Kraa-Kraa-Kraa Senryu

Realm of Contagious Stupidity, IV

For Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945)

neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazi dissident

who wrote in Letters and Papers from Prison: “Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

ravens' kraa-kraa-kraa

as one stray outbarks the rest:

Trump TV on

NeverEnding Story, September 22 2026

FYI: Bonhoeffer's passage isn't simply saying that people are unintelligent; he distinguishes the phenomenon from an intellectual defect and describes a condition in which people surrender independent judgment and become impervious to contrary facts. 

And 

The Guardian, September 21, 2026: US TV networks suspend White House pool coverage over Trump media ban

White House promoted its own ‘Trump TV’ feed online after ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC decline to participate

Fenceside Chitchat Haiku

fenceside chitchat

the drone

of bumblebees

The Mainichi, June 22, 2026

Cubicle Glass Haiku

year in, year out ...

in the cubicle glass

my reflection

Haiku in Action, Weekly Prompt:"Window to the Soul," May 20th - 24th, 2026

First Summer Since She's Gone

Moths batter the porch’s yellow bulb, a dry, restless tapping against the casing. Below, a glass of melting ice sweats into the wicker table.

The humidity lies over us like a heavy blanket, but the old beagle and I can't kick it off.

a hazy crescent

the rhythm of crickets

stitching our silence

Cornflower, 1, 2026

Smoky Clouds Haiku

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVIII: "smoky clouds"

inspired by the Israeli award-winning documentary, NAZA (a Hebrew acronym for the "military term, collateral damage" ), which purports to reveal "the SYSTEMS behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza"

where tents were

a tornado-twist

of smoky clouds

NeverEnding Story, September 17 2026

FYI: Haaretz, September 17, 2026: Netanyahu Vows to Revoke Israeli Citizenship Over Alleged IDF 'Defamation' in Response to 'NAZA' Film

Netanyahu said that he would also work to increase twentyfold the amount of damages people can sue for defamation against IDF soldiers: 'We will hit them both in the pocket and in citizenship, because they have no place among us'

This collision between state narrative and systemic exposure brings me back to the words of US Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918: “The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.”

For more detailed responses, see "Special Feature" post, "Selected Poems for Reflections on Israeli 'Gaza Genocide Documentary, NAZA'"

And 

FYI: +972 Magazine, September 10, 2026: NAZA: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza written by Directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor

Over the past three years, we conducted night-time interviews on the rooftops of Tel Aviv with 24 Israeli soldiers who played an active role in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Most of them were intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians. 

Their testimonies form the basis of “NAZA,” a new documentary we directed ...

This is a film about a system. It focuses on orders, policies, and patterns of operation, not deviations from them. The conclusion that we draw from the testimonies is clear: The mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza was not a “tragic byproduct” of a war against Hamas, as it is commonly portrayed in Israel, but a premeditated, calculated, and intentional act. This is why a UN commission, the world’s leading human rights groups, and Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars have described it as a genocide.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCIX: "attack drone"

in smoky twilight

a mule-drawn flatboard wagon 

with wounded Gazans ...

an attack drone flying past

silences everything below

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCX: "Yom Kippur"

after the shofar's long blast

the Ark's curtain pulls closed ...

forty miles away

smoke column after column

climbing without end in Gaza

FYI: The final, absolute closure of Yom Kippur is signaled by a single, long blast of the shofar (the Tekiah Gedolah). This blast formally brings the fast to an end, representing the final "click" of the lock. Only after this blast is the physical curtain of the Ark pulled closed, and the community transitions into the evening service and Havdalah

Crimson Sunset Glow Haiku

hospice garden

crimson sunset glow

across her face

NeverEnding Story, September 16 2026

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

hospice garden

the wishing fountain fills

with fallen leaves

Ink Sweat & Tears, April 17, 2025 

Added:

echo of footsteps

in the psych ward hallway

EXIT blinking

Added:

hushed silence

before and after

a midnight scream

Added:

war cemetery

in slanted moonlight

new row of graves

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

war cemetery 

birthday on this tombstone

uncarved

NeverEnding Story, September 5 2023

Added:

the other shore

of surging Pacific waves ...

years in exile

Sunset, Moonrise Haiku

sunset, moonrise—

held

in a heartbeat

NeverEnding Story, September 15, 2026

FYI: In Zen-inspired haiku, the Void (Śūnyatā) can be approached not as emptiness in the sense of nothingness, but as the absence of fixed boundaries between things...

...At first, sunset and moonrise appear to be separate events unfolding along a timeline. Yet the phrase in a heartbeat collapses that distance. Within a single pulse of awareness, the transition from one to the other can be experienced not as two events but as one unified "moment of suchness" ...

For more detailed comments and void (sūnyatā)-inspired haiku, see "To the Lighthouse" post, "Haiku and the Void (Śūnyatā)"

Added:

moon in water—

the ripples

where it was

...L1 presents an apparently simple image: moon in water. Yet what is actually present is not the moon itself, but its reflection—a phenomenon dependent upon the moon, the water, the light, the distance between them, and the conditions of perception.

When the ripples appear in L2, the reflection disappears in L3:

the ripples

where it was

Yet nothing substantial has been destroyed. The moon remains in the sky; the water remains; the ripples arise and pass. What disappears is an appearance that never possessed an independent existence of its own. Its presence was always contingent upon particular conditions.

In this sense, the haiku evokes the paradox expressed in the Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.” The moon's reflection has form—it can be seen, recognized, and momentarily experienced—yet it is empty of svabhāva, or inherent self-nature. It exists only through a temporary convergence of conditions....

For more detailed comments and void (sūnyatā)-inspired haiku, see "To the Lighthouse" post, "Haiku and the Void (Śūnyatā)"

Icicles Tanka

moonlight

dripping from icicles

in pulses

this silence echoes

weeks without you

Tanka Award Winner, Time Haiku, 64, 2026

FYI: The prize is £40 ($USD 54)😍

Night Adventure

Queen Anne's lace bows under the weight of raindrops. The air is thick with the scent of crushed clover and cooling earth. The rest of the world and I are waiting.

tall grass

a deer's ear twitches

cloud-thinned stars

Shot Glass Journal, 49, 2026

Childhood Boardwalk in Twilight

The smell of deep-fryer oil and salt air hangs heavy. Crumbling remains of a row of sandcastles wait for the surging tide. Far out, a freighter's light crawls across the horizon tinged with red and orange.

carousel music

fades into the crash of surf

end of summer

Shot Glass Journal, 49, 2026

Exile Haiku

sea foam shaping

and reshaping itself ...

tenth year in exile

Shot Glass Journal, 49, 2026

September 11 Haiku

false dawn

in a bead of grass dew —

September 11

NeverEnding Story, September 11 2026

 

FYI: For more poems about 9/11, see "Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on Remembrance of 9/11"

Remembrance is less a fixed record than a stencil constantly revised; each time we retrace the steps of the past, our present reflections reshape the impression left behind.

-- Chen-ou Liu

Added:

another year

another “thoughts and prayers” —

9/11, grayer

Added:

And after ...

Facing south, a sea of white empty chairs, 2,753 in all, flooded the lawn of Bryant Park, Midtown Manhattan. One for each person. Not a breath of air. This burden of hushed silence...

blinds drawn

against the light of dawn

9/11, yet not

Added:

Retracing and Reflecting

for those who have journeyed heavily across the landscape of the heart

the light of dawn

on September Twelfth

the time it takes 

for leaves zigzagging 

to the dust-choked ground

off the tower

one after many sped downward —

Muslim lives

and our world ripped by the day

before and forever

the footprint

of each tower that once stood

now surrounded

by four walls of water and grief

an Afghan woman's look

FYI: The dedication alludes to Melvina Young's remark:

Sadness takes its own time. It can't be hurried along. It can't be rushed. It "moves heavily across the landscape of the heart" until time and love can carry it further into the distance. 

Added:

Ground Zero silence --

yet this golfball-brained man

closes his eyes, snoring

FYI: The New Republic, September 11, 2026: Trump Falls Asleep Onstage at September 11 Ceremony

Moonlit Kiss Haiku

our moonlit kiss ...

that first time years ago

and the last

NeverEnding Story, September 10 2026

Added:

sultry night

a couple knee-deep

in stars

Added:

jasmine breeze

tonight smells of her

gone for years

Added:

moving day

the backyard swing 

slows to a stop

Added:

summer's end

the blue morpho

under a pin

Added:

sky tinged smoky gray

alone, I drive slowly past

what's left

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

cliff edge —

a burning sky

behind us

Honourable Mention, IHS International Haiku Competition 2022

Marion Clarke 

Screams Gendai Haiku

screams red bleeding through midnight fog

NeverEnding Story, September 9 2026

FYI: This is written in response to the following:

knife cold swimming into blue bones

Modern Haiku, 44:1, 2013

Susan Constable

My detailed analysis can be accessed here.

Late Wife Haiku

half-sleep again …

seeing my late wife turn back

not turn back

Haikuniverse, June 18 2026

Rooftop View of My Life

night shift done

in 7-Eleven lights

a stray and I part

Tar sticks to my sneakers. Below, the grid of this city is a circuit board of silver, yellow, and red LEDs. A siren wails from afar, then is swallowed by the concrete canyons. Up here, a place of my own: the city noise thins to a hum.

clothesline

a damp sheet snaps

at my cheek

haikuKATHA, 58, 2026

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