---

I might write an unpoem

if I’m able, if I dare

 

though I am unsure

unknowing, unaware

would it redo poetry?

could it undo it?

I would never want my unpoem

(or anyone else’s)

to accidentally become an antipoem

Enheduanna forbid!

 

I suppose

to write an unpoem

I should not write about seasons or flowers and certainly not beauty or grains of sand

I’ll definitely avoid life, love, labor, loss

those just wouldn’t do

 

I’ve read poems that claim to be prose and much prose that declared itself poetry

 

Indeed, some wild-eyed people write abstract unliterature, some create unusual unart, others play strange unmusic, there are even unfilms, and they can be so invigorating, inspiring, provocative, and fun, even if not always great per se. After one particular participatory unart exhibition a few decades ago, my friends and I stayed out late that night, laughing and feeling high, discussing arcane philosophy and arguing utopian politics, acting as if anything and everything were possible. And perhaps it was, at least in those moments.

 

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I appreciate haiku

that Japanese technology

so pithy and portable

having written several thousand

those little snapshots

each one

a poem, work of art

a little document, bit of therapy

 

but is there unhaiku?

 

a simple haiku 

if it’s written perfectly

would upend the world

 

perhaps

but perfection is a myth

as elusive as infinitude

each more a concept

than a thing

and therefore never achieved

 

is everything nothing?

is nothing everything?

 

I don’t know that

but I know this:

everything that is born

eventually dies

plants, animals, empires,

people, planets, even poems

 

yet here we are

together

right now

---

Dan Brook teaches in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at San Jose State University, from where he organizes the Hands on Thailand program. His most recent books are Harboring Happiness: 101 Ways To Be Happy (Beacon, 2021), Sweet Nothings (Hekate, 2020), about the nature of haiku and the concept of nothing, and Eating the Earth: The Truth About What We Eat (Smashwords, 2020).