Many years ago I received the wonderful book The Haiku Year as a gift. It is a collection of non-traditional haikus from 7 friends (including Michael Stipe of REM) all of whom decided to write a haiku every day for a year. It is a beautiful and sometimes surprising collection of short poems that I return to often. I was really taken with it at the time and embarked on the same challenge. I recently stumbled across my efforts in my own haiku year notebooks, where I found these little short poems, many of which still hold up quite well. There’s a bit of silliness in there, and also some slightly more serious, melancholy ones, and even an unfinished imperfection to others – but overall I still feel that they manage to capture something quite nicely in their terse short few lines. Little poetic windows to a specific time and place.

my laziness
was surpassed only by my
oh whatever

My life had finally
Reached the point
That it could be condensed into a haiku

with only enough money for chips and cans
we head off to Coney Island for the day
wide eyed and Irish

Just before I assumed the worst
I consumed the best
steak I’d ever had

all day
I dreamt about
the night before

My cheeks redden
At the thought
Of what I just implied

Try to open your mind
The same way you expect
Me to open mine

like wax
we poured the night
into our pockets

a treasure this great
does not deserve
to be kept a secret

the conversation credits
were starting
to run out

but all of this
is nothing without everything
that came before