Chen-ou Liu's Translation Project: First English-Chinese Haiku and Tanka Blog

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

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



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 22Company owned by Trump donor won $1.7 million no-bid Reflecting Pool cleaning contract


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