Rain Chain Haiku

    winter

drizzle down

       the

  rain chain

      this

    life, yet

      slow

 and short

The Pan Haiku Review, 6, 2025

Why Me Tanka

I keep asking

why me? there's no rhythm

to this life,

its days like today scattered 

by Fate among the rest

NeverEnding Story, April 28 2025

Added:

life is short

my Spotify list remains long ...

and yet 

this loveless morning 

alone with birdsong 

Added:

at 3 a.m.

sleepless once again ...

this crescent moon

this gray-haired stranger

in the bedroom window

FYI: In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

         -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

Added:

the sunlight fades

into the gathering dark

another day 

will ends with nothing new

in my life and on my mind

Fate Tanka

a caged monkey

runs up and down

back and forth

as if it could flee ...

in its eyes I see my fate

Take 5ive, "Inclusivity," 2024

Joy to the World Tanka

Joy to the World

drifting in from my neighbor ...

alone in the room

I've almost nothing,

yet everything

NeverEnding Story, December 24 2022

Added:

Christmas Sale!

a teen with an oversized hood

in the mall window

Added:

snowonsnowonsnow ...

shopperssleepinaWalmart

Added: No More Fairy Tales, VII

written in response to this brutal Christmas storm

a bomb cyclone

sweeping across the country ...

snowed in for days

I play Russian roulette

with my drunken shadow

Added: No More Fairy Tales, VIII

gathering dark ...

row upon row of houses

encased in ice

FYI: Sky News, Dec. 27: US snow storm covers houses in ice as people struggle to dig out after deadly blizzards.

An icy white blanket - which from a distance looks like icing on a cake - covers the entire front of the Fort Erie properties.

At least 65 people have died as a result of the extreme weather, with the region in and around Buffalo, New York state, emerging as ground zero for an Arctic deep freeze.

Large parts of North America have been battling a huge bomb cyclone – the deadliest US storm for at least two generations – since last week.

Gavel-On-The-Desk Gesture Tanka

reading between the lives and writing between the lines, XXVII

God, my country

just hard work, no handouts ...

in the spotlight

the mayor punctuates his words

with a gavel-on-the-desk gesture

NeverEnding Story, September 19, 2022

FYI: For more, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, Character/Persona Tanka

Penhouse Tanka

alone 

by the penthouse window

my friend repeats 

this is America

why settle for pretty good? 

NeverEnding Story, September 19 2022

FYI: For more, see my "To the Lighthouse" post, Character/Persona Tanka

This (Sinful) World Tanka

alone again

face to face with sun-filled

stained-glass windows

that depict the beginning

and end of this (sinful) world

Fireflies' Light, 25,  March 2022

River of No Return and Inner Child Tanka

stepping into

the river of no return ...

who will wait

for my inner child

on the other shore

NeverEnding Story, July 28, 2022

Fiftieth Birthday Senryu

the knife

cutting through Happy

fiftieth birthday

Frogpond, 45:1, winter 2021

Young and Old

my niece yells

at my silver-haired Father

I'm sixteen

I want everything

or nothing at all

strands of gray hair ...

alone in a detached house

with cabinets

and closets full of things

I haven't touched for years

PoemHunter, March 14 2022

Spare Buttons and Goddamned Life Kyoka

spare buttons

in her sewing tin

unable to find one

to mend the jeans

of my goddamned life

Failed Haiku, 6:68,  August 2021 

Selected Haiku: Floating world Haiku

floating world ...
this childhood river
of summer stars

Cattails, April 2017

Selected Haibun: Child Is Father of the Man

winter twilight ...

Father stands firm

in diapers

He can't remember what he had for dinner but can still hear The Spring Rain Will Come Again. It was playing when Sarah Rose danced topless on the bar at Janus in his freshman year of high school. Now, he mumbles to himself, Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day, my boy...

A Hundred Gourds, 4:1, December 2014

Selected Tanka: Playboy and IKEA Tanka

my classmate
used to sit in the bathroom
with Playboy ...
now feasts his eyes
on the IKEA catalogue

Bright Stars, V, 2014

Wordless

Before boarding the train, she turned to me with her arm across her belly and said, "you want to have a room of your own to write in, but how about us? How do you put food on the table?" We stood there wrapped in a shroud of silence... Finally, the train whistled into the dead of night.

Her ten-year absence is a black hole where I dream restlessly.

dawnlight ...

the poems I wrote for her

now illegible

cattails, April 2018

Floating Life Tanka

April snowflakes
fall on the Don River
and disappear ...
the coldness I feel
in this floating life

NeverEnding Story,  May 1, 2018

Hearse Tanka

a hearse
in my rear-view mirror ...
I wonder
will my name be written
in water or marble

Ribbons, 13:3, Fall, 2017

Selected Tanka Prose: The Sunflower Girl

She burst into my room, “I want to taste this summer petal by petal as if it were my last.” I cannot remember the color of her dress as she stood with sunlight pouring through the window and looked as if she were on fire.

snowflakes drift
this Easter Sunday...
the space
between her dates
cut into black stone

Atlas Poetica, 13,Autumn 2012

Selected Haibun: Just A Day

November sky
framed by the basement window
thoughts of home

The ceiling still water stained. A pile of poetry books on the desk. None with my name on it. Yet my life harms no one -- no wife... no pets.

Today, on my forty eighth birthday,  no one calls.

Haibun Today, 5:4, December 2011

Cardboard Sign Tanka

beneath the lamppost --
the cardboard sign
on her chest
reads Wearth/Worth
in black and gold

Atlas Poetica, 22, 2015

Note: The Old English word wearth means outcast.