GENIUS FORUMS

haiku at the zoo

moonglow fills the night
between bars and eyes and tongues
a worn pacing path

falling leaves no sound
one scream: claws grab peeping mouse
falling leaves, no sound

where firelight meets night
glowing eyes patiently wait
the first embers dim

Outside the window
Tree leaves dance silently
Traffic roars like the ocean

This page helped me a decade ago lot writing a bit more "original" style Haiku. I found it tricky to really get a good "cut" in the centre. Personally I believe without a distinct but subtle shift or "turn", opening up the earlier meaning, one tends to end up with flower print wallpaper. But don't let that stop anyone trying :)

Some of the best example I remember coming from The Heron's Nest. Here are my two favorites, I find them hard to top although they use the alternative counts which some argue are better for English.

• creak of the swing . . .
  my feet still reach
  the sky

and

• animal skull
  the child fingers
  her eye

and finally one again of my own

• chilling northeast winds
  herding sheep towards a shelter:
  warm glow of sunset

पूरे दिन चाय पीने
मैं आज रात को सोने के लिए नहीं मिल सकता है
कल यहाँ है

Drinking tea all day
I can not get to sleep tonight
Tomorrow is here

Very good Kunga! Not sure why you wrote it in Hindi. Perhaps it was Darjeeling? When I put it through a translation a few more times (a game I used to play when Internet was still fresh) we get something different though. Although translation sites have become way too good these days. Too much exactness, little fun.

The Day of drinking tea
You can get sleep tonight as I have already suggested
Meeting convened

This page helped me a decade ago …

A decade ago I wrote:

Smooth stone plunks in pool
Tiny tsunamis ring out
Silent energy

A month after I wrote this, the tsunami of 2004 occurred. This gave me a pause, to contemplate.

Cahoot wrote:

This page helped me a decade ago …

A decade ago I wrote:

Smooth stone plunks in pool
Tiny tsunamis ring out
Silent energy

A month after I wrote this, the tsunami of 2004 occurred. This gave me a pause, to contemplate.

This sends chills up my
spine the power of subtle
energy making

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: Not sure why you wrote it in Hindi. Perhaps it was Darjeeling?

The Indian tea
vibrated with India
and so... my heart beats

Is it summer or
winter - climate change has
spun my convictions.

Swirling swarms of gnats
Buddha frozen in statue
Clouds frozen in sky

So when is anyone actualy going to try to write Haiku here? Although I liked to one about tea, it not really qualifies either.

Perhaps you all do as much effort with them as with philosophy? Haiku's are supposed to be harder than anything else to write! I only wrote one so far which comes close but still not good. It needs to be way more immersive, more direct and also more (somewhat) surprising at the end. Here's an award winning one as example, from Sandra Simpson, see how it takes you to a place, a smell, sound and a little mystery about what is gasping. Stripped from everything else!

• receding tide the gasps of little
  shells

unpinned golden locks
her unholstered thirty-eights
captured Randy Bear

fuschia petunias
and the taste of cardamom
orchids listening

God found alive. Search efforts continue.

The toast is toasting. I am toast.

In the beginning was the end.

not wanting to harm
i scoop ant with a napkin
now he is limping

i broke the ants leg
he limps, i limp, we both limp
limping together

funny how that works
non-duality limping
serendipity

Doctor No mumbled the unfamiliar word.

Ruined by Bruins

After my long journey
all I wanted was to sit
nothing fancy
just a chair, to ease my feet
relax, and sigh.

And all I wanted
was some soup
that wouldn’t burn my tongue
or taste like cold grits

And a bed, perhaps
a safe place at day’s end
to ponder my fate, before sleep
where I was going, where I had been.

All I wanted
was a happy world
that is not too hot
or not too cold
but is ever so right
and never changes
forever and ever.

Damn the bears!
Damn the bears!

unlettered loon laugh
arrow piercing foggy veil
a haunting I am

Sky says to the earth
Let's meet at the horizon
Bring mystery seeds

nothing to say now
mind swimming in swirling thoughts
chocolate black hole

haiku like the wind!
but break the form of haiku
and you break the wind