Law Is King

Trump Empire, Inc, XC

written for No Kings protests

just a dream, and yet ...

the mountain lion roars

to grazing sheep:

once elected as your King

I'll be vegetarian

the peanut-brained man

behind the Resolute Desk

grins to cameras,

just a little excursion...

oily clouds over Tehran

how much bullshit

can come out of one ass-hole

a veteran’s refrain

cracks and booms through iron bars

at the White House gate

the Capitol fence

shadowed against the sky

in twilight chill

lineups snake at the pumps

and at food banks too

chant after chant

of eggflation, fried truth

scrambled justice ...

a mutt's neck sign: I can poop

a better president

FYI: The title alludes to the famous quote from Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense: In America, THE LAW IS KING.

NeverEnding Story, March 28 2026

Added: Trump Empire, Inc, XCI

the stacking

of KKK hood, MAGA hat

and ICE cap ...

my beagle takes a dump

it steams the same in the snow

Election Buzz Senryu

blowflies around

last night's leftovers ...

election buzz

Fireflies' Light, 32, October 2025

Trade War News Haiku

yellowing leaves 

astir in the night wind ...

trade war news

Fireflies' Light, 32, October 2025

Spiral Slide Haiku

last rays of sunset

the curves of laughter 

down a spiral slide  

 

tsuri-dōrō, 30, Nov/Dec. 2025

Full Moon Haiku

a full moon 

in barren maple branches

tangled thoughts of home

O2 Haiku, October 31, 2025

Family Retreat Haiku

family retreat

the riverfront garden

fireflying our eyes

O2 Haiku, October 29, 2025

Redwood Hike Haiku

My haiku is now on display in Washington DC's Golden Triangle as part of the 2026 Golden Haiku Competition.

Another Snowstorm Tanka

another snowstorm …

in a world of one color

I watch passersby

each of us drifting

alone together

NeverEnding Story, March 22 2026

Added:

a brown leaf

on the frozen lake

slate-gray sky

Added: 

a gray-haired man

slumps against the alley wall

behind a tavern

clouds of his breath rise

and drift into the dark

Added:

red tip of a cigarett

between missile sirens --

darkness among stars

Added:

between sirens  

the moonlit alley holds  

a stray’s cry

Added:

in silence

I rehearse my script again

outside the job fair

daffodil heads peek out 

from a patch of snow

Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LXXXVIII

first "pop, pop, pop"  

then lies layered with cement ...

ICE on the beat

Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LXXXIX

to camera lights

the peanut-brained man vows, 

"I bend to no one ..."

lineups snake at the pumps

and at food banks too

Added: No More Fairy Tales, LI

It’s March Weather

Hawaii floods and Alabama snows. In the Northeast, temperatures flip-flop daily while the West Coast burns under a red-hot heatwave. With the TV on mute, I stare through the window at the twilight, grey as ash.

coal-soot haze rests

on scattered farmhouses

Four More Years askew

An Immigrant Poet's Reflection on Writing the Suffering of Others

"Merely to say, to see and say, things 
as they are,” grows loud ... and louder in a corner of my mind as moonlight slants through the study window.

[decades-long

inhuman occupation compressed]

to one-day attacks

reponding with the red glow

of missiles in Gaza's night sky

this endless loop:

October 7, October 7 ...

[and yet

the decades BEFORE

and the day AFTER] bloodshedding

each bombed-out house:

an album with no photos

but with people

living, wounded and dead

pressed between its pages

anything new

under Gaza's smeared sun?

smoky rubble

beyond smoky rubble, and yet

again smoky rubble

I etch each pain with a borrowed tongue, then every word becomes a betrayal; but all the silence will turn into a heart wound. Turning my gaze from writing, then looking out the window at the moon, its fullness, I mutter, "what is the use of useless poetry when it cannot stop the killing?"

Cattails, October 2025

Give me your tired, your poor ...

the Stars and Stripes

in my migrant friend's wrinkled eyes

the spring that once was

American dream

somewhere over the rainbow

detention camps

A group of protesters, mostly gray-haired, gathers at the steps of the Statue of Liberty. They reclaim this public space as a site of memory and denunciation. Helped by her granddaughter, a civil rights activist reads out loud, one by one slowly, the names of the unlawfully disappeared.

Each name is a breath of life , a wound of heart, and most importantly, a warning for the country whose "greatness" will be built on the silence of everyday Americans.

Editor's Choice, Cattails, October 2025

Commentary: Chen-ou Liu is again another artiste who shows us that only in asking will we find the path— that only by daring can we truly reclaim what we have lost. He tells us of a history that is easily forgotten and warns us of what is, and what is in the coming. The prose is stark, focussing on the intergenerational emotion that resonates with freedom. As I read this over and over again, it dawned on me that in writing, Chen-ou dares us too. It is at once a warning and a beseeching. The haiku are placed at the beginning—a necessity to draw our attention to the immediacy of the moment.

FYI: The title refers to the most famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty, "The New Colossus," a sonnet by Emma Lazarus.

Winter Dawn Tanka

the warmth left

by my late father's hand

holding mine ...

half asleep and half awake

to this false winter dawn

Cattails, October 2025

Echo Senryu

summer cottage

everywhere the echo 

of me

Cattails, October 2025

Ponytailed Girl Haiku

cherry blossom rain

a ponytailed girl

pirouetting alone

Cattails, October 2025

Cinematic Fray Tanka

for the 98th Oscars ceremony

in dim light

battle after battle …

muffled cries

screams, laughter, clapping hands

in this cinematic fray

NeverEnding Story, March 16 2026

FYI: L2 is a thematic and emotional play on the title of Paul Thomas Anderson’s comedic political thriller, One Battle After Another, a major movie with 13 nominations and six wins including Best Picture.

Added: Politics of Distraction, II

The Czech Shopkeeper Story Re-told

A row of neon shop windows in Washington, D.C., each holding a full moon. Above the doorframe hangs a sign: "Prices are stable. Everything’s fine."

fireball-lit sky

the reach of winter night

over Tehran

FYI: The title alludes to the parable of the shopkeeper (or greengrocer) in Václav Havel's 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central Eastern Europe,” where a shopkeeper posts the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” to signal obedience to the system; such everyday rituals help sustain political lies.

This is a sequel to the first entry of  Politics of Distraction

oil-dark clouds

hang heavy over Tehran —

reporters squint

at row after row of black bars

in Epstein’s redacted files

NeverEnding Story, March 10 2026

(FYI: Politics of Distraction is my new writing project. The title is taken from Al Jazeera: February 26, 2026: Epstein and the politics of distraction

Scandal individualises corruption, creating a spectacle that redirects anger away from structural power)

Added: Politics of Distraction, III

Ramadan moon

sliced by one jet's contrail

after another

ink-dark columns rising

from tankers near Hormuz

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLXXXVII: "Ramadan sunset"

the last glow

of Ramadan sunset —

fingers lick hummus 

Added: 

Make Love, Not War...

candles in drifting snow

flicker, yet hold

FYI: "Make love, not war" is a legendary 1960s counterculture slogan advocating for peace, love, and sexual liberation over violence and conflict, primarily opposing the Vietnam War.

Added:

our street overflows

with dogs, laughter and snow balls

first day of March break

Added:

snow on snow ...

the shadow curls up

with me

Added:

a raven settles

on the burnt olive branch—

winter deepens

Added:

both sides

of a border crossing

honking geese

Flashflooding Haiku

flashfloodingpropertydisbutesettled

Kingfisher, 12, 2025

Geese and Migrants Haiku

Canada geese

gathering, parting... and yet

these farm migrants

Haiku Canada Review, 19:2, 2025

Shooting Star and American Dream Haiku

a shooting star

over the border wall

American dream, and yet ...

Haiku Canada Review, 19:2, 2025

Yawp of "USA!" Tanka

a lament for Walt Whitman's America

to cameras

no, more wars! the chant

echoes, echoing

around the Congress chamber

swelled with the yawp of USA!

NeverEnding Story, March 11 2026

FYI: The joshi (prefatory note), “a lament for Walt Whitman's America,” serves as the thematic anchor of the tanka. By invoking the “barbaric yawp” from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, the tanka establishes a pointed irony: what Whitman envisioned as a raw, soulful cry of individual liberation and democratic vitality has here been transformed into a partisan, nationalistic roar.

And For more about the use of "joshi," see "To the Lighthouse" post, "Joshi (Prefatory Note) as a Poetic Device."

Writing Gembun

written for Richard Bach and Robert Frost

A cursor blinks in the white of my screen.

darkness pools around stars

words I never said

words I never sent

NeverEnding Story, March 11 2026

FYI: Below are two of my favourite remarks on writing:

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. 

-- Richard Bach

And

Every time a poem is written, every time a short story is written, it is written not by cunning, but by belief. The beauty, the something, the little charm of the thing to be, is more felt than known.

-- Robert Frost

Added: I just found this "reading, writing and human connection" remark:

These days, it’s easy to feel that we’ve fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love. I mean: we have. But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.

George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, 2021.

Coal-Soot Haze Haiku

No More Fairy Tales, XLIX

coal-soot haze hangs 

over a field of farmhouses

Four More Years crooked

NeverEnding Story, March 10 2026

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

clean coal billboard ...

a fork-tongued thought 

darkens the night

Plum Tree Tavern, January 21, 2023

Added: No More Fairy Tales, L

rows of wind turbines

a field of prairie grass

bends in twilight

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

No More Fairy Tales, XLVIII

COP30:

more fossil fuels

or green energy?

a question smeared in ash

from the burned Amazon

NeverEnding Story, November 21 2025

Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LXXXVI

in gold-color

Trump holds Epstein’s stretched arms

from behind

on the National Mall:

King of the World Statue

Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LXXXVII

the peanut-brained man

behind the Resolute Desk

grins to cameras,

"just a little excursion"

oily clouds over Tehran

Added:

billows of smoke

from Beirut neighborhoods ...

the war chief vows,

we will take the territory 

block by block, street by street

FYI: Haaretz, March 13 2026:  Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday morning that he had "warned" Lebanese President Joseph Aoun following Hezbollah fire toward Israel. "I warned the president of Lebanon that if the Lebanese government cannot control the territory and prevent Hezbollah from threatening the northern communities and firing at Israel – we will take the territory and do it ourselves," Katz said. 

Added: Politics of Distraction, I

oil-dark clouds

hang heavy over Tehran —

reporters squint

at row after row of black bars

in Epstein’s redacted files

FYI: Politics of Distraction is my new writing project. The title is taken from Al Jazeera: February 26, 2026: Epstein and the politics of distraction

Scandal individualises corruption, creating a spectacle that redirects anger away from structural power.