Haiku Hassle

So, I got bored with the conventional poem, at least, with the kind I usually write. After dancing around the rhyming scheme and making Thesaurus.com my best friend, boy was I tired of stanzas! A vague idea of writing haiku instead began floating in my head. The first time I’d read it was in the House of Night books (back when sexy Loren Blake wooed Zoey with his mesmerizing ones. Yum.), but I still had no clue what a haiku was. So, it was back to the ol’ Google search engine.

Basically, a haiku is a very short form of Japanese poetry, and by very short, I mean ve-ery short. It’s usually three lines or so, in three phrases of five, seven and five respectively. Despite its size, haiku are actually pretty complex, and there are three major elements involved-

 ‘It is impossible to single out any current style or format or subject matter as definitive. Some of the more common practices in English are:

1. §  Use of three (or fewer) lines of 17 or fewer syllables;
2. §  Use of a season word (kigo);
3. §  Use of a cut (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) paralleling the Japanese use of kireji, to implicitly contrast and compare two events, images, or situations.

While the traditional Japanese haiku has focused on nature and the place of humans in it, some modern haiku poets, both in Japan and the West, consider a broader range of subject matter suitable, including urban contexts.’

(DISCLAIMER: Yes, I copied and pasted that from Wikipedia. So, the information ain’t coming from me. Sue me.)

After I went online and did some research on it, I tried writing a few of my own.

The first one turned out like this:

Moaning, groaning, slimy

In a pool of pale blood

My lovely baby.

Eeesh. See what I mean? It’s quite difficult.

Eventually, I did manage to crank out a few, but I’ll let you be the judge of how good they are (I’m pretty sure that they aren’t haiku at all, just random lines. Ah, what the hellJ)

The moon is Mikado-yellow

Suspended against a night of veiled beauty

Dreams explode above.

A Muscat evening

Warm, with a hollow roar

A shrill screech and people die.

Basketball swishes

The net plunges; I scream

Only sleep is my witness

Mysterious night

Dangerous lovely, what would you have me see?

Only nothing. Death.

Scopic sky

Nostalgia drags my wings

Mother, why would you have me leave?

In short, haiku are simply the most beautiful forms of poetry I’ve ever read. They’re short and get to the point quickly, but at the same time, they have this air of mystery that puts me in mind of a cold, moonlit night under a pear tree, on a snow-capped mountain in Japan. Good stuff.