Page 21 — Gerard Sarnat
Life is sci-fi flicks
i. Theater of The Absurd haiku
Life is sci-fi flicks
used to read, see on tv
— but much scarier.
ii. Not Sci-Fi Noir Surveillance haiku
Nations unite to
fight the virus horror comes
down from outer space
nominate Chinese
rulers plus their/ our high tech
to control COVID?
iii. Notoriously Bad Sci-Fi Pod Flick haiku
Suburb soccer moms’
SUVs got new slogan
beyond, Proud Parent
Of Honor Student!
and BABY Princess On Board:
I Only Leave House
For Root Canal Work —
Otherwise Pretty Much In
Shot Gun Bunker Mode.
iv. Metrics haiku
A brief history
of measuring up
in America:
nerds’ IQ, slicker
GQ, fuzzy EQ – now
Trump’s Fuckedness Quotient.*
*Sci-Fi writer William Gibson’s phrase quoted in “Mirror World” by Joshua Rothman, 16Dec19 New Yorker
v. Unimpeachable haiku
End of December
2019, taking stock
our democracy
Punch and Judy style
late-state capitalism
begins bowing to
red blue states/ Brexit
post-truth reality shows
of flatlined puppets.
Gerard Sarnat
Gerard won San Francisco Poetry‘s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters.
[I have added a link to an interview with Gerry in The Poet magazine.]