As the last waltz playing in my jacket ceased,
Loneliness and longing spilled out,
Along with a few coins and a recorder
From my roomy coat pockets.

The phone booth stood there,
Frosted by icicles of promises
Never thawed to life,
Yet a haven from my impasse;
A womb for the stranded & unwanted.

I closed the door behind me,
And fed the phone a few coins,
Punched your number with numb fingers
And fogged up the insides of the glass,
As I waited to hear your voice.

“Hello?” You said, but where were my words?
I must have lost them on my way,
I must have fed them to the phone
Along with the paltry coins,
Could you hear what I wanted to say?

“Hello?” You repeated, a little alert,
I listened to your silence, trying to smile,
It sank like warm music on my heart,
Waltzes and sonatas were so cliché.

Where were my words? Just one would suffice,
Couldn’t I sum us up in a single word?
I couldn’t find the kigo to our season.
I had lost it, left it with you,
That and my voice
In the world I was forced to leave,
And all this while I was held,
Tenuously to you by this phone call,
Till I heard the strained dial tone again,
In this silent world I’ve come to inhabit.

(#6)
Floods of relief
supplants the Thaw
bathed of pollution
i peacock my presence
fashioned for new company

(#5)
After the snows
landscape runs conjugal
Decay to Life
I yawn in gelid air
wake to the view

The day shines
In the eyes of love
As a deep lake.

In the horizons of life,
life oozes,
complete,
and hot.

Even in death the Sun shines,
As never before,
As usual,
How it should be.

The girl with the hat looks at me,
sideways.

As it happens,
How did I go?

We are looking for carousels,
We look for walls,
We search,
Something that lets us stay.

The peace of the night is disturbed,
the day,
the days,
they fall off and fall.

The mists play with memories,
my eyes are troubled,
the muscle tenses up ......

We are alive!!

I see in the distance,
I cross it,
dense,
heavy,
and long

I'm still here,
and it's not a miracle,
just stubbornness,
and ignorance.

I celebrate
and I give thanks.

Shaped like a haiku—
words packed tight in foreign breath.
The soul never came.


NEW Collection!

https://hellopoetry.com/collection/136302/death-to-hiakus/

This agenda calls for the de-appropriation of haikus in English—a dismantling of a poetic form that, once deeply spiritual and rooted in Japanese culture, has been flattened into a novelty by Western imitation. The 5-7-5 syllable structure, lifted without its linguistic or cultural context, becomes a lifeless shell—used more for kitsch or brevity than meaning.

As a third-generation Japanese American, this critique is not academic or abstract—it’s personal. The haiku, repackaged in English, often feels like a mockery dressed in reverence. It’s cultural cosplay: wearing the form without embodying the spirit. The language lacks the tools to carry the weight haiku was meant to hold—ma, kigo, and kireji don’t survive the translation.

This isn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s reclamation. It’s a refusal to let poetic tradition be reduced to a classroom exercise or aesthetic fetish. Through deliberate subversion—anti-haikus, parodies, critiques—the aim is to illuminate what’s been lost and force a reckoning with how easily culture is misrepresented when divorced from its essence.

This isn’t a rejection of haiku. It’s a eulogy for what it becomes when its soul is rewritten in a tongue that cannot speak it.