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Exercise in Song Haiku

Show me the way home:
I’m tired, having drunk my fill
Of some noxious spring.
Now, feeling quite ill,

I search all summer in vain;
Can’t find home at all.
Yet my hopes still rise / Like distant song, to the skies
As the dead leaves fall.

I cannot find my way home,
Nor shall my meanderings abate,
And water, water everywhere—nor any drink!—
Is my own benighted fate.

I stoppeth one of three
And relate tales of the sea;
O, by my grey beard and glittering eye,
Guest at the wedding: hear me!

Home smells of baking and fires,
But I can't detect it for the stench
Of alcohol and Scampi Fries and dry-roast nuts
And the general fug of mensch.

I long for hints of peat,
Salty seas and shorelines sweet,
And the gentle note of rose-round-the-door
Filling the length of my street.

Show Mimi how to get Hywel:
I’m Cy and I want to Giuseppe.
I had a Johnnie Walker just an Arp ago,
And now I’m Don Quixote.

Wherever I Paul Klee
(Foma, Erdmann or Marie),
You will Kasper Krone my Édith Piaf:
Show me the Ray from Paris!

I crave that you indulge me,
And, like a Samaritan of old,
Assist me with directions to rus in urbe;
My asylum; my stronghold.

My weariness has won,
And o’erthrown my devotion
To a life of Bacchanalian glee:
Instead, I—wait, I’m not done!

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