’s Syracuse
A Washington City Paper T-shirt will be awarded to the person who writes the best haiku about the city. (For those who’ve forgotten freshman English, the first and third lines of haiku have five syllables; the second line has seven syllables.) Inspired poems will be published in next week’s edition if they reach us by Tuesday morning. Submit your entry by writing to Haiku, Washington City Paper, 2390 Champlain St. NW, Washington, DC 20009. Our fax number is (202) 462-8323, or e-mail us at dplotzwashcp.com. No phone calls, please.
Nicole Arthur, David Carr, John Cloud, Glenn Dixon,