Skip to content

Haiku Battle

    A friend and I are in the midsts of a Haiku Battle. We exchange poems like a hail of bullets in 5-7-5 barrages. Moves and countermoves, each building on the last. He mentions a park and then I’m writing about a carriage-horse and then we’re at an old abandoned carousel where the horses sit lifelessly…and then we’re writing about death.

    I check the shared google document regularly to see if it’s my turn. At this stage, about a week in, we are at 32 combined haikus and looking back to the beginning we’ve both already improved. It’s fun writing such a condensed format with inherent constraints. I’m not sure how long we’ll keep it up–probably not long, but I like to imagine us in our 70s, finding a new Haiku submitted and sitting down in our sky-suites to compose our retaliation.

    Here are some of my own favorites so far:

    Life is a haiku

    Days counted like syllables

    then, over too soon.

    ____

    Remember the night

    we climbed to your roof then fell

    into a slow dance.

    ____

    The tossed cigarette

    explodes on the dark freeway

    bright as dynamite.

    ____

    Hey, amphibians!

    Make up your minds already

    Walk or swim, not hard.

    ____

    Defunct carousel

    Cracked horses wait in silence

    for riders to come.

    ____

    Death is patient, Death

    is unkind. Proudly Death boasts

    a perfect record.

     

    Next Post>