Many of you wrote haiku at the Silver Lake Jubilee, and we’re glad to announce our first (of two) winners of a $20 gift certificate to Skylight Books!

One of my favorites is about our frequent helicopter fly-overs, by Ryan, who “just moved to Highland Park from Mississippi”:

Steel choppers above

Modern prehistoric birds

Watching over me

Ian wrote another haiku about airborne vehicles:

They make me fly high.

Who doesn’t want to fly high?

Silver Lake Jetpacks!

His inspiration is simple: “I like haikus and jetpacks.” Jubilee participant Abel wrote a more intimate haiku for his unborn son:

When I father child,

His name: Thuglonious Crunk,

We will rock this town.

In his accompanying paragraph he eloquently writes, “I will live vicariously through my unborn son. He will be everything I am not. Get ready, prepare yourself, because he will be the real deal.” Here’s hoping young Thuglonious might someday write a better haiku…

We also received a rather prophetic haiku, written by Susan, no doubt by one of the many crowded around the food truck televisions to watch the Lakers in the playoffs:

L.A. loves Lakers.

Bryant, Bynum, and Gasol.

Bringing home the ring!

One recurring theme, no doubt because of the Next Step Moustachios sold at the Molosus/Jubilee Booth in the Literary Village, was the abundance of mustaches, real and fake. This example is by Ian:

Ray Bans, mustaches

Real + fake are everywhere

At the Jubilee

Another, which describes the Silver Lake Jubilee well, by Derek:

Fifty-two food trucks on a tongue

The tongue is a street named Myra

Buy a tee shirt and stain it with food

And perhaps the most eloquent of our haiku describing the event itself is by Liz, who is our first winner of the Neighborhood Haiku Contest, for her attention to imagery, reference to the season, and, of course, the neighborhood.

Jacaranda trees

Leave lavender snowflakes

On Hoover Street Cars

We also received many haiku about Silver Lake, Echo Park, and other Los Angeles neighborhoods. From Erin, a former West-sider:

New to Silver Lake

Micheltorena, tough hill

My glutes thank me daily

Allison recalls her observations from Sunset Junction coffee shop patios:

dogs ride in strollers

people pass on bicycles

on Sunset at dusk

And Robert, our only “professional drunkard,” recounts the time his watch stopped on the stumble home:

Between the Red Lion and the Cha

one could see it,

the center of the universe

Not everything in Silver Lake is coffee or drinking, moustaches or sunglasses, as Vince writes in his four-line haiku:

Star twinks at blue heron

Nesting in eucalyptus

As I stroll by

Along Silver Lake.

Stay tuned for more haiku from the Silver Lake Jubilee’s Neighborhood Haiku Contest, and be sure to read more about literature at Jubilee partner Molossus!