Haiku Mondays: Inspired by Favorite Song Lyric

Inland empire
ants affect affluence, but
it's all work, no play.

* * *

Thanks to everyone who played this week and to Troll, originator of this here Best Meme Ever, who so kindly hosted while S.B. and I were enjoying a weekend in Southern California to shop until we dropped (our jaws), run the OC Marathon/Half Marathon, and basically wonder at the California dream that seems at once so admirable and yet so dangerously sealed off from the rest of the really real world.

Anyway, those are musings for other posts. And, yes, I'm writing the manager of the Newport Beach Marriott to give him a piece of my mind on the internet debacle AND the fact that we paid $18 a day to park the rental, which we got for $50 for all four days. Madness, I tell you: MADNESS.

Anyway, let's get on with the judging, shall we?

I'll make this short and sweet. Everyone submitted what I can only say are contenda worthy haikus this week, so once again, it comes down to that little extra something, which, I admit, is particular to the particular judge, in this case, Moi, who tends to choose the winner based on how well something both sticks in my head and evokes emotion in my heart.

In this case, it came down to four:

Buzz's

Born on Iron Horse.
To the V-twin thunder roar
Be wild summer knights.

I instantly knew which song he was referring to and as much as I recall my sojourn in South Dakota during Sturgis with horror, I do love riding motorcycles. My father ran through a series of bikes (Triumphs, BSAs, Harleys) when I was in grade school, finally settling on a custom chopper he designed himself and upon which he used to take me and my brother to school. Sans helmet or any other protective gear, I ate more than my fair share of bugs and still bear the faint scar from the exhaust pipe burn, but I loved it. Great, job, Buzz.

K9's

seer of visions
a legend and martyr; shines
exposed in the light

I give Pink Floyd a lot of scheisse for their at times self-indulgent stoner-'tude languidity, but truth be told, they are (were) in many instances utterly brilliant, and this is one of my all time favorite songs, ever. If more haunting lyrics were ever written about life's complex confluence of loss, failed ambition, hubris, and redemption than those contained in "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" I don't know what they are. K9 captured the essence of the song perfectly.

Kim's

"With or Without You"

It's a conundrum;
Staying would mean disaster.
Leaving, just the same.

Yup. A familiar sentiment, perfectly and concisely summed up in a neat little package in that cut to the chase, ah-hah way Kym has when writing haiku. I give U-2 a lot of crap, too, mainly because I find Bono insufferable, but they're responsible for some truly sublime songs, and this is one of them. Kym's haiku pays that sublimity proper homage and as such would have been my winner had it not been for . . .

Fleurdeleo's

Hitchcock cool blonde mom
fights off rage-fueled words like birds
heroine or fool?

Which I chose as the WINNER for this week, because it sums up so perfectly not only her chosen lyric—a reach back into the musical memory banks of the 1990s to Sir Mix A Lot's "I Checks My Bank"—but it astutely ponders the true motivation of one of the most ill-conceived attempts at social control to ever come down the pike in the name of protecting the pwecious chylldrun, Tipper Gore and her army of Jimmy Choo-ed Nazi Mommies otherwise known as the Parents Music Resource Center, or the Big Bad PMRC. My hatred for this and other groups like it (PETA and MADD being just a handful) is legendary and when Tipper first started flapping her mouth at the horror she felt upon listening to Prince's "Darling Nikki," which started the whole kerfuffle, I was all, "Well, then, you dim bulb of a blonde, don't let your kids BUY the thing!" and I wrote her to tell her so. Listen, Party People, it doesn't take a village; it only takes individual parents doing something that I think we have long forgotten in our misguided quest to make the personal political: their fargin' JOB.

Also, I just love the technical aspects of the haiku, everything from comparing Tipper to a cool Hitchcock blonde (an archetype that Hitchcock viewed with both admiration and derision), and the tidy alliteration of "fights off rage-fueled words like birds." Oh, and fool, most definitely fool.

So, Fleurdeleo, you red lipstick wearing, pearl casting chanteuse of the computer keyboard, congrats on your win and let me know where I can send your jar of salsa. You also get the honor of choosing next week's theme and hosting it at your place.