For Sale Sign Tanka

on the driveway

all hopscotch squares

except one

fill with crimson leaves ...

for sale sign askew

NeverEnding Story, October 4 2026

Added:

a dollhouse

at the rain-streaked window ...

foreclosure sign

Added:

roof cobwebs

threaded with rosary beads —

foreclosed house in mist

FYI: My tanka below could be read as a sequel to the "for sale" and "foreclosure" poems above:

foreclosure

and for sale signs

like scarecrows ...

wildflowers bloom

in rioting glory

Gusts, 26, Fall/Winter 2017

Added:

somewhere, someone

shadowing me through twilight

faint buzz overhead

Added:

distant sirens ...

from one dream to another

no blinking exit

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

echo of footsteps

in the psych ward hallway

EXIT blinking

NeverEnding Story, September 16 2026

Added:

winding dappled trail

through a green-leafed breeze

I'm off the map's edge

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)😍

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.

 

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

Dare to Be Happy

The neighborhood is a hush of humid air and mown grass. Time feels suspended, marked only by the rhythmic pulse of water hitting the driveway. For a moment, this white picket fence world is nothing but light and motion, before the next headline arrives—red banners scrolling, digits flickering upward.

on the front lawn

the sprinkler ticks like a clock

throwing silver arcs...

his toddler's laughter

chases a beagle's bay

The New Verse News, April 20 2026

Transient Glow Tanka

response to Thomas Mann: A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. 

a transient glow

before another sunrise

the cursor blinking

while I'm alone with a mind—

all its windows closed

NeverEnding Story, September 1 2026

FYI: Ls 1&2 refer to a "false dawn," a transient light that precedes the rising of the sun by about an hour.

Added: 

My fingers click-clacking — hail against the window.

what's left unsaid

between words and lines ...

alone at false dawn

Added: response to Richard Bach: A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t QUIT. 😎 

robins chirp

to a faint glow in the sky —

carving out

showy verbs and fatty nouns

I hold the poem's bare bones

Stonehenge Tanka

a full moon

between the sarsen stones 

of Stonehenge

one silhouette ghosting

across the gravel path

NeverEnding Story, August 29, 2026

Added:

a thrum of rain

on the old van skylight 

in a parking lot

I murmur, the life I dreamed

yet the life I'm living

Added:

flash after flash

of midnight lightning

my dream and I

rippling

in the vodka glass

Added:

words are only air

dissolving as they are said ...

yet my chest tightens

as if I’ve swallowed a rock

lodged beneath my breath

Added:

belief is a bridge

built across surging waters...

yet my shaking hands

cannot find the wooden rail

to the altar in dim light

Added:

emigration eve

the last notes

of Home Sweet Home

fading once more

into this moonless stillness

First Summer Rain Tanka

(

"Israel's oldest daily, Haaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

Daniel Blatman, Opinion, August 24, 2026: From Armenia to Gaza: The Language of Denial That Makes Atrocities Possible

From Nazi 'language rules' to the American military's 'collateral damage' and Israel's 'voluntary migration' policy for Gaza, euphemisms do more than conceal crimes. They allow ordinary people to live with them

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCV: "headlines"

headline after headline

of situation, event

and incident ...

body parts on the blood-stained floor

of a half-flattened classroom

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVI: "neu-tra-li-za-tion"

neu-tra-li-za-tion

a new recruit mouths

with a middle finger —

a gray-haired Gazan's back

pockmarked with bullets

FYI: Below is a relevant excerpt:

In 1947, two years after the collapse of the regime that had threatened his life, the German Jewish philologist Victor Klemperer published a short book titled "The Language of the Third Reich" ("Lingua Tertii Imperii"). Klemperer, who escaped extermination because he was married to a non-Jewish woman, did not write about extermination camps or SS death squads. He wrote about words.

Nazism, he argued, penetrated society not only through speeches and posters in the streets, but primarily through expressions that people unwittingly internalized, like tiny doses of poison entering the bloodstream. Individual words, expressions and syntactic patterns were imposed on the masses through millions of repetitions, then adopted mechanically and unconsciously. The poison, he wrote, does not act immediately. It accumulates....

The Israeli media now has a complete, efficient and polished lexicon designed to implant euphemistic descriptions of the state's crimes in the minds of Israelis. Mass killing in Gaza falls under the heading of "operational activity." The destruction of entire neighborhoods becomes "mowing the lawn" or "flattening," images borrowed from gardening and construction. A targeted airstrike that kills dozens of innocent people is described as a "thwarting" or "neutralization," terms from the world of intelligence that imply the prevention of some greater evil. An area that continues to be bombed, such as Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, is called a "humanitarian zone." And when it becomes clear that uninvolved civilians, including children, have been killed, passive formulations take over: "were killed during an operation," "lost their lives," "fatalities were reported." ...

This is precisely what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu meant by "symbolic violence." It is not a lie that someone decided to sell or an instruction handed down from above, but a set of categories of thought internalized so deeply that both the person doing the classifying and the person being classified accept them as natural. A news editor who writes "hikers" or "terrorists" does not feel that they are choosing a word. They feel that they are describing reality. That is the power of symbolic violence. It requires no administrative enforcement because it is already embedded in our vocabulary.

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCCVIII: "torn pieces of Star of David"

asleep

on torn pieces of Star of David

a stray 

FYI: The New Yorker, July 28, 2025: Israel’s Zones of Denial

Amid national euphoria over the bombing of Iran—and the largely ignored devastation in Gaza—a question lurks: What is the country becoming?

Added: Realm of Contagious Stupidity, III

he hides “files”

sleeps through meetings, yells be quiet

trades stocks and golfs:

this ball-size-brained con man smirks

behind the Resolute Desk

)

a child's hand 

outside the car window

to touch

the first summer rain ...

bumper to bumper to Exit

NeverEnding Story, August 23 2026

Added:

a midnight moon

glints in the skylight

turning once more

I listen to her breathing

as the night stretches on

Added:

packing

and unpacking my suitcases

for three hours —

this life without my love

yet still within my love

Added:

we all move on

then the story carries us —

still I stand still

at the bend of her street

hearing her door close

Added:

home from vacation

it takes three moonless nights

for my heart and mind

to adjust to living

in a room of my echoes

Another New Day Tanka

the sound

of yellowing birch leaves

zigzagging ...

alone again, yet

another new day

Time Haiku, 65, 2026

Pulses Tanka

moonlight

dripping from icicles

in pulses

this silence echoes

weeks without you

Time Haiku, 65, 2026

Maple Leaf Flag Tanka

the Maple Leaf

flaps in drifting snowfalkes  ...

a hyphen

before "Canadian"

joins my two halves

The Bougainvillea Journal, 1, 2026

Seaside Train Trip Tanka

seaside train trip

to my childhood hometown

with eyes closed

and the window ajar

I breathe in, and breathe out ... 

Laurels, 5, 2026

Pink Roses Drooping Tanka

pink roses

drooping in a vase—

the shadow

of the psychiatrist

darkens my niece's face

hedgerow, 152, 2026

Remembering

"doctor, please

the sounds, they won''t leave"

a boy mutters …

buzzing of drones, roar of jets

screams of Gazans, living and dead

For days he lies curled in a shelter bed, staring at the pockmarked wall as if it could answer him, until the sounds lodged deep inside his head finally overwhelm him.

When the razor wire outside glints with the first light of a new day, silence enters his head … and his life, five years older than the war that claimed it.

Ribbons, 22:1, 2026

Human, All Too Human

heated breaths

and tangled bedsheets

bodies and dreams . . .

the bittersweet burden

of this love affair

 

to Kintsugi Master

I lament, with gold glue

could you piece back

my shattered heart?

a cloak of silence falls

 

chance encounter

at a motel ice machine . . .

with eyes and hands

we undress each other’s armor

curling into a single dream

Ribbons, 22:1, 2026

War News on Mute Tanka

war news on mute …

the morning light spills

over garden beds

where herb seeds nudge the crust

seeking room to grow

Ribbons, 22:1, 2026

Gliding Kayaks Tanka

gliding kayaks ...

ripple after ripple

overlapping

summer stars that bridge

what words never could

NeverEnding Story, July 30 2026

Added:

the time it takes

for my aging beagle

to close his eyes—

crumbled dog-treat pieces

left in my jean pocket

FYI: My tanka below could be read as its sequel:

my neighbor’s dog

hit by a red sports car ...

after our walk

she tells me she  sees

his shape in the clouds

Bright Stars, VI, 2014

Added:

one tide cycle

after another and another

across the Pacific 

pulling out, returning anew ...

my heart still on the other shore

Added:

to stay or to go

I murmur to myself

again and again 

through the autumn wind 

each leaf zigzags its way down

Added:

all things must pass,

the seasons teach me this —

yet I still press

my face into her lingerie

forgotten in the basket

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

Between Heaven and Earth

I'm soul-tired

before this wooden Jesus ...

Time is frozen

in St. Peter's Church

with frost flowers on the windows

What is Time?

alone and calm

before a leafy riot

of garden plants ...

my old friend and Time

are of the same race

If no one asks me, I know; if I need to explain it to one who asks, I don't know.

a mile-long lineup

of trucks at the checkpoint

in smoky sunset

inch by inch Time crawls through

the Kerem Shalom Crossing

What then is Time? In the present, the past presses forward; the future leans back toward me. I stand between them—no nearer to an answer than frost on glass.

Contemporary Haibun Online 22:1, April 2026

To the Unknown

trapped alone

in the liminal space

between shifting present

and frozen past ...

I gaze up at departing geese

on my life journey

what might happen, what could be ...

this burden

of all the possibilities

as new snow falls on icy roads

Haiku Canada Review, 20:1, 2026