List of Dead Things

white shag rice
broccoli in the weave
beef feet

List of Dead Things

hollowed ground
a closet full of steam
water runs

List of Dead Things

sticks in the wind
seed pods, squashed
cardinal
bright red
above oil black seeds

List of Dead Things

concrete water tomb

List of Dead Things

graffiti / gears / ground / halted / blocked / still, life

List of Dead Things

if you want
rights
incorporate yourself

List of Dead Things

black pipe
through the low point
train tracks

List of Dead Things

sand
washed
from rock

List of Dead Things

pebble / seed
wet
in the furrow

List of Dead Things

white banded
wings through the rain
fallen tree

List of Dead Things

petro fried
le miz keyfabe
um, what were we talking about?

List of Dead Things

tropical plant in january stewed greens

List of Dead Things

sunbleached bleach bottle bird song

List of Dead Things

recycling center
used needle
in an oil spill

#todayspoem

from Variations on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop by John Murillo

…Learn to lose as if
your life depended on it. Learn that your life
 depends on it

List of Dead Things

plastic bag
caught / catching
chilled rain

List of Dead Things

strip mall after sunset
finger nail clipping reflection
in the storm drain

List of Dead Things

plastic grass
jade shards reflecting
low winter sun

List of Dead Things

class deadcount

List of Dead Things

styrofoam snow
dusting the puddle

List of Dead Things

train whistle quack
clouds curled like dragon whiskers
racing down

#todayspoem

List of Dead Things

became death, destroyer of worlds
just bird tools
for kickin' up bugs

List of Dead Things

slab of glued sand
in sun cracked parking lot
neon lit night

doors sliding open, closed
for circling bat

List of Dead Things

feed:
because that’s what you do to it
attention vampire

List of Dead Things

azalea blooms: brown
clinging
to the branches

List of Dead Things

tattered clouds
glowing
racing
across full moon face
silent night

List of Dead Things

deer head in a storm drain

List of Dead Things

cold rock
hanging in blue vacuum
above bundled wooden sticks

List of Dead Things

r. hole filled with lightning
a. tar ridden
i. whitewater runoff
n. pothole weather

List of Dead Things

snakeskin shoulder line
worn, flattened
empty toothpaste tube

List of Dead Things

last year’s whistle
cutting
through first new morning

List of Dead Things

another year
fodder
for the fire pit

List of Dead Things

old gods
new gods
gods that don’t look like us

List of Dead Things

v. captured
o. fallen sunlight
i. piled high
d. recaptured

List of Dead Things

9

leaf blown drone
dance of the deciduous
solar panels

List of Dead Things

box of
dark glass filled
with extractions
with the taste
of blood

List of Dead Things

List of Dead Things

felled tree
fallen again
one plastic red berry

25 Songs of Christmas

Day 25: Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses

List of Dead Things

dry seed headed stalks
bobbing a bird
into frozen sky

List of Dead Things

twitching
squirrel
broken

List of Dead Things

jeweled drops
pulled from hidden tumor rot
dazzling in the runoff

List of Dead Things

pile of
frost-lipped leaves
sleet bounces

rippled solstice sky
a slow train through
the intersection

fall ends / winter begins

solstICE

pine beetle chew
sound of sleet
in leaves
fallen
falling

lines
classic and congested
seasonal pattern shift

ice melts
bird song
fat as winter sun

gray cat
waiting
with sealed box
curious

traffic pattern patched pavement
memory of water

rough torn orange wedge horizon night bruised sky

ink wash
train cars through
the fog

horizon hung sun haze
hanging from stop light wire
shoes

farm tool rusting
in memories of the deer
running past

windowpanes
of warm light in the night
hanging from a branch

flashes of white
behind fallen brown grass
in green leaves

sky shard
hops
through rocks / leaves
brown birds
chasing / fleeing

door
sends blue streaks
to the sky

metronome of
stacking boxes
van doors
rain
 drip
  drip
   drip
    drip
     drops

25 Songs of Christmas

Day 7: Holiday Road by Matt Pond PA

cold dough
the oven clicks
rain drop off the gutter

woodpecker expanding
grid of holes
on growing rings

dogwood
one leaf left
red
bobs
a cardinal

rain drop
hanging
off the rusting leaf
hanging
off the branch

school bus dusk
stop & rave lights
reflector tape

pink clouds
a Jackson Pollock
over sunset

tumbling
down the hill a crow
flaps across the road

streaks of pink
in the darkening blue
chimney silhouette

across the street
santa slowly filling out
leftover turkey

flying
under the power lines
another little brown leaf

circling
the thanksgiving table
turkey vulture?

bleaching the bath mat
another leaf drifts
down

fog passing
under a streetlight
train on unused tracks

colder
with every sip
neglected coffee

idling / creeping / idling
the light cycles
again

tractor tiller
still&emdash;rusted yellow
fallen leaves

nails
rusted in the pine
leaf blower drones

held note
a pine top sways
string scrape

leaf pile
rustles in the cold breeze
wet shadow of one gone

bird
yowling like a cat from the alley
flaps away

deer bounds under
power lines cutting
sky into ribbons

pot holes
filling with cold rain
orange cones fallen

against mismatched
fence slats

asleep in the long grass
coyote stretches
the sun down

stacking skeletons
fallen limbs, some held
by the living

water rolls down the glass
ice shifts - a dog
barks

basho’s narrow road
in the rain, lead piles
at the curb

one leg
from beneath the car
rain picks up

leaves
piled on the ground
the birds, quiet

thin branch
made mostly bare
yellowed leaves

the hours
come at different times
squirrels / up and down a tree

the order the same
the order the same

dead spider
on the stove
changing the clocks

sandwich
half eaten
the air hardens

future
gods of forgotten hymns, fallen
squirrel food

rock fall
of the clock hand
a branch, falling

hawk standing
in a once wild field
hotel brick red head

#todayspoem
from 2/16 by Alice Notley

fog
thick
burning off
with the sun sweep
of the hour hand

🎃🍂

pumpkin guts
dried on the step
quilt of fallen leaves

look of rain
hanging in the sky
leaf spins in the breeze

plant
drooping
under cool weight of autumn

signature of water
blasted!
through dirt

machine tower slide
behind a stand of bare trees
beheaded

the sky
once painted with sunrise
now fog

birds
still
on spread wings

leaves: bronzing
light: softening
pumpkins: spiced

personal landscape
of leaves raked
into books

a bird hits the window
a leaf
fallen

layers
  scraped away
  accrued again

a cycle
a circle

bramble of blueberries
now just
a patch of dirt

sun sets water down the drain

drone of deciduous destruction
ice
drops in the machine

old fluorescent
cockroach
clicking away

smoke vining
wax melt
just cooling

dirt
turned over
turned again

stone shadow
still
until you blink

for the Micro.blog Day in the Life Photo Challenge

time taken: 0823 EDT
location: Greenville, SC

saw
passing through
rings of time

rain
water
clock

ghost white
hunter’s moon
fills the hours

7 flowers
amongst dry stalks
bare dirt

sand gone clear
BANG!
thrush gone still

bird song
over the hood music
empty bird bath

fence pickets
falling
one by
one by
one tall weed

still standing
still

moon
in blue sky
sawdust

bananas
browning
leaves

branch
walks its leaves
across the road

time
passing
trains

aren’t all islands
dynamic in time
of climate change?

from the roots
of the dead tree
red leaves

breeze
shifting leaves
old notes
a timer
sounds

foundation
stripped of its structure
donating baby clothes

honking
migrating geese
neighborhood
walking group

racing
red light train
strip center cemetery

time flies
falls
just
a butterfly

do you remember
the end of
summer sky?

talking heads
burning down the house
breaking “news”

around the fallen tree
re-fallen
debris pile

multiplying
the dust bunnies

falling
yellowed leaf
raining again

claw hammer possum
the purple blooming
beneath my thumbnail

topographic
map in clouds
a dead hornet

mouth full of needles
squirrel
steps gingerly

dead cat
or plastic bag?
against the curb

we claim ownership
with lines drawn
in invisible ink

standing next
to the footless angel
a cooked-necked crane

siren song of
a neighborhood emergency
moths to a flame

blue
above
the lit street
light pink cloud shard
moon

crows
laughing
out of sight
cackling cawing
gone

this cinquian inspired me to try my take on the form, using the stress count by line as a syllable count.

and here is what the Stable Diffusion text-to-image AI model thought this Hi-Q should look like.

crow flaps a bang traffic

b/le/a/e/ding edge

dust clouds
around the trees
fenced in by red tape

behind the fence
golden-headed grass
droops

stepping off the duck slippery when wet

raining acorns bounce

brick wall
butterfly flies away
a bird

mimetic theory and
triangle roof joists
recalculating…

squirrel
carrying a three
acorn clover

attic’s ribs
bared to the sun
behind the fence

a crow laughs above a child’s cry

lost in thought
moss collects around
the roots

swaying
seed-headed
stalks

dirt path
one crow walking
another

rinse cycle rain
suds in the bottom of
the dishwasher

first day of school and
the spicing of pumpkins
false fall

m   m
m o o n
m o o n
    n n

chrome grill constellation
reflecting the stars
cloud cover

armadillo
across the grass
ramshackle barn

hawk
watching the unkempt field
police car

fog collects
in the dark side of the mountain
armadillo

front loader
overtaken and overgrown
color of asbestos

an island of horses
rural highway

corrugated gold bricks
stacked 2 to the horizon

lines:
dashed and un

red eyes blinking
in the sun spots

orange cone megaphone
spewing sewer water
into the street corner

summer rain
a cold knife through
hot butter

floating on a fog of exhaust dead obsidian suv

ceiling fan
a slight sway
pear tree

greasy cardboard box
a closet shelf

leaves shaking still air stirred fan blades

(THE) DOORS

Love 8:12
open the door
of forever change
…
psychedelic pill
in the pepper mill

crocodile skinned pine
through the door
to fireflies

I quite like the poem Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine

& the doorframe
propped, a kickstand
for lease facade rot

I also quite like the poem Losing A Language from The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang

Maybe I have a thing for door poems…

watching my heart
metronome
in my foot

a good poem about moonlight, and more

chicken bird
fossil feud
flying through
the hand drawn archives
of and child like curiosity

rolling over the tracks
rain
trains
clouds

HI-Q: AN END / A BEGINNING

Today (April 2, 2022) is the 3 year anniversary of Hi-Q as a daily project. Of this specific instance of my haiku obsession, er, journey.

Today is also the end of this particular incarnation of that obsession (for now?). After somewhere around 1,100 consuctive days of Hi-Q (if my math is correct).

I started entertaining the thought the other day, and then realized that day happened to be the 3 year anniversary of the Instagram post that kicked this whole thing off.

Hi-Q will live on, but in new formats and experiments. My immediate, post-daily poem plans are to organize the archives and create some book-like objects to house them. It’s something I’ve been meaning and wanting to do for a while, so now is the time. Plus, I might learn some things that come in handy for future Hi-Q experiments.

What are these new experiments and formats I keep hinting at? Haven’t the foggiest! But I think the broadstroke ideas fall into three general categories:

• Collections (zines, books, pamphlets, cycles, vignettes, etc.).
• Physical artifacts (typewriter art pieces, textile, paint, landscape works, who knows)
• Digitally-native artifacts (podcast, audio poems, animated pieces, hyperlink works, pieces that can only exist because of technology)

I also just want to read, think, and write more about haiku, not just make haiku. I think I hit a point where the daily aspect of this current version became more primary than the haiku portion. I need to disrupt that habitual rhythm in order to explore (I already feel more excited about and creative with haiku again since making this decision).

Over the past few years of doing this I’ve collected a group of questions that will likely lead my future experiments. They are:

• What is a modern haiku? What makes a haiku modern?
• What is a punk haiku?
• What would be a future haiku? What pushes the form/genre forward?
• What would a mixed media haiku look/feel/sound/smell/taste like?
• What would make a haiku web-native?
• How does haiku, as an art form, remain timeless while also being timely? (Doesn’t it seem like a form created for the current age?)
• The most existential: what is haiku?
• And, probably the biggest one: am I good enough to get published?

All that to say, things around here will be different, but they will still be haiku.

If you want to stay plugged in, you can subscribe to the mailing list or follow this blog via rss or monthly email zine.

branches
once bare
soften under spring sun

petals popping open
riot of roadside color

buds
redden
the depth of field

double taking
fake fly
in death repose

spring blues
the bird empties the feeder
the bird, the empty feeder

leaves rippling
reflected sunlight
water feature?

cast off
mirepoix under
the coffee grounds

shadow boxing
box’s shadow
unflappable

hawks hover above
clouds heavy
with promise of rain
//
gray clouds
heavy with rain
hawks hover above

birds
sing home
the stars

baseball bat song
in the red bud
breeze

spring arrives
to find
what the birds
left behind

the eyes
through other eyes
lane shift

in the rain
pear blossoms
in the squirrel’s stomach

pumpkin patch
in the sourdough
soda bread

prismatic cloud
changing light
and clocks

traincar
loudly announcing
its corn products

63 feet
of mixed messages
big rig

the weight of water

roadwork signs
like wildflowers
in the scrub

watching for brake lights
the groundhog
looks on

the drone of
insects and fan through
winter window

through the dark
rumble
the window lights, briefly

the air
blows a different season
into the room

amidst the whirlwind
bird watching

light and sound
show through the flat glass
cord cutter

heat
but for a second
then lingers

bowl stained
the colors of sunset
frozen beets

seeing landforms
in the sky

seasonal crossfade
nostalgia mix

last night: fire
today: smoke
siren song

tracks
signal blinks the backbeat
arms up

the many masks
of deflection
worn

lines
the only thing in the sky
other than the fog

like droplets
the petals on the ground
red

last year
still
in the soil

the field
a pond
rutted

swerving to miss
the squirrel
unmoved

a kerfuffle
a winged rustle
a stillness

the door
heaving
on quiet paws

mesmurmuration
of arcing star winged
lightning

author other
silicon valley darling
not in their dictionary

fuselage
salvaged as fuel
for the forest fire

decoding lines
the tickle
of the brain

missing the squirrel for the tail
mid-flight
warm socks

two hearts
floating
into the transformer

rainbows
dropping into puddles
like the frogpond

year’s first warmth
signals interstitial szn
red stripe and reggae

stop / start
for the swing
of launching clouds

money blocks
stacked and
allotted

together
apart
screen time freeze melt

wisp emoji
cloud memory

black wing
and dusk
both fall

branch length
fallen with the
wisps of nest

stackin up schemes
like pharoahs click bricks
with wrist flicks

blue rising into gray
the horizon smears together
water colors

drip
drip
drip
drip
drip
drip
drip
drip
a day washes by

light show
on the half dome
look up from the light slab

another new cycle
of a different sort
order

a question to
clarify itself
circling back

summer breeze
through the walls
droning in the cold morning

turning the corner
a flurry of movement
tail
nuts

ripe summer red sun
caught on
ragged ridge of blue

[img alt: sunset blood drop on jagged horizon]

winter’s cobwebs
gathered
in the shade

andes of the
untamed mind on
biological acid

salt in the grounds
the full-bodied wine of
a day

sunset clouds
actually solid
amber sun

a curve’s memory
control lost
frame-in-frame

paper
stained
with memories and
what else?

sky bare shelves
before / after
the storm

the rot
mushroom’s buffet
the rot

water drips through the bird song cacophony

moth-eaten blanket in the sun
dog-stained snow
a warm breeze

the spear
a pond
in its own rain

[img alt: drip drip drip icicle in the sun]

frozen
rabbit eye white
wolf moon

summer growth
autumn color
winter blanket

forever like cholesterol
shilling diamonds
bedazzled calphalon

sunrise drips
into predawn remnants
stuck between the trees

HI-Q: V8

clouds
puddles of shadow
mirroring
stop line asphalt
oil stain

rolling gallery wall signed by the pseudonym

the lights
beacons
in the gray

[img alt: two windows curtain pulls closer on the day]

time passes over the candle wick like blown smoke
crumbs

[img alt: blown out cupcake wrapper wrapped ‘round smoke of memories]

minor moments adding up to a major scale

branches heavy
with nuts
and their gatherers

tic
tac
treetop
snagged the sky

just realized that yesterday’s Hi-Q was the 1000th consecutive one i’ve done.

found
trifecta hit
with a hammer

a fresh start on the same old
every day is the start of a new year

another trip around the sun
sequel or original concept?

redacting fortunes from pulped tea leaves

cow tools

HI-Q: ANTI-[ ]-BIOTIC

scrip for the pharma company store
syringe binge

Recommendation
the rhythm achieved through repitition in this poem is mesmerizing

highly recommend listening to the poet read it (assuming he’s the one doing the reading at that link)

Hi-Q Time Machine
2020: church sign snafu
2019: moon after dawn

HI-Q: HANDS LIKE GASOLINE

stone sheen smells of ancient sun and fossilized rot

Recommendation
i added this poem to my “to recommend” list before i was even halfway through

the combination of tone, length (both poem and line), fourth wall breaking, and content made me like it immediately

Hi-Q Time Machine
2020: parallel lines
2019: sun at dawn

stackin up schemes
like pharoahs click bricks
with wrist flicks