Do You Haiku?

Haiku

Black and white and read

These seventeen syllables

Feed my hungry soul

It’s the 17^th day of National Poetry Month, and that can mean only one thing —

It’s National Haiku Poetry Day!

If you've been dragging your lyrical feet and have yet to put your poetic pen to page, then today is the day to clear your conscience. You, too, can Haiku!

Remember long ago when you first learned to print words with those chubby pencils and fat-lined paper? Well, that was probably around the time you wrote your first Haiku. Haiku has always been one of the stones teachers use to kill two Language Arts birds at the same time — poetry and syllables. 

While you may not have kept the little gem you wrote way back then, it most likely went something like this —

Toad

Rude green hoppy thing

Peeing when children catch it

Talking loud in burps

Okay, maybe your first Haiku wasn't like this, but my classmate Richie Richendifer insisted that it followed our teacher’s recipe.

“Describe something in nature,” Miss Henry said. “And remember the 5-7-5 rule. Use 5 syllables for the first line, 7 syllables for the second line, and 5 syllables for the last line, and you will make a great Haiku.”

“Gesundheit!” said Richie Richendifer… for the 87th time that day.

Even if you haven’t wielded a chubby pencil in years, you can follow Miss Henry’s fabulous recipe for your own Haiku stew. And you don’t really have to stick with the nature part. You’re welcome to use your mind’s elbow to 

bend and stretch that rule the way my son once did with this poetic 

offering —

Bad Haiku

Bad poem this is

It is extremely boring

Wait… was that too long?

Yeah.

Nuts never fall far from the tree.

PROMPT: Haiku! Haiku! It’s what we've got to do! Yep, I’m pretty sure that the 7 Dwarfs sang these work song words every April — now you can, too!