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Jewish World Review March 26, 2002 / 13 Nisan, 5762

Lenore Skenazy

Skenazy
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Consumer Reports


Hey, New York - Take a Haiku


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | New Yorkers are poets at heart. If you don't believe me, look at the "honkus" on the lampposts in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn - anti-honking haikus written, at first, by a 31-year-old named Aaron Naparstek:

you from new jersey/honking in front of my house/in your suv.

Naparstek penned this salvo back in December, when the honking on his street - an approach to the Brooklyn Bridge - grew unbearable.

"The honking had just reached this fevered pitch," recalls the Web site designer, "when one guy started leaning on the horn nonstop, and I was like, 'Okay. I'm getting some eggs, and if that guy is still honking when I get back from the fridge, he's getting it.'"

Get it he did: Three eggs from Naparstek's window. "By the time the third one hit he was getting out of his car, ballistic, screaming, 'I'm gonna come back tonight and kill you!'"

Time for Plan B, Naparstek decided: Write anti-honking poems instead.

After he posted his first few haikus - defined as three-line poems of five-seven-five syllables - dozens of others began popping up in the nabe. So he started a Web site - www.honku.org - and now New Yorkers are flooding him with poems not only anti-honking, but anti-rude behavior in general.

Clearly, this city is desperate to teach its most inconsiderate inhabitants a lesson - in meter. Here are mine. Feel free to send me some New York pet peeve haikus (Peevkus? New Yorkus?) of your own!

Too Much Excitement

oh boy, a street fair./funnel cake, backrubs, sausage/some guy selling socks

Oh, Mighty Kneed Wonder!

you must really be/something, taking up two seats/while granny lurches

Time Well Spent

Song of the Invigorating Car Alarm

wow, I feel terrif!/3 a.m. and I'm rarin'/to blowtorch your car

Art Schmart

jewish museum/hotsy-totsy nazi show/as bubbe says: oy.

Double Trouble

articulated./that's what the new buses are./in other words: slow.

Reality Hails

if you see a cab/a checkered one, that is: smile!/you're in a movie.

Truth in Sipping

a small is a small/it is not "tall" or "grandé"/it's small. short. little.

Traffic Lesson

don't you dare turn right/until I scurry across!/well you dared. i'm dead.



JWR contributor Lenore Skenazy is a columnist for The New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.

Up

03/21/02: Your 'victim,' is my 'survivor' is somebody else's 'hero'?
03/19/02: Terrorists, get out your No. 2 pencils
03/14/02: Tribute Has City Back at its Windows
03/06/02: Dumping Ted: Gray Day For the Baby Boomers
02/27/02: Sometimes, lying's the best policy
02/20/02: The Fad That Won't Fade Away
02/12/02: The smoking gun of white-collar crime is making some folks very happy
02/05/02: Exterminators are evolving, too
02/01/02: Don't suffer … do drugs
01/22/02: The Blue Light of Happiness
01/18/02: Marlboro's surprising gift to U.S.
01/08/02: Hospitals make me sick
01/02/02: Read-Aloud Resolutions
12/21/01: Nothing's Worse/Than Bad Verse
12/18/01: This Little Dog Bytes
12/13/01: Palm Pilot or Calendar? Paper Wins
12/07/01: The gift of 9/11
12/03/01: Altria Is Really Smokin'

© 2002, New York Daily News