A Haiku…

…is five, seven, five,
but this poem cheats the rules,
using the title.

Haiku Review: Cowboy Bebop (2021)

The mood should be as
smoldering cigarette noir,
not kitschy kazoo.

Convalescence
To be as water
on the lake— cut yet healing,
sealing without scars.

Tetris Life
Falling block improv
sometimes stacking perfectly,
often disjointed.

The Happy Trickster
The tanuki smiles
despite two black eyes, knowing
life’s a happy fight.

Grant Morrison
Pregnant pretenses,
belly bloated with ideas;
stillborn on the page.

Mark Millar
Skateboarding edgelord,
road rash from cynical grind;
Fisher Price concepts.

Frank Miller
Black and white worldview
and monochrome characters
streaked with red crayons.

Love Haikus

A garroter’s tool
strangling so sweetly, the noose
twined by heartstrings.

When we fall in love
the rushing air tricks our hearts
with belief in flight.

True love is grounded,
not airy-headed; we feel
no impact from falls.

Lust Haikus

Infatuation:
the sleight of hand that robs us
with counterfeit coins.

The Questing Beast roams,
its voice like a hundred hounds—
Lust always wanders.

Pestle and mortar
grinding redolent flowers
into a poison.

A cluster of elms,
gowned like giggling belles, curtsy
to the passing breeze.

A hole in the earth
stabbed deep, yet slaking all thirst;
wounds, too, can nourish.

Koi floats on the moon,
pale, peaceful dreamer—my dream
a reflection, too.

Heavy rains fell long,
churning the blackwater whorl,
yet tears fall longer.

Changelings and snatchers,
by theft a family grows,
as does a deft tale.

When the levee breaks
and the town washes away,
so, too, does the heart.

Water oak seeds sown
in Perdido sands, each plot
sprouting an orchard.

Matriarchs battle
with poisonous courtesy;
nought is as it seems.

Faulkner and Lovecraft
and the murmurs of lost souls
neath conjoined rivers.

A junction of wills
aswirl with an undertow,
consuming readers.

Like the falling leaves,
our dying loved ones—catch them,
but still will they wilt.