Baby's Mud-Stained Arm Haiku

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXIII: "baby's mud-stained arm"

written on the 77th anniversary of the Nakba ("the catastrophe")

smoky rubbles

a baby's mud-stained arm 

gathering crows

NeverEnding Story, May 15 2025

FYI: UN "2024" Nakba Commemoration 

Nakba of 1948 and Today Are Not Separate Events, but Ongoing Process of Palestinian Displacement, Replacement, Speakers Tell Panel, Urging Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza ...

The Nation, May 15, "2025:" (Israel's War on Gaza, Day 587) The Nakba Has Never Ended

In Gaza, the boundary marking past and present has become indistinct. Nineteen forty-eight is not over—it is unfolding again, and in more violent and destructive ways.

And Haaretz, May 9 2025: How Did Israelis Become So Indifferent to Children Killed in Gaza?

We must ask ourselves, how did we become so indifferent? How have our hearts become hardened to the deaths of children? Why are we silent in the best case, and even rejoicing in the worst, most horrible case? We must view this indifference as a sign that we are undergoing serious deterioration, a process that has affected our central moral nerve. This is a process that requires us to get help.

If nothing can justify what was done to us on October 7, how can it be that what we have been doing to them for more than a year and a half now – actions that have cost tens of thousands of people their lives and destroyed their lands – does seem justified to us?

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXIV: "grinning and finger-gunning"

smoky ruins

after smoky ruins

a soldier 

grinning and finger-gunning

at the TV camera

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXV: "covered in blood"

covered in blood

a mother holds her dead children ...

with news on mute

this Israeli expat shouts

we won't forget; they won't escape

FYI: Haaretz, May 15: Trump's Sanctions on ICC Prosecutor Have Halted Tribunal's Work

The sanctions, that followed the arrest warrants filed for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, will 'prevent victims from getting access to justice,' said a senior director at Human Rights Watch

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.

The Hague-based court's American staffers have been told that they risk arrest if they travel to the U.S. Some non-governmental organizations have stopped working with the ICC. The leaders of one won't even reply to emails from court officials.

Wedding Photo with Brown Edges Tanka

I seem happy

in this wedding photo

with brown edges ...

on my then-wife's face

a look I never knew

Cold Moon Journal, March 28, 2025

Refugee Girl Haiku

first snowflakes ...

a lone refugee girl

pirouetting

Cold Moon Journal, March 3, 2025

Refugee Child's Gaze Haiku

cold moon

in the web of barbed wire

a refugee child's gaze

Cold Moon Journal, March 3, 2025

Blooming Faces Haiku

blooming faces

mother's water sprinkler

spouts a rainbow

NeverEnding Story, May 11 2025

Border Towns Haiku

This Brave New World, CXXII

border towns linked

by a suspension bridge

smoky twilight

NeverEnding Story, May 10 2025

FYI: This haiku could be read as a sequel to mine below:

the arch

of the border bridge

half moon

Wales Haiku Journal, Autumn 2018

Added: Yellowing Memories, V

this childhood lake

an endless blue expanse

rippling silver

in the morning sunshine ...

my love buried herself here

Added: 

unseasonal heat

Tarzan yell after Tarzan yell

in the schoolyard 

FYI: The Weather Network, May 12: Ontario's first 30°C recorded

Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XXX

a magical-realism tanka written in response to Donald Trump's first Middle East trip to three of the world's richest nations.

the White House 

covered in thick black oil

all Trump has done

is win, win big, win bigger

in his golf-ball-sized head 

FYI: The Guardian, May 12: Trump’s Middle East trip isn’t just about diplomacy. It’s about the family business

The Trump Organization has millions in developments in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE – sites of his first state visit.

While the true value of Saudi and other Gulf Arab states’ investments in the US economy remain hazy, their deals with Trump’s family business and its foreign partners are far more tangible

Immigrant Past Tanka

jolted awake 

from a recurring dream

I murmur

is my immigrant past 

this black hole of what-ifs?

Cold Moon Journal, March 3, 2025

New Peace Plan Haiku

written on the 80th anniversary of VE Day 

new "peace" plan

fields of sunflowers

bend to the wind

NeverEnding Story, May 8 2025

FYI: This haiku could be read as a prequel to the following:

army of sunflowers

again peace becomes

war somewhere

Third Prize, 2016 Kusamakura Haiku Competition

Dietmar Tauchner

And for more about reflections on VE Day, see Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on VE Day in the shadow of Russia's War on Ukraine

...the idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow is completely wrong.

Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.

-- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer

Added:

the silence 

in an armless man's saluting ...

the sunlight shines

on 30,000 ceramic poppies 

at the Tower of London

The World Unseen Tanka

men and women 

birth and death, war and peace ... 

between pages

of A Farewell to Arms

the world unseen breaks each one

NeverEnding Story, May 7 2025

FYI: L5 alludes to the following lines from A Farewell to Arms:

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

And the following is an excerpt from "Last Words" by Joan Didion, which was published  The New Yorker, October 25, 1998

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

So goes the famous first paragraph of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which I was moved to reread by the recent announcement that what was said to be Hemingway’s last novel would be published posthumously next year. That paragraph, which was published in 1929, bears examination: four deceptively simple sentences, one hundred and twenty-six words, the arrangement of which remains as mysterious and thrilling to me now as it did when I first read them, at twelve or thirteen, and imagined that if I studied them closely enough and practiced hard enough I might one day arrange one hundred and twenty-six such words myself. Only one of the words has three syllables. Twenty-two have two. The other hundred and three have one. Twenty-four of the words are “the,” fifteen are “and.” There are are four commas. The liturgical cadence of the paragraph derives in part from the placement of the commas (their presence in the second and fourth sentences, their absence in the first and third), but also from that repetition of “the” and of “and,” creating a rhythm so pronounced that the omission of “the” before the word “leaves” in the fourth sentence (“and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling”) casts exactly what it was meant to cast, a chill, a premonition, a foreshadowing of the story to come, the awareness that the author has already shifted his attention from late summer to a darker season. The power of the paragraph, offering as it does the illusion but not the fact of specificity, derives precisely from this kind of deliberate omission, from the tension of withheld information. In the late summer of what year? What river, what mountains, what troops? 

Grandfather and Home Tanka

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXX: "grandfather and home"

inspired by Mosab Abu Toha's poem, "my grandfather and home"

my grandfather 

used to count the days for return 

with his fingers

then stones, birds, flowers, Gazans ...

his thousand-yard stare nowhere

NeverEnding Story, May 6 2025

FYI: "The thousand-yard stare or two-thousand-yard stare is a military phrase coined to describe the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier, but the symptom it describes may also be found among victims of other types of trauma."

And for more about Mosab Abu Toha's work, see "Cool Announcement: Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha Wins Pulitzer for Commentary on the Devastation in Gaza"

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXI: "things hidden in ears"

inspired by Mosab Abu Toha's poem, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear"

doctor, you may find

these things hidden in my ears

the refugee murmurs ...

buzzing of drones, roar of fighter jets

screams of Gazans, living and dead

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXXII: "mow the grass"

breezy sunshine ...

row upon row of eclairs 

oozing cream

glazed with blue wording:

let the IDF mow them down!

FYI: Haaretz, May 6: In Israel, Violence Saturates Everyday Life

What does it say about a society that sells eclairs inciting IDF destruction in Gaza while Palestinian children wait in lines at community kitchens, unable to enjoy even one cookie?

...The Hebrew word written on the eclairs means "mow" as in to lawn-mow, but mowing is also a euphemism for something more brutal. "Mowing the grass" is a term popularized in 2013 to refer to Israel's "strategy of attrition designed primarily to debilitate the enemy capabilities." To put it more crudely, mowing the grass means bombing Gaza periodically to facilitate temporary quiet for Israel...

...I'm struck by the profound cognitive dissonance experienced by so many in Israeli society. We revel in sugary-and-creamy abundance, a year-round array of fresh vegetables and fruit and stores with names like "Meatman" that advertise marbled steaks. Not far away, Palestinians in Gaza burn plastic and toxic waste to cook the little food they can obtain or scavenge.''

Cuckoo Clock Haiku

what’s left of wildfires…

a cuckoo clock folded from

one sheet of paper

5-7-5 Haiku Journal, March 29, 2025

Another Day Tanka

morning air

heavy with the fragrance 

of lilac ...

another day as pale 

as the day before

NeverEnding Story, May 4 2024

FYI: This tanka could be read as a sequel to the following:

at 3 a.m.

sleepless once again ...

this crescent moon

this gray-haired stranger

in the bedroom window

NeverEnding Story, April 28 2025

Added: Yellowing Memories, IV

this rage

boxed up for years ...

in attic light

I read letter by letter

written by my young self

FYI: This tanka could be read as a sequel to the following:

Yellowing Memories, III

a photo slips

from The Catcher in the Rye

17-year-old me

not afraid of anyone

except myself

NeverEnding Story, April 23, 2025

Added:  

a burst of colors

this wintry morning

kingfishers in flight

Fleeting Thoughts Haiku

winter to winter

alone with these fleeting thoughts

of my late father

5-7-5 Haiku Journal, March 27 2025

Here and Now Haiku

another new grave

in winter mist tangled thoughts

about "here and now"

5-7-5 Haiku Journal, March 24 2025

Chant after Chant Tanka

Trump Empire, Inc., XXVIII

written in response to NeverEnding Story's Tanka Poetry Month call:

This is our reply to Trumpocracy: to write tanka more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. Changing the world, ONE TANKA A DAY. 

think, feel and act

while they're still "legal"

chant after chant

no more DOGEy business

drop this small dick(tator)

NeverEnding Story, May 1 2025

FYI: L4 refers to DOGE, which stands for the "Department of Government Efficiency," while L5 is in response to Rolling Stone, Oct. 6 2024: Trump Reiterates He Wants to Be a "Dictator" for "One Day" at Wisconsin Rally.

Added: Trump Empire, Inc., XXIX

the White House

posts the AI photo of Trump 

dressed as the Pope

the lingering odor

of this Antichrist shit

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CLXXIX: "stones and bullets"

a Gazan teen

threw stones that hit no one ...

smiling out loud

the soliders respond with a spray

of US-made bullets 

Bloodied and Bandaged Bald Eagle Tanka

Trump Empire, Inc., XXIV

written in response to Huffpost, April 25: Magazine Cover Puts A World Of Hurt On Trump's First 100 Days

the White House's shadow

darkens the Convicted Felon's face ...

bloodied and bandaged 

bald eagle under the headline

1,361 days left

NeverEnding Story, April 30 2025

FYI: For more about the Convicted Felon Donald Trump's first 100 days, see "Special Feature: Selected Poems on Trumpocracy's First 100 Days of Lies, Delusion, Corruption and Ineptitude"

And The Guardian, April 29: Trump warns ‘nothing will stop me’ at rally to celebrate 100 days in office

Donald Trump has celebrated his 100th day in office with a campaign-style rally in Michigan and an attack on “communist radical left judges” for trying to seize his power, warning: “Nothing will stop me.”

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. 

-- Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895), who escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1838 and became a national leader of the abolitionist movement. 

Resist Trumpocracy like it's 1938 Germany

Otherwise,

"First They Came"

by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), who first backed and then opposed the Nazis and ended up in a concentration camp:

First they came for the Communists (see above: Trump's attack on “communist radical left judges”)

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me

Added: Trump Empire, Inc., XXV

one store shelf

after another, another ...

red MAGA hats

$10, Made in China

$50, Made in USA 😂

FYI: The Guardian, April 30: US economy shrinks in first quarter of Trump 2.0 amid sweeping tariffs

Drop comes amid a huge fall in consumer sentiment, which in April dropped 32% to lowest level since 1990 recession

Added: Trump Empire, Inc., XXVI

the Convicted Felon

in the White House's window

the north lawn

littered with the mugshots

of "illegal aliens"

Daily Beast, April 28: Trump Turns White House Into Stunt Central—With More on the Way

Political stunts at the White House have become a hallmark of MAGA 2.0, with no sign of them slowing down.

Added: Trump Empire, Inc., XXVII

one travel warning

after another for US ...

few foreigners

make America great again

the Convicted Felon mutters

FYI: UPI, May 11: U.S. added to int'l human rights watchlist over Trump attacks on democratic norms

The United States was added to an international human rights watchlist on Sunday over Trump administration attacks targeting civic freedoms.

CIVICUS, an international human rights monitor, said it added the United States due to "the Trump administration's assault on democratic norms and global cooperation."

Hospice Balcony Haiku

hospice balcony

alone with the dawn chorus

on this fresh morning

5-7-5 Haiku Journal, March 21, 2025

Why Me Tanka

I keep asking

why me? there's no rhythm

to this life,

its days like today scattered 

by Fate among the rest

NeverEnding Story, April 28 2025

Added:

life is short

my Spotify list remains long ...

and yet 

this loveless morning 

alone with birdsong 

Added:

at 3 a.m.

sleepless once again ...

this crescent moon

this gray-haired stranger

in the bedroom window

FYI: In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

         -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

Added:

the sunlight fades

into the gathering dark

another day 

will ends with nothing new

in my life and on my mind

Water Strider Haiku

alone at the pond ...

a water strider resets

the stars

The Mamba, 17, 2025

Clenched Fist Haiku

snowflakes ...

the clenched fist

of my baby

The Mamba, 17, 2025