Haiku-ing

Haiku, I like you,

You limit my syllables.

Differently, I think.

Ohh, the haiku.  A ancient Japanese poem that I fell in love with just last year.   It started in Tahoe.  Beautiful, magical Lake Tahoe.  It started small – a haiku here, a haiku there.  My roommates and I embraced the spirit of the haiku with ferocity.  We wrote silly haikus, serious haikus, drunken haikus, angry haikus, happy haikus (you get the idea).  We made a haiku wall and encouraged our friends who visited to write a haiku and stick it on there.  We never seemed to have paper, so the wall was a mélange of haikus written on scraps of cardboard, the backs of envelopes, and pieces of magazines.  We taped them haphazardly to the wall using blue duct tape.  The wall grew large and turned into a weird

scrapbook of our lives.  I never thought that haiku-ing would become such a large part of my life, but something about the brevity of the poem captured my attention.   The haiku forces you to sum up the thought, message, or feeling you are trying to convey in 17 syllables.  Words must be rearranged and thoughts must be approached from  new angles..  And the best part about haikus is that they are relatively easy to write and can be quite silly and trivial.The New York Times has created a haiku generator, that will write a haiku based on the news headlines.   And there is something really, well, poetic, in the discovery of poetry hiding in the cruel headlines of the news.  You can check out the New York Times haiku generator here. And I urge all of you to write a haiku a day, I think you'll find it strangely therapeutic.Some of my favorites from the wall:

life is just a game                                              enjoy this haiku

make up the rules as you go                          for its the last one I'll do

and you'll always win                                         unless I sniff glue

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You and I were eggs                                     Yellow dog, sad eyes

Once that big tree was a seed                  you look at me and I melt

Then we both grew up                                    I wanna pet you

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