All the Feelings Tanka

(FYI: The following is the first installment of Realm of Contagious Stupidity, an ongoing series of contemporary, satirical kyōka examining modern culture and politics.

Realm of Contagious Stupidity, I

In response to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "Against stupidity we are defenseless."

at the gallery

a plane mirror with a sign:

the DUMBEST --

no one stands before it

except a Trump lookalike

FYI: The Guardian, Oct. 2 2025: A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might there be a way out?)

I was told

to hide all the feelings

once grown --

carrying this silver casket

I shed tears for her, and me

NeverEnding Story, July 24 2026

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

with each sob

his body convulses …

in the hospital

for the first time

I embrace a man

Ribbons, 7:4, Winter 2011

Added:

my brain humming 

with scraps of Sappho  

while Eros stirs ...

"I'll be a poet," I confess

to my river reflection

Added: This Brave New World, CXXVIII

another lineup

round the block near a foodbank

wall-mounted TV

blasting "sunlight on demand"

"orbiting data centers"

FYI: The Tyee, July 23 2026: 

Reflect Orbital's giant mirror to create “sunlight on demand” was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission, or FCC,

In February, SpaceX filed with the FCC for one million more satellites, for “AI data centers.”

Added:

dust motes  

in slanted moonlight—  

I settle  

into what remains

after bankruptcy

Nameless Headstone Haiku

sunlit edges

softened with moss ...

nameless headstone

O2 Haiku, March 10 2026 

Desert Mindscape Tanka

riding hard

with heels against the horse’s flanks

I race alone

across a desert mindscape —

Samarra’s walls in twilight

NeverEnding Story, May 17 2026

FYI: The transition in L 4 from a physical horse race to a "desert mindscape" is the emotional anchor of this tanka. It redefines everything the reader just read, transforming an adventure into a battle with loneliness or memory, and L5  invokes the famous literary tale "The Appointment in Samarra" (where a man rides hard to escape Death, only to meet Death at his destination), it infuses the tanka with a powerful sense of inescapable destiny.

The long dash leading into "Samarra’s walls in twilight" acts like a camera panning out. Readers can see the frantic, internal race, and then suddenly, the vast, quiet, ancient walls appear in the fading light. The tanka ends with a haunting image of imminent death.

This tanka was inspired by TomDispatch, February 22, 2026: America’s Date With Destiny: An Appointment in Samarra

Some tales can cross cultures, continents, and even centuries to arrive in our own era with their timeless truths pretty much intact. That’s particularly so for the immortal story of “an appointment in Samarra.” It first appeared in the fifth century in the Babylonian Talmud, that ancient repository of Jewish rabbinical wisdom. Then it crossed over into Islamic literature for reiterations in a thirteenth-century Persian version and a fifteenth-century Egyptian text, before popping up on the London stage in Act III of William Somerset Maugham’s 1933 play Sheppy.

In Maugham’s retelling, the tale is rich in irony. Once long ago, he wrote, there was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to shop in the market. But the servant soon returned home in a panic and told his master about a woman in the crowd there who stared at him angrily. “It was Death that jostled me,” the servant announced, pleading with his master for a horse to flee to the town of Samarra. There, said the servant, “Death will not find me.”

“That was not a threatening gesture,” said Death. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

More than anything else, that ancient tale testifies to the eternal human folly of trying to outrun fate. 

And my tanka below could be read as a counter poem:

in the moonlit dark

Death and I stare, unmoving

with thoughts miles apart ...

silence stretches between us

and who will blink first

Fireflies’ Light, 33, April 2026

Funeral's End Haiku

funeral's end

against the winter sunset 

the widow’s silhouette

Cold Moon Journal, January 11 2026

Easter Sunday Haiku

Easter Sunday

as the churchyard mist parts

another grave

NeverEnding Story, April 5, 2026

Added: 

What Will Come Next?

in Easter sunshine

a billboard atop the church

proclaims:

Mary, called Magdalene

host to seven devils

Jesus is Risen

drifts from the whitewashed church

on the corner

a middle-aged black man

wears a crown of thorns

FYI: White evangelical Protestants have emerged as one of the most loyal and crucial voting blocs for Donald Trump, with approximately 72% to 80% supporting him in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections... excerpted from Pew Research Center, Feb. 9, 2026: "White evangelicals remain among Trump’s strongest supporters,"

Golden Glow Tanka

one year older

as sunlight floods the bedroom,

a golden glow

brightening each corner ...

Death and I minds apart

Chrysanthemum, 35, 2025

German Translation:

ein Jahr älter

als Sonnenlicht das Schlafzimmer flutet

ein goldener Glanz

erhellt jede Ecke ...

Tod und ich sind uns uneins

Father's Ashes Haiku

winter fog

heavier than expected

father's ashes

Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, 9:1, 2025

A Passage

a pause

before the doctor's reply ...

my wife's hand in mine

the day she's gone ...

her smile in the wedding photo

with brown edges

sleepless again

I hold her empty pillow

tight ... and tighter

as if my late wife's hand

caressed my wrinkled face ...

first blossom rain

Frogpond, 48:3, 2025

Weight of Parting Haiku

scattered ashes ...

the weight of parting with her

a second time

Shot Glass Journal, 47 September 2025

Forever Tanka

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

Dove and Heart Haiku

a dove and a heart

painted on his cracked helmet ...

a dead aid worker

Haiku Avenue, 7, 2025

Ashen Sky Haiku

ashen sky

pieces of him drift towards

a world unknown

"One Breath", O2 Haiku, September 28, 2025

West Bank on Mute Haiku

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXLVIII: "a Mina plush doll, blood-stained and headless"

West Bank on mute  

a Mina plush doll blood-stained

and headless

NeverEnding, November 15 2025 

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXLIX: "patchworked tents"

rain pitter-pattering  

on rows of patchworked tents ...

a Gazan child

stares out at the puddle

with rippling gray skies

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCL: "a Palestinian doll"

twisted rebar heap

a Palestinian doll's eyes

jammed open

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLI: "Sde Teiman"

crimson twilight

at the edge of Sde Teiman 

a scream snaps in two

FYI: +972 Magazine, Independent Journalism from Israel-Palestine, NewsLetter, Nov. 18, 2025:

Torture, neglect, and starvation: new data reveals 98 Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody

Read the full report on +972 Magazine. 

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCLII: "summary execution"

their hands raised

into the thinning light ...

a soldier

fires without a word

as Jenin’s skies darken

FYI: Jenin is a city in the West Bank, Palestine. And CBC News, Nov. 28 2025: UN says killing of 2 Palestinians in West Bank looks like 'summary execution'

...The UN and B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, say since Oct. 7th, more than 1000 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied territories and that Israelis are acting with impunity...

Casket Senryu

traffic jam

face to face with the casket

on a flat-bed truck

Failed Haiku, 109, 2025

Wrinkled Face Haiku

as if my late wife's hand

caressed my wrinkled face ...

blossom rain

Shadow Pond Journal, June 7 2025

Priest's Shadow Haiku

muffled cries

a priest's shadow slips

into the grave

Under the Basho  May 4  2025

Cocked Rifle Tanka

life is so good

why am I dying for this?

on the hilltop

of the West Bank settlement 

he mutters with a cocked rifle

NeverEnding Story, July 9 2025

Note: Ls 1&2 allude to the existential "question -- 'Existence is so good—why am I dying for this?'-- that reflects a sentiment often explored in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, particularly in the context of war and the characters' struggles with mortality and the meaning of life. It encapsulates the tension between the inherent value of life and the seemingly pointless sacrifice demanded by war. "

FYI: United Nations Press Release, March 18, 2025: Israel ramps up settlement and annexation in West Bank with dire human rights consequences

Haaretz, May 28, 2025: Israeli Cabinet Approves Construction of 22 New Settlements, Some Deep in West Bank

And +972 Magazine, June 19, 2025: With Iran war as pretext, Israel suffocates the West Bank

After striking Tehran, the army closed hundreds of gates to seal Palestinians inside towns and strand them on roads — proof of annexation in all but name.

The following tanka about Israel's genocidal war in Gaza could work as real life foreshadowing of what will happen to the doubting solider on the hilltop of the West Bank settlement:

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LX: "suicide deaths"

the lingering smell

of blood-stained body parts

scattered everywhere

another soldier dies

by his own hand, and yet ...

NeverEnding Story, May 17 2024

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXI: "two deaths, Palestinian and Israeli"

One War Story and Two Deaths

a head

severed from the body

grits its teeth ...

moonlight luster on the faces 

of young Israeli soldiers 

back from Gaza

Ezra couldn't stop the war

in his head ...

our father holds his shroud tight

as he is being buried

NeverEnding Story, October 16 2024

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CXCIX: 'white coffin"

the white coffin

a gray-haired man balances 

on one hand ...

a child born after the war started

and buried  before it ends

Worker in Words Tanka

midnight hush ...

I, a worker in words

straddle the line

between the abstract, death

and the concrete, aging body

NeverEnding Story, June 21 2025

Added:

the brick shack

with boarded windows

facing a graveyard

in gathering dusk

a torn-up chapbook: I AM

FYI: For more about death poems, see "To the Lighthouse: Jisei, Japanese Death Poems" And  you can get a free PDF copy of the book here  and here is the link to Janine Beichman's detailed review of the book, "Yoel Hoffmann as Japanologist: Japanese Death Poems."

Roadside Wreath Tanka

the roadside wreath

in a drift of snowflakes

how fleeting

my memories of her

who pirouetted, pirouetted

Gusts, 41, Spring/Summer 2025 

The Last Year of My Father's Life

A haiku sequence for my father who was born in mainland China, lived most of his adult life in Taiwan, died and was buried there in 2022

a slice of my life 

in father's foggy mind

birthday sunset

father silver-haired

now my child

foggy winter night

ventilator hiss

Father's face blurry

and blurrier...

this faded photo ...

the story father told us

as mother grinned

this weight

of the words half spoken

a stone on Father's grave

NeverEnding Story, June 16 2025

FYI: For more about my father's story, see my tanka prose below:

A Chain Smoker of Few Words

My father, who was born in mainland China, quit his studies to defend his country against the Japanese invasion. Later, he fought his fellow countrymen for the sake of unifying war-torn China. Retreating to Taiwan along with the defeated Chinese Nationalist Army, he was separated from his family in China for four decades. He spent most of his adult life in Taiwan, worked hard to support his new family, died and was buried there without ever again seeing any of his family members from China.

this dream loop:

riding on my shoulders

into the Taiwan Strait

Father cries out, Mama

wait for me, I'm coming home

Contemporary Haibun Online, 19:3, 2023

Added:

for ten days

onslaught after onslaught

of writer's block ...

I look out the window

at the moon, its fullness

Added:

white sand

slips through my fingers

a flash 

of morning sunlight

in each grain

Added:

one brown patch

after another, another

on the lawn ...

we speak less day by day

as the end of spring approaches