The Haiku Thing

I frequently get re-interested in doing things that I used to do. Apparently I have more interest in maintaining a continuity than the folks behind Red Dwarf did, but then again that's not a hell of a lot. There are two key things I reach back to, and that's the SMILE sign and the haiku thing.



I've been writing a daily haiku as my status update on Google+ now for the last couple of weeks. As I mentioned in one of the comments recently, I started writing haiku on a daily basis back when I was in high school. A chalkboard-on-wheels found its way into a secluded hallway, and I got to school early enough to write on it without being seen by other students. It got so that I was writing my haiku every morning on the bus to school, then transcribing it from note cards onto the chalkboard, and then not signing my name. Eventually, a number of people would get to know that it was me -- I didn't exactly keep it a secret amongst my friends or classmates -- but I was just anonymous enough with it that I would sometimes happen upon a conversation about the haiku on the board that day, and I would thoroughly enjoy that moment of eavesdropping.

I found over the years that I have something of a knack for being able to distill a moment or a feeling that a lot of people identify with or share into a haiku. I wound up writing haiku on my online dating profile, which was wildly successful when compared to a regular answering-of-questions, as my girlfriend Emily can attest. The first haiku on that profile is the one that is probably considered my best to most folks:

The birds and the bees:
what do all the women want?
I hope it's haiku

I wrote one today about yesterday's one-year anniversary of the passing of Seattle Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus, and it reminded me of one I wrote for Fred "Mr." Rogers, who passed away in February of 2003 when I was still writing haiku on that chalkboard. I unfortunately cannot remember what I wrote that morning when we heard the news, but I remember it being a strong one. Bear in mind, "Please won't you be my neighbor" is seven syllables. I feel that haiku in memoriam tend to be some of my better work.

I've written enough haiku on different subjects over the years that I can get into a groove where I pound one out in, say, 40 seconds, and it feels pretty solid. You can test me on that and leave a topic in to comments. I'll try to keep a stopwatch close by so I can see if I can still do it. The only problem about this is that every time I see a book of haiku published in some oddball store, I think to myself "why didn't I do that?"

At one point, getting a haiku book published was one of the front-runners for being my senior project in high school. I also had considered trying to perform stand-up comedy at an open-mic as my senior project, but neither of those got off the ground. I can't remember what I wound up doing, now. I think the requirements changed to something where getting a book published or performing stand-up was not something that made sense to present about. Which is pretty weak, actually.