Pursuit of Happiness

Trump Empire, Inc., XCVI 

for MAGA cult and Christian Nationalist in Trumperica

gated cul-de-sac

lined with wavy green oaks

in golden sunlight

diverse shapes and heights

of white picket fences

whitewashed fence

taller by two feet this year …

neighbors equipped

with security cams, bulldogs

and stars-and-stripes rifles

NeverEnding Story, July 4 2026

FYI: Stars-and-Stripes rifles refer to limited-edition or custom American flag-themed firearms. 

And "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence. Like the other principles in the Declaration of Independence, this phrase is not legally binding, but has been widely referenced and seen as an inspiration for the basis of government.

Spider's Hammock Haiku

first light

the spider's hammock

pearled in dew

Haiku in Action, Weekly Prompt:"Capture the Moment," Dec. 24th -- 28th  2025

Seashell Haiku

 

Commentary by The Solitary Daisy Columnist, Sean B. Wright.

This is a resonant, memory-laden haiku that uses a familiar sensory gesture to evoke distance, identity, and longing. The opening line, “years in exile,” establishes a wide temporal and emotional horizon, suggesting separation from homeland, endurance over time, and a life shaped by displacement. It is a heavy and somewhat abstract beginning, but it clearly sets the stakes and frames how the reader approaches the image that follows.

The phrase “a Pacific seashell” grounds the poem in something tangible while also expanding its scope. The specificity of “Pacific” is important—it evokes not just a place, but an entire ocean, compressing vast geography into a small, handheld object. The shell becomes more than an object; it carries with it the weight of memory, origin, and possibly the speaker’s lost or distant home.

The final line, “held to my ear,” completes the image with a simple, familiar gesture. This act of listening to a seashell is almost universal, often associated with childhood curiosity, but here it takes on a more poignant dimension. It becomes an attempt to recover something distant, to hear again what has been left behind. The sensory immediacy of this action contrasts effectively with the abstraction of exile in the opening line.

What gives the haiku its strength is the juxtaposition between the abstract condition of exile and the concrete, intimate act of holding the shell to the ear. The seashell functions as a bridge between past and present, between homeland and current place, and between memory and physical sensation. The implied “sound” of the ocean—whether real or imagined—becomes a stand-in for what has been lost, or at least what cannot be directly accessed.

The tone throughout is reflective and gently elegiac. There is a quiet ache present, but it is restrained; the poem does not state its emotion outright, instead allowing it to resonate through the image. Sonically, the poem is unobtrusive, the sibilant s sounds in Pacific and seashells echo the sea’s quieter movements.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and evocative haiku in which a simple, tactile action carries deep emotional resonance. The seashell becomes a conduit for memory and belonging, compressing vast distance into a quiet, intimate moment. While the opening leans toward abstraction, the image that follows sustains and deepens the poem effectively.

July First Tanka

the Maple Leaf

billows on July First …

the added hyphen

weighted with ancestral names

before Canadian

NeverEnding Story, July 1 2026

Gold-Rimmed Frame Tanka

I’ve bounced for years

through internships, contracts

and odd day gigs …

thin dust coats my testamur

in its gold-rimmed frame

Take 5ive, 2026

Drifting in White Ribbons Tanka

Re-Homing in the Maple Land, XLIII

written on Canada Day Eve

twilight mist

drifting in white ribbons

over the river ...

thoughts of staying or going

tangled in my immigrant past

NeverEnding Story, June 30 2026

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

Re-Homing in the Maple Land, XLII

A new life in this promised land of milk and honey, where my veil of forgetfulness drapes like a shroud.

shoppers come and go

“I used to be” in the folds

of my Walmart smile

NeverEnding Story, December 14 2025

This gembun could be read as a sequel to my tanka below:

at winter twilight

should have, could have, would have

are a boulder

rolling down the hill of life

I push it up, and yet ...

Gusts, 39, Spring/Summer 2024

This tanka could be read as a sequel to my tanka prose below:

The Point of No Return

On the day of my emigration to Canada, a land of maple leaves and snowflakes that will eventually bury my past.

a parting

of summer clouds

mother

lets go of my hand

. . . and of my heart

Ribbons, 16:1, Winter 2020

Added: Re-Homing in the Maple Land, XLIV

a fork in the road —  

thoughts of returning

to my homeland

as a blue butterfly veers

into the narrower trail

Last Rays Tanka

the last rays

of a winter sunset

slip beyond the hills …

I’m left in silence, grieving

what’s left of my dream

Take 5ive, 2026

Ceasefire: You Cease, I Fire

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXCIX: "Ceasefire: You Cease, I Fire"

Ceasefire: You Cease, I Fire

Boom, boom, boom ... trailed by intermittent night-piercing screams, near and far. 

an armless boy's stare

midnight lightning links Heaven 

and smoky ruins 

hazy day moon

an orphaned girl, her world

of paper cranes

NeverEnding Story, June 28 2026

FYI: For more poems about Israel's war crimes, see Special Feature: "Selected Poems for Reflections on UN's Report on Israel Committing Genocide and Other War Crimes."

On June 18, 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry published a major report titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023”. 

The paper describes the deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian children, including post-ceasefire since the October 2025 Gaza peace plan. The Commission also examines a sharp increase in violence perpetrated by members of Israeli settlers against Palestinian children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

There is no ceasefire in Gaza; the world has normalized the genocide of Palestinians.

-- Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine and author of UN Report, "Anatomy of a Genocide"

And

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Absence Tanka

moonlit icicles

dripping from the eaves ...

another night

alone with my drunken self

haunted by her absence

Take 5ive, 2026

Face of the Past Tanka

I pluck out

another white hair ...

in the mirror

this face of the past

now foreign to me

Take 5ive, 2026

Layoff Notice Tanka

oh! sunset glow …

I drift, drifting through

a swirl of leaves

as the wind tears loose

my layoff notice

Take 5ive, 2026

Oriole Song Haiku

hiking alone

I'm lost except for

oriole song

NeverEnding Story, June 24 2026

FYI: This is a sequel to my haiku below:

the scent 

of dappled sunlight

redwood hike

Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, 5:2, Spring/Summer 2022

Added:

weeks since the layoff 

I step out of myself 

into bluebird song

Added:

me in her eyes

the bite

of a strawberry

Added:

red juice dripping

from her lip to my tongue —

strawberry moon

Added:

strawberry moon

rippling on the ocean —

with wing-soft strokes

my love and I skinny-dip

through its silver path

Added: Trump Empire, Inc., XCV

the White House roof

shadowed against sunset skies

America First banner

Cursor Blinking and Swift Skywriting Tanka

for Thomas Mann and Richard Bach

all-night wrestle

with this blinking cursor curse —

alone

at morning’s lightfall

I glimpse a swift's skywriting

NeverEnding Story,  June 23, 2026

FYI: Below are two of my favourite remarks on being a writer:

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

-- Thomas Mann

And

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t QUIT. 😎

-- Richard Bach

Added: No More Fairy Tales, LIV

for  Franz Kafka 

sky tinged gray

a heron high-stepping

through plastic

FYI: It seems to me that one should only read [poems] that bite and sting you. If the [poems] we read don't wake us up with a fist to the skull, what’s the point of reading them?

-- paraphrasing Franz Kafka 

Added: Politics of Distraction, XVII

In the land of the free, dreaming ...

To American midterm-election voters

The poor and middle class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the super-rich pay lawyers, and the ultra-rich pay politicians.

smell of muggy noon —

the Reflecting Pool's blue sky

turns algae green

Trump news on mute ...

in the soup kitchen mirror

a twentysomething's stare

FYI: CBS News, June 22: Company owned by Trump donor won $1.7 million no-bid Reflecting Pool cleaning contract

Added: Politics of Distraction, XVIII

American “Carnage”

A 15-million-dollar resurfacing—pool reborn in flag-blue paint. It peels at once, thin skins of coating unthreading into the water.

No Trespassing

in the lingering smell

of muggy noon

a chain-link fence around

the Reflecting Pool’s green sky

Microbes revise the budget in silence. A 1.7-million-dollar, no-bid cleanup contract follows, awarded to a company owned by a Trump donor.

A super El Niño presses toward Independence Day.

FYI: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed El Niño conditions in mid-June, with a “super” event expected to develop over the summer and peak in the fall.

And The Atlantic, June 26 2026: Trump’s Peeling Green Gift to America

The Reflecting Pool fiasco says everything about how the Trump administration operates.

Donald Trump, trying to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for America’s 250th birthday and, instead, scoring a tax-payer-funded, $14 million-over-[close to $15 million-dollar] budget own goal in the form of a cracked and peeling, green-algae-riddled, potentially duck-killing militarized zone in the nation’s capital. One of the firms hired for the renovation is named Greenwater Services.

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, XCIII

summer sunlight

pours through atrium walkways ...

flicker and flicker

on tired faces of back-alley youth

at the photo exhibit

FYI: This is a sequel to the following:

reading between the lives and writing between the lines, XCII

in held silence

the newbie bares, I used to 

love getting high...

until a certain point

a roomful of heads bowed low

NeverEnding Story, December 20 2025

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXCVIII: "settler's silhouette"

billows of smoke 

against olive-grove sunset

settler's silhouette

FYI: "Israel's oldest daily, Haaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

June 23, 2026: Undoing History

A revolution is taking place in the northern West Bank. A decades-long settler project is becoming a reality – fast. Settler representatives in the Israeli government are reaping political gains, while the IDF enables and supports the effort on the ground.

Investigation, June 23: The Israeli Far-right's West Bank Land Grab and Why It's a Ticking Time Bomb

Bars of Light Haiku

bars of light:

winter moonlight slants  through

his cell window 

Haiku in Action, Weekly Prompt:"Prison of Light," Dec. 18th -- 22nd  2025

The World without Father Tanka

written for my late father:

alone again

on this winding road home

in slanted moonlight

I try to imagine my place

in the world without Father

NeverEnding Story, June 21 2026

FYI: This is a sequel to my tanka below:

Father's breath

fades into forever ...

I gaze out 

his hospice window

at the moon, its fullness

Haiku Page, 11, 2025

reprinted in Charlotte Digregorio's Writer's Blog, February 12 2026

Midlife's Edge Haiku

my coffee darkens ...

a stirring of thoughts

on midlife’s edge

Wales Haiku Journal, Winter 2025/2026

Crease Haiku

her side of the bed

slanted winter moonlight

in the crease

NeverEnding Story, June 19 2026

FYI: For a detailed analysis of this haiku, see To the Lighthouse: Literary Device: Objective Correlative

Added:

no reply yet ...

a spider repairing

its moonlit web

Added:

his last call missed ...

the porch chime 

in a winter night wind

Added:

a weeping willow

leans slightly downstream

life between gigs

Added:

construction fence

with a torn poster flapping

harbor night fog

Orphanage Gate Tanka

hand-me-down shirts

with elbows worn thin

in dim twilight

each boy's gaze tracks the couple 

past the orphanage gate

NeverEnding Story, June 18 2026

Added:

this fresh morning

I wake alone to the world

of broken dreams ...

yet outside new leaves bud

from an oak stump

Added:

alone

in California golden light

slanted through the room ...

I close my eyes, listening

to the child in my mind's corner

Added:

I waved at her

beyond the departure gate 

yet she didn’t turn ...

memories of her packed

into the folds of my mind

Added:

across the sky

streaks of orange, pink, and violet ...

burning letters

I wrote to her years ago

but never sent

Added: Politics of Distraction, XV

"peace deal" news on mute—

fold after fold

of ceasefire-strike thoughts

into a thousand

rainbow origami cranes

FYI: This tanka is a sequel to mine below:

Politics of Distraction, XII

flip-flopping

on the ceasefire deal

amid camera clicks --

a dove's feather caught spinning

in the White House's wire fence

NeverEnding Story, June 12 2026 

Added: Politics of Distraction, XVI

smell of muggy noon -- 

the Reflecting Pool's blue sky 

turns algae green

Spring Equinox Haiku

spring equinox

half asleep, half awake

to twilit skies

Asahi Haikuist Network, March 20, 2026

Floating Life Haiku

this floating life ...

tea leaves at the bottom

of my chipped cup

Asahi Haikuist Network, March 6 2026