h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As in the US, English schoolchildren are taught the 5-7-5 syllable rule for Haikus - but we were always yelled at if we didn't conform exactly to it. But if we did, our poems were always really bad.

Mind you, they'd have been bad anyway

A chill in the air
keeps all Researcher poets
from posting haiku.

Shoulders hunched over
I stare into the boob tube
Who is looking back?

Flowers are blooming,
Bees and pollen fill the air,
This hayfever sucks.

It's well past midnight,
I must go to bed right now,
Or I will suffer.

Good night all of you,
I will speak with you again,
When I am awake.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........

Good night all,
Zeitgeist.

Sleeping Researcher
Surfing the REM and alpha
Haiku dreaming

Saturday evening...
Have we got nothing better
to do with our lives?

jd

Well it seems to me,
That indeed we do not have,
Anything better.

Or else we would not,
Be sitting here, posting our,
Warped and weird haiku.

I am awake now,
Having caught up with my sleep,
But my brain won't work.

Here is an idea,
How about a haiku test,
With random subjects.

Challenge for next post,
Create a haiku with the,
Subject of 'Jelly'.

Zeitgeist (can't believe he's doing this)

Seven pints of beer...
God, I feel ill this morning.
My legs are jelly.

Truly well done there,
I could not think of anything,
My brain was jelly.

But, does anyone
Have a challenging haiku
Word for me to use?


Zeitgeist......

Challenge accepted
Of haiku words now thinking
...How about "elbows"

Mine can be sometimes
found resting on the desk top
holding my head up

Elbows are indeed,
The most awkward of all joints,
Always sticking out.

But on occasions,
Elbows can be good,
For edging through crowds.

There, that's my response,
To the challenge of "elbow",
Hope you enjoy it!


Zeitgeist, who's wondering when this madness will end.....

p.s. The next challenge word is 'pregnancy'

Hmm... pregnancy, huh?
A pregnant pause while I think...
Oh baby, that's tough!

The next challenge word:
"Zoroastrianism".
Must go in line two!

jd

Here's a question... is
"Zoroastrianism":
Seven syllables?

Grabs dictionary,
"Zoroastrianism":
Good fights with evil

Is that good enough?
I had to simplify the
Definition though....

Zeitgeist

...Well it works for me
shades of "Buffy" and "Angel"
can't be all that bad.

Ad speaking of which
that can be our next topic
for challenging word.

"Transylvania"
Yes,let's try one re vampires
get thinking caps on...

OOOPS missed out an "n"
Spot deliberate mistake
in my last posting.

Transylvania,
Is where vampires come from,
Or so I've been told.

Perhaps it's werewolves,
I can never remember,
Where beasties come from.


Zeitgeist.

Whenever I tell my (Japanese) mother that we were taught (and made to create) haiku in school (USA), she just laughs at the idea of non-Japanese creating such a thing. That to her, it is a cultural impossibility. I liked the explanation of haiku listed here. I don't have any warm sentiments about that style of writing but I liked how it explained a little further than what my textbooks ever said. These would be, the nature of the Japanese language makes the explained as "5-7-5 syllable" rule a falsity (as it is 5-7-5 letters, which to the English-speaking ear, would almost always sounds like 5-7-5 syllables) and that haikus deal with nature. (In school the ones we created could be about anything.) To illustrate, a simple haiku (mom, hope this is acceptable, hehe) would be in Japanese: natsu kuru to, semi ga naitari, ase wo kaku. (Translation: when summer comes, locusts cry [and], one sweats.) In English, one can quickly assess that whether this is not, (in native tongue or even translated), 5-7-5 letters nor 5-7-5 syllables (as the reader would most likely read the second native line as having 6 syllables). Yet, it is a haiku by definition nontheless. Maybe there will be a cultural translation revision one day, where scholars reassess the explanation of haiku (and other literary styles of non-native to your own cultural origin), and rules for creation. Perhaps 5-7-5 language building blocks? Like prefixes and suffixes within the words used to allow fuller and more complex thoughts. Then again, haiku is also about simplicity.

An English form related to the haiku only by its syllabic form is the "limeraiku".

Strictly 5-7-5, but containing rhyming syllables in the pattern a-a-b-b-a; the rhymes can be spaced in any way except that the final syllable must be an "a".

Examples:

Rhyme in a haiku;
It takes time. The seventeen
Made to mean and chime.

Compact and exact.
A brief form, too light for grief
Without perfect tact.

We hurtle to death
Life curtailed of influence
We fail to exert

I've put an extended example of the Limeraiku form in A3014768.
Perhaps I wish I had a better name for the form.

And another example at A3375227.

I wonder about "slightlines" for the form; at least it avoids the tenuous connections with both the haiku and the limerick.