Naked Haiku

  MESSY ART
Art, like life:
messy along the way,
beautiful
in its ordered end.


   MY BODY
Intending no
sacrilege, I offer
my body
for your art.



    GESTATION
Curled in the womb
of your gaze,
I await birth
through your
dancing fingers.



     RAINSNAKES
Liquid snakes wriggle
down the slanted panes:
birth, life, death
in a moment.



     I don't recall the occasions for the composition of the first two Haiku here, but the second two are vivid in my memory.  "Gestation" came to birth after a session at Doylestown Art Center, run by a talented art teacher.  I had posed for Sunday open sessions there several times, when the owner/teacher asked me to pose one day for a class of neophyte artists, all female, none of whom had drawn from a nude male before.  One pose suggested was literally in a gestation position, which yielded some interesting drawings.  A little reflection later gave me the poem.

     "Rainsnakes" was composed after a night session (or maybe it was just a very dark and stormy afternoon) at Tyler School of Art, the art school affiliated with Temple University.  The studios all had slanted glass roofs, allowing a lot of natural light in during the day.  When it rained, the runoff made interesting patterns down the panes of glass.