Slabs of Concrete Tanka

 written in response to BBC News, Feb. 8: "Turkey-Syria earthquake death toll rises to more than 11,000"

snow mixed with drizzle ...

a dust-covered man holds the hand

of his daughter

who is dying slowly

under slabs of concrete

NeverEnding Story, February 8 2023

FYI: The New York Times, Feb. 6: "Here’s how to contribute to organizations that are aiding the rescue and recovery efforts in Turkey and Syria."

Added: This Brave New World, LXIX

punctuated

by bullshit, liar, and peals

of laughter

the President's speech and silence

about the State of Dis/[Union]

FYI: It was considered a travesty when Republican Joe Wilson shouted, "you lie,"  at President Barack Obama during the 2009 State of Union Address. Back then, Wilson was Formally rebuked by the WHOLE House. 

And this time around, Republican lawmakers shouted both “liar” and “bullshit” at parts of President Joe Biden’s speech, and no one appeared shocked. After the speech, Republican Andy Ogles of Tennessee defended yelling out “it’s your fault” as Biden described the fentanyl crisis, telling reporters it was “a visceral response.”

Breaking News Tanka

every day

passes in an endless stream

of breaking news

in a huddle of children

the blind boy quiet ... quieter

Gusts, 36, Fall/Winter 2022

Frost Ferns Tanka

frost ferns bloom

on the hospital window ...

will each fold

of the paper crane

hold her undying wish?

Gusts, 36, Fall/Winter 2022

Again Black Haiku

written on the first Sunday of Black History Month

sunrise, sunset

another boy shot

again Black

NeverEnding Story, February 5 2023

FYI: For more about Black History Month, see my "Special Feature" post, "SocioPolitically Conscious Haiku for Black History Month"

This What-If World Haiku

to stay or to go ...

alone in this what-if world

of my attic room

NeverEnding Story, February 4 2023

Added:

missile attack

after missile attack 

in the winter dark

an old couple phone-scrolling

through a cacophony of news

Added:

the full moon between

bars of a cellar window

boom, boom, boom ...

Laid Off Tanka

first day

after being laid off

alone

and awake to the silence

of falling leaves

Cold Moon Journal, November 10 2022

Empty Feeder Haiku

house sparrows

flit to the empty feeder

again, sticker shock

Plum Tree Tavern, Nov 2 2022

Snow Squalls Haiku

snow squalls as usual the silence after our squabble

Brass Bell, November 2022

Striving to live

Sunflowers deepen into the soil. 

more war news ...

weeding the flower bed

I don't feel deserving

of this small plot of earth,

an Eden of sorts 

Will these sunflowers flourish in this place I've claimed as my “own?”

Ribbons, 18:3, Fall 2022

Masked White Man Tanka

masked, in the snow

we walk silently

toward each other ...

the white man raising his hand

to shield his mouth and nose

Ribbons, 18:3, Fall 2022

What Is the Difference?

This Brave New World, LXVIII

written in response to the released video of vicious Tyre Nichols beating by Memphis police officers

decades-old video

of the Rodney King beating --

now, punch after punch

a black man beaten to death

by five black policemen

a phalanx

of black youth with arms linked --

blood-red paint

on a pair of giant bronze hands

named Serve and Protect

NeverEnding Story, January 29 2023

FYI: The New Yorker, Jan. 28: "The Police Folklore That Helped Kill Tyre Nichols": A 1992 study claims that officers who show weakness are more likely to be killed. Law-enforcement culture has never recovered.

Most significant, the study’s core lesson about the imperative to dominate dovetailed with a nineties-era turn in law-enforcement culture toward what was known as a “warrior mind-set,” teaching officers to see almost any civilian as a potentially lethal assassin—an approach that many police trainers still advertise, even as the cops-vs.-citizens mentality has fallen out of favor among many police chiefs.

Added: Three Hundred and Sixtieth Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary

written in response to Bloomberg News, Jan. 27: "China Celebrated Lunar New Year Like Covid No Longer Exists" and The Daily Beast, Jan. 28: "How China’s COVID Crisis Could Spawn a Disastrous Virus Leap"

back-to-back waves

of Omicron subvariants . . . 

migrant workers

on their New Year's train ride

stare at the rolling dice

FYI: FYI: Lunar New Year celebrations, also known as the Spring Festival, in China start on the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. The festival lasts for about 23 days, ending on the 15th day of the first lunar month in the following year in the Chinese calendar. And the Chinese New Year Migration, Spring Festival Travel Rush, is the largest human migration on earth annually.

Added:

these nail heads

of the new neighbor's fence ....

heat lightning

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

midnight barking ...

one group after another

hastily crowded 

into this new VRChat 

a men-only echo chamber  

The Burden of "Used to be ..."

in dim streetlight 

I stagger out of the bar ...

rough-and-tumble

conversations with my shadow

spill into the cold

bare-knuckle brawling

with my drunken shadow

on the wall

a frenemy of ten years

in my immigrant life

fleeting moments

between waking and dreaming

I muse

on the extended “if”

of twenty years younger 

Ribbons, 18:3, Fall 2022

Holocaust Remembrance Day Tanka

This Brave New World, LXVII

written in response to this alarming news, NL Times, Jan. 25, 2023 : "23% of young Dutch have doubts that the Holocaust happened"

"I, too, find it shocking, ”Prime Minister Mark Rutte later said. “We can debate everything, but it is important that we at least agree on the facts.”

Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of Netherlands residents born after 1980 think the Holocaust is “a myth” or that the number of Jewish people killed is grossly exaggerated. That is more than in other countries. One-third to over half of the generations born since 1980 know remarkably little about the persecution of the Jews and genocide in the Second World War.

in the chat room

did SIX million really die

loud and louder ...

more youth enter this guessing game

as the night grows dark and colder

NeverEnding Story, January 27, 2023

FYI: Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last is a neo-Nazi, Holocaust denial pamphlet published in 1974 by neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zündel...In 1983, Holocaust survivor Sabina Citron began a private prosecution under s.181 of the Canadian Criminal Code against Zündel, charging him with spreading false news...The Supreme Court concluded in the 1988 trial that "The pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die? does not fit with received views of reality because it is not part of reality." -- excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, "Did Six Million Really Die?"  

And for more about Holocaust Remembrance Day, see my "Special Feature" post, Poems For Reflections on the Day of Holocaust Remembrance

Care Home Stillness Haiku

thread in and out

lost in the stitches ...

care home stillness

Acorn, October, 2022

Midnight Scream Haiku Noir

the sound of rain

on the sound

of a midnight scream

Frogpond, 45:2, Spring/Summer 2022

For further discussion, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, Haiku Noir

As If Nothing Mattered

tank tracks

shrouded in winter mist

the burnt woods

trees blackened 

by a cloud of ravens 

blood-stained doll 

On a Zoom meeting with his Ukrainian cousin, the Russian blogger pauses for a moment, then responds in a lower voice as if murmuring to himself, “Nobody sees on TV that people are dying. Everyone around me thinks that maybe everything is ok, and we're told it's a special military operation."

His cousin looks tired and has weeks-old stubble. He says with a sigh, "I was issued an automatic rifle yesterday, and my neighbour and I made thirty Molotov cocktails." His words are met with an uncomfortable silence. 

basement shelter

empty bottles, tuna cans 

and camouflage nets

thunder of gun-fire

another spring arrives

with falling snow

cattails, October, 2022

The Confession of a Guy Like Me

written for the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on  January 22, 1973

her eyes fixed

on the test results

as the snowy night deepens 

the burden of red lines

on my wandering heart

Whatever happens to her in the bathroom causes her to have these dreams; they keep her squirming, tossing, and turning all night long. She says nothing, and asks nothing of me. 

What am I (or are we) going to do in the foreseeable future, the future after Roe v. Wade?

NeverEnding Story, January 23 2023

Note: This poem is a sequel/response to my haiku sequence below:

First Post-Roe Independence Day

slanted light

the rise and fall

of her belly

unbroken heat

an 800-mile road trip

to the clinic

firework-lit sky

in the cheap motel window

a dream deferred 

UnbornLivesMatter

blood-scrawled on the entrance

silence between us

what ifs ....

return trip from the clinic

in gathering dark

NeverEnding, July 4 2022

FYI: The New Yorker, June 24 2022: "We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse:" We are entering an era not just of unsafe abortions but of the widespread criminalization of pregnancy.

...We have entered an era not of unsafe abortion but of widespread state surveillance and criminalization—of pregnant women, certainly, but also of doctors and pharmacists and clinic staffers and volunteers and friends and family members, of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth... 

Added:

this silence

between the two of us
grows louder ...
winter sunlight pouring
through stained-glass windows

Added:

the demon

hiding behind my back

waits for me

to turn in the half dark

white-haired in the mirror

Garden Buddha and Rabbit Haiku

New Year's sunshine ...

behind my garden Buddha

a rabbit

NeverEnding Story, January 22 2023

Added: Three Hundred and Fifty-Ninth Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary

written in response to Bloomberg News, Jan. 18: China’s Censors Vow to Erase "Gloomy Emotions" Over Holiday

as cases explode

upside-down face, confused, sad eyes

shocked and scared emojis

scrubbed clean from the internet --

Happy New Year of the Rabbit

Added:

police cars parked

near the Happy New Year banner ...

rabbit lanterns

decorate downtown streets

where deadly silence rules

FYI: The Canadian Press, Jan.22 : Gunman kills 10 near Lunar New Year 

festival in California

The massacre, which sent fear through Monterey Park and Alhambra’s large Asian American communities, was the nation's fifth mass killing this month. It was also the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas...

...An Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S. shows that 2022 was one of the nation's worst years in terms of mass killings, with 42 such attacks — the second-highest number since the creation of the tracker in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four people killed not including the perpetrator...

Added: 

the Stars and Stripes 

fluttering at half-mast ...

another mass shooting

FYI: CNN, Jan. 23: Three weeks and 36 mass shootings. This is America in 2023.

... Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among people younger than 24 in the United States, according to a study published in the December 2022 edition of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics...

Added: This Brave New World, LXVI

Doomsday Clock

set at ninty seconds

to midnight ...

mass shooting after mass shooting

as the sky turns dark, darker

FYI: Atomic scientists set the "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight than ever before on Tuesday, saying threats of nuclear war, disease, and climate volatility have been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, putting humanity at greater risk of annihilation...

And NBC News, Jan. 24: The U.S. has had at least 39 mass shootings in just 24 days so far this year, data shows

Best Years Tanka

alone

on the high-speed train

facing backward ... 

my best years rush away        

in fields of grass

cattails, October, 2022

Invisible Wounds Tanka

the door ajar

to let the silence out

face to face

with a midnight moon

and my invisible wounds       

cattails, October, 2022