Baiku: Very Short Poems Made While Riding A Bicycle
by Chris Brandt
Chris Brandt is a writer, activist, translator, carpenter, furniture designer, theatre worker. He teaches in the English Department and the Peace and Justice Program at Fordham University. Poems and essays have been published in Spain, France, Mexico and the US; translations in The New Yorker and by Seven Stories Press, UC Berkeley, and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
Call for Baikus for possible publication online or in book form.
What is a baiku? A very short poem made while riding a bicycle, and later recalled in stillness. Some will have the classic form of a haiku; others will find their own forms. They need not be about bicycle riding as such, but it will somehow be clear they have to do with it. What makes a baiku besides its brevity and the fact that the Muse is riding on your handlebars? This, for example?
I just love
riding down
the green
west side
of Manhattan.
That’s a nice sentiment, and I do love riding the bike path, but there needs to be something more, though what that “more” is I leave to chance, to the Muse, and to you.
Feel free to share the poem you submit in the comments below as well. The same license applies. Only poems submitted by the above form are automatically submitted to Chris Brandt.
Sticky Maintenance
Tick, ticking from spinning wheel
Bubble on bike tire
Pink, gummy problem
Baiku poem writes itself
comment form confuses
poem disappears. Why?
Cyclists pedal earnestly
Airplane flies above
Sweat beats jet fuel
Rusting Raleigh Rolls relentlessly
while steel wheels flatten hills
weight is an illusion
Spotted an old bike
For sale from a college kid
Friday beer money
[...] Baiku: Very Short Poems Made While Riding A Bicycle [...]
Biking in Miami:
A car blows the stop.
I slam on brakes and swerve right.
Death avoided again.
Century riders!
Enthusiasm, speed, wind, thirst.
How far to next pit?
Provence in California
hot asphalt
hot muscles
biking past
a fragrant field of lavender
in the hot shade
Pedals cranking wheels
Spinning hair flying it’s re-
Volutionary!