Orphaned Girl Haiku

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXCIX: "orphaned girl"

silence between fireballs

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 23, 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:

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

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

Nameless Headstone Haiku

sunlit edges

softened with moss ...

nameless headstone

O2 Haiku, March 10 2026 

Flooding Tanka

after the flooding

in this tourist town

the sound

of a whiskey bottle

tapping the dock

O2 Haiku, February 3 2026

Golfball-Brained Man and Inflation Tanka

Politics of Distraction, XIII

this golfball-brained man

behind the Resolute Desk

loves inflation ...

a MAGA sign, Donald Trump

                              $20,28 per gallon

The New Verse News, June 12 2026

FYI: The Hill, June 10, 2026: Trump embraces May price spikes amid Iran war: ‘I love the inflation"

“No, I love it. The numbers were great,” Trump said when asked if he was concerned about the latest data, which showed the consumer price index rising to 4.2 percent over the past 12 months — with an increase of 0.5 percent in May alone, according to the Labor Department.

...The CPI data also showed that energy prices spiked 3.9 percent in May after having risen 3.8 percent in April and 10.9 percent in March. 

Added: Politics of Distraction, XIV

smoky haze ...

the 40th deal to end

the war of this wor(l)d

FYI: ABC News, June 16: US-Iran agreement confirms Trump trend on the art of the deal

The agreement between the United States and Iran fits with a pattern from Donald Trump where the signing of a deal appears to be the major goal and the details often seem a distant secondary consideration. 

Bigger Splash Tanka

In memory of David Hockney (9 July 1937 – 11 June 2026)

Inspired by "A Bigger Splash" (1967)

a cloud of droplets

from the blue swimming pool

and the diver gone ...

how long a life can linger

after the one who made it

NeverEnding Story, June 12 2026 

FYI: The New Yorker, June 16 2026: David Hockney’s Hidden Depths: Remembering a master of color and light who understood life’s shadows.

One of his best-known paintings, “A Bigger Splash,” which Hockney made in 1967 and which became part of the permanent collection of the Tate in 1981, shows a modernist house flanked by a pair of skinny palm trees, before which extends a brilliant-blue swimming pool equipped with a yellow diving board. There is no one in sight, but the surface of the water bursts with evidence of someone having just dived in, disappearing into the cool aqueous depths. The painting is suggestive of heat, with the palm trees offering no shade, and of a full-body relief from that heat: someone—probably male, probably young, almost certainly beautiful—is about to emerge from the pool’s sublimity, gasping with pleasure.

...what Hockney’s best works can make a viewer feel: the splash of water that, in reality, takes seconds to dissipate, captured over weeks of careful brushwork, then held in place forever on the canvas. Just as Hockney did, these works draw us in with their winning superficies only to hold us rapt with their enduring depths.

Added: Politics of Distraction, X

At an outdoor briefing, "military operation," "little excursion," "self-defense strikes" amid camera clicks in unseasonal heat.

smoky haze

war after war

of this wor(l)d

FYI: NBC News, June 11, 2026: Trump says U.S. will hit Iran ‘very hard’ tonight and take ‘total control’ of Iran’s oil industry.

And this gembun is a sequel to the following:

Politics of Distraction, IX:

blocking the blockade

to break the strait blockade ...

in gathering dark

a gin-soaked flight to nowhere

through the un/truth of this war

NeverEnding Story, April 18 2026

Added: Politics of Distraction, XI

the flat TV

mounted on the side wall

of a bookstore

blasting, a great deal!...

layers of dust on Trump books

Added: 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

Added:

thunder rumbling

his talk of war turns dark

then darker still

Added:

a skinny girl

drags her Disney Princess

by its hair ...

the doll’s eyeless face turns 

to the orphanage window

Added:

lying on her back

arms and legs splayed open …

a refugee dead

then the shelter left alone

with its rows of empty beds

Sips of Tea Haiku

cherry blossoms

between sips of tea

birdsong

Sakura Haiku Challenge 2026

Sudden Burst Haiku

I live as I dream

alone, yet a sudden burst

of morning birdsong

5-7-5 Haiku Journal, February 6 2026

Fence Haiku

two-feet higher fence

new neighbour’s bulldog eyeing

my beagle below

5-7-5 Haiku Journal, February 10, 2026