Try Again and Fail Better

written in response to Thomas Mann's remark on writing:

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

My fingers strike the keyboard with rhythmic force; my eyes sting, rimmed with red, but something keeps carrying me forward like a surging current beneath the skin.

another

false dawn while robins call

I add three words

backspace them, write five more

then delete the whole line

NeverEnding Story, September 7, 2026

FYI: The title alludes to the famous quote about trying and failing:

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. 

-- Samuel Beckett, "Worstward Ho,"  a radical, minimalist prose text that strips language down to its barest essentials to explore decrepitude, memory, the limits of expression, and the stubborn human compulsion to keep going despite inevitable defeat.

 

Cyclic Pursuit of Love

I scroll through one dating app after another, and another.

snow on snow

our pot of tea steeps dark

and bitter

Beeps flurry. Messages stack up. Faces blur. I scroll until my thumb aches. The night thins out into small screens.

awake, facing

the empty side of my bed

sunrise tinged gray

A vee of geese unzips the morning sky. I reach for my phone.

haikuKATHA, 55, 2026

Truck Stop at Midnight

Diesel fumes and the hiss of air brakes. The neon ‘Open’ sign buzzes, casting a flickering pink halo over cracked asphalt, a discarded ‘Lucky for Life’ ticket, and cigarette butts.

highway hum

a luna moth flattened

on the windshield

hedgerow, 153, 2026 

Sweat-and-Tears Life Tanka

another

mid-sentence silence

this muggy noon

our thoughts of returning

to sweat-and-tears yet sure life

NeverEnding Story, September 4 2026

Added:

cubicle glass

the stare of my eyes

the stare of my eyes

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

a fly battering

at my cubicle window

this 9-to-5 job

Haiku in Action, Weekly Prompt:"Primordial Fears," July 2nd-6th  2025

Added:

in giant letters

think outside the box

on the wall

of this newbie's cubicle 

on my wall, actions speak louder

Added:

After three years of walking my boss's bulldog, I imagine all I can imagine and then keep on going.

corner glass cubicle

new self growing larger

with afternoon light

Late Night Shift Haiku

late night shift

in seven-eleven lights

a stray I part

Asahi Haikuist Network, June 5 2026

Dare to Be Happy

The neighborhood is a hush of humid air and mown grass. Time feels suspended, marked only by the rhythmic pulse of water hitting the driveway. For a moment, this white picket fence world is nothing but light and motion, before the next headline arrives—red banners scrolling, digits flickering upward.

on the front lawn

the sprinkler ticks like a clock

throwing silver arcs...

his toddler's laughter

chases a beagle's bay

The New Verse News, April 20 2026

Transient Glow Tanka

response to Thomas Mann: A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. 

a transient glow

before another sunrise

the cursor blinking

while I'm alone with a mind—

all its windows closed

NeverEnding Story, September 1 2026

FYI: Ls 1&2 refer to a "false dawn," a transient light that precedes the rising of the sun by about an hour.

Added: 

My fingers click-clacking — hail against the window.

what's left unsaid

between words and lines ...

alone at false dawn

Added: response to Richard Bach: A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t QUIT. 😎 

robins chirp

to a faint glow in the sky —

carving out

showy verbs and fatty nouns

I hold the poem's bare bones

Gardening Haiku

onion sets

one inch deep, root-side down...

green tops in my mind

Asahi Haikuist Network, May 15, 2026

Red Balloon Haiku

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVII: "Gazan girl's red balloon"

to Banksy

fireballs bursting into the dark a Gazan girl's red balloon

NeverEnding Story, August 30 2026

FYI: The phrase, "to Banksy," serves as a joshi (prefatory note), alluding to Banksy's iconic Girl with Balloon, an image associated with childhood, innocence, hope, and loss. For a detailed analysis of this haiku and the use of "enjambed double-take," see To the Lighthouse: The Art of the One-Liner, Mastering the "Enjambed Double-Take"

Stonehenge Tanka

a full moon

between the sarsen stones 

of Stonehenge

one silhouette ghosting

across the gravel path

NeverEnding Story, August 29, 2026

Added:

a thrum of rain

on the old van skylight 

in a parking lot

I murmur, the life I dreamed

yet the life I'm living

Added:

flash after flash

of midnight lightning

my dream and I

rippling

in the vodka glass

Added:

words are only air

dissolving as they are said ...

yet my chest tightens

as if I’ve swallowed a rock

lodged beneath my breath

Added:

belief is a bridge

built across surging waters...

yet my shaking hands

cannot find the wooden rail

to the altar in dim light

Added:

emigration eve

the last notes

of Home Sweet Home

fading once more

into this moonless stillness

Reflection Haiku

Chen-ou or Eric ...

my reflection in the eyes

of a white colleague

NeverEnding Story, August 28, 2026

FYI: This haiku is written in response to the following:

spring mud

the hyphen

before American

Frogpond, 44:2, Summer/Spring 2021

Fay Aoyagi

And my haiku blow could be read as a sequel:

Pacific waves

Chen-ou Eric two names meet

and part here not here

NeverEnding Story, June 10 2024

On Shifting Ground

With skin creased like winter-worn leather and hands calloused from decades of labor, this gray-haired immigrant bears the map of a hard life across his face. His heart and mind now straddle memories of a sun-drenched homeland and a no-milk-or-honey future.

in wind-blown leaves

go back where you came from ...

he limps along

Kokako, 44, 2026

A New Immigrant

Outside the floor-to-ceiling airport windows, snowflakes waft down from a starless sky, then disappear into a world of one color.

I muse how far to walk to the pickup stop— a threshold to this land of milk and honey.

looking back

at footprints in the snow ...

which are mine?

Kokako, 44, 2026

Dappled Trail Haiku

dappled trail ...

alone with the rise and fall

of birdsong

Kokako, 44, 2026

Granite Skies Haiku

granite skies

the burden of this grief

unknown

Kokako, 44, 2026

First Summer Rain Tanka

(

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

Daniel Blatman, Opinion, August 24, 2026: From Armenia to Gaza: The Language of Denial That Makes Atrocities Possible

From Nazi 'language rules' to the American military's 'collateral damage' and Israel's 'voluntary migration' policy for Gaza, euphemisms do more than conceal crimes. They allow ordinary people to live with them

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCV: "headlines"

headline after headline

of situation, event

and incident ...

body parts on the blood-stained floor

of a half-flattened classroom

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVI: "neu-tra-li-za-tion"

neu-tra-li-za-tion

a new recruit mouths

with a middle finger —

a gray-haired Gazan's back

pockmarked with bullets

FYI: Below is a relevant excerpt:

In 1947, two years after the collapse of the regime that had threatened his life, the German Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer published a short book titled "The Language of the Third Reich" ("Lingua Tertii Imperii"). Klemperer, who escaped extermination because he was married to a non-Jewish woman, did not write about extermination camps or SS death squads. He wrote about words.

Nazism, he argued, penetrated society not only through speeches and posters in the streets, but primarily through expressions that people unwittingly internalized, like tiny doses of poison entering the bloodstream. Individual words, expressions and syntactic patterns were imposed on the masses through millions of repetitions, then adopted mechanically and unconsciously. The poison, he wrote, does not act immediately. It accumulates....

The Israeli media now has a complete, efficient and polished lexicon designed to implant euphemistic descriptions of the state's crimes in the minds of Israelis. Mass killing in Gaza falls under the heading of "operational activity." The destruction of entire neighborhoods becomes "mowing the lawn" or "flattening," images borrowed from gardening and construction. A targeted airstrike that kills dozens of innocent people is described as a "thwarting" or "neutralization," terms from the world of intelligence that imply the prevention of some greater evil. An area that continues to be bombed, such as Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, is called a "humanitarian zone." And when it becomes clear that uninvolved civilians, including children, have been killed, passive formulations take over: "were killed during an operation," "lost their lives," "fatalities were reported." ...

This is precisely what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu meant by "symbolic violence." It is not a lie that someone decided to sell or an instruction handed down from above, but a set of categories of thought internalized so deeply that both the person doing the classifying and the person being classified accept them as natural. A news editor who writes "hikers" or "terrorists" does not feel that they are choosing a word. They feel that they are describing reality. That is the power of symbolic violence. It requires no administrative enforcement because it is already embedded in our vocabulary.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVIII: "torn pieces of Star of David"

asleep

on torn pieces of Star of David

a stray 

FYI: The New Yorker, July 28, 2025: Israel’s Zones of Denial

Amid national euphoria over the bombing of Iran—and the largely ignored devastation in Gaza—a question lurks: What is the country becoming?

Added: Realm of Contagious Stupidity, III

he hides “files”

sleeps through meetings, yells be quiet

trades stocks and golfs:

this ball-size-brained con man smirks

behind the Resolute Desk

)

a child's hand 

outside the car window

to touch

the first summer rain ...

bumper to bumper to Exit

NeverEnding Story, August 23 2026

Added:

a midnight moon

glints in the skylight

turning once more

I listen to her breathing

as the night stretches on

Added:

packing

and unpacking my suitcases

for three hours —

this life without my love

yet still within my love

Added:

we all move on

then the story carries us —

still I stand still

at the bend of her street

hearing her door close

Added:

home from vacation

it takes three moonless nights

for my heart and mind

to adjust to living

in a room of my echoes

Another New Day Tanka

the sound

of yellowing birch leaves

zigzagging ...

alone again, yet

another new day

Time Haiku, 65, 2026

Pulses Tanka

moonlight

dripping from icicles

in pulses

this silence echoes

weeks without you

Time Haiku, 65, 2026

Old Farmer's Stare Haiku

old farmer’s stare 

dawn fades into the flight

of ravens

Time Haiku, 65, 2026

Hazy Crescent Haiku

hazy crescent ...

the trace of what I was

(is this all)

Time Haiku, 65, 2026