Category Archives: haiku

Slim Dickens (plus bonus haiku)

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Slim Dickens

David Copperfield
now there’s a name
to conjure with.

Let’s read Oliver Twist again
like we did last summer
let’s read Oliver Twist again
like we did last year.

Great Expectorations –
the plague novel
he never wrote.

 

Raccoons in the Road

caught in the headlights:
too much eye shadow, fellas,
too much eye shadow.

 

Haiku written in response to a comment by the incomparable Steve Simpson.

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Haiku written in response to a comment by the incomparable Steve Simpson.

it’s summer here, Steve
keeping the syllable count
as low as I can.

 

(see Steve’s comment here )

( if you are not following Steve’s blog, you should be, he’s one of the most original poets out there!)

Why I have difficulty writing haiku

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I thought I would give this one another outing at Open Link night over at dVerse.

Why I have difficulty writing haiku

problem with haiku
definite article is
first casualty

next casualty
indefinite article
makes me sound little

like Japanese guard
in prison camp in movie
world war two movie

who for some reason
is speaking English (how? why?)
with staccato voice

or perhaps I am
po-faced guru on mountain
dispensing bromides:

crow flies at midnight
in front of luminous moon
affair ends badly

all because I am
in service to, at mercy
of, syllable count.

Early Bird Special (quadrille with bonus haiku)

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Early Bird Special

unlike the midnight special
there are no songs
to celebrate the early bird special
no IHOPian bard,
no poet laureate of the blue plate
no bargain basement Dylan
no cut price Cohen
to extol the digestive
and economic benefits
of getting an early start.

Inspired by the dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word “early”. Thanks to Kim for the prompt.

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Bonus Haiku

dawn breaks, early shift
at the haiku factory
counting syllables.

Photo: Sunrise on Planet Cistern 2

 

The Daily Prompt is dead, long live…..

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The Daily Prompt is dead, long live…..

Suddenly at the end of May, the Daily Prompt disappeared from the blogosphere just when I was getting to know it. Frankly, I miss it. I didn’t respond on a daily basis but every now and then, a prompt would fire my imagination (I can’t get no..) and I would write a poem that I would never have written without that prompt. So here is a haiku to lament the passing of the Daily Prompt.

In Memoriam: the Daily Prompt

left bereft, promptless
stalled and stumped and paralysed
how can we go on?

But all is not lost, I have noticed a few bloggers out there are trying to fill the gap, and I would like to throw my hat into that ring. The difference is I will be offering prompts that are not actual words, but words that I have made up. Today’s word is “brattitude”. As in…..

“The dress has that swaggering catwalk brattitude we have come to expect from a Karl Aufderfelt design.”

Since I do not want to sully the memory of the Daily Prompt, I have struggled to come up with an alternative name. I thought maybe, the Daily Prod, but some of my friends in Belfast might mistake it for a sectarian bulletin. I toyed with the Daily Prick but abandoned it for obvious reasons. I finally settled on the Daily Jolt, like a shot of caffeine, a creative laxative. (This post is like a bowling ball that keeps veering towards the gutter.)
So give it a go, hit me with your best shot, post something inspired by the jolt word “brattitude”, link back to this blog and I will list a link to your post here. Or simply post a comment here.

By the way, it’s very unlikely that I will have the imagination or application to do this on a daily basis, so the Daily Jolt will probably be occasional.