~ today is poetry day.

today is poetry day
the day when you notice
the warm shafts of sunlight
cutting through the gaps between
autumn's leaves
as they spiral slowly towards the grass
carried by the wind
and sometimes the dust
we so abhor
settles on them
and makes them sparkle

the weather in this town
almost never follows
the charts they talk verily about
and so when it rains
the golden-red-orange bits of trees
are plastered to the asphalt
sometimes bicycles flatten them out
and turn them brown
muddy water from the gutters
swirls around their last lost freshness
soon they will be gone
and the winter shall come
the whole lot of us will be left wondering
why every day couldn't be poetry day.

but this thought will be forgotten
the merciless cold will force
the strongest of us into our rather weak strongholds
all branches will be bare
photographs will celebrate
white roads peppered with black branches
rising from their roots like phoenixes
hot chocolate with marshmallows
and syrup will be sold on the sidewalks
until the blizzards and hurricanes
reduce all our homes
to broken sticks and broken bricks
and cement that doesn't cement anything anymore
ravaged to the ground

after a long while
of suffering and anguish
and much grief and angst
stepping carefully around the power lines
so you aren't shocked to your core
all the snowmen will melt
their carrot noses will rot into oblivion
(or into fertilizer)
the tar will crunch underneath your sneakers
every sunday the ice cream truck
shall jingle its bells from off your street
but by the time you reach
all the vanilla's finished
so you trot along the line the aligned doors make,
your red-and-white sweater bunched up
in a bouquet of sadness
and stay home
and never come back out again
until one day
a friend taps on your window
with a bag of crackers
and a pack of cheese slices
from the supermarket, saying,
"step lively, it's summer!"
so you do
and you forget you were ever unhappy
and the sadness melts away just like the snowman
out in the back of your yard.

~ vruta gupte.

How To Write A Haiku Poem

Moleskine is a notebook company, if I'm not mistaken.

So it's been a while since I've published a 'how-to' post out here, so I'm going to do just that.

A few days ago, I was browsing through a poetry website, and these beautiful haikus caught my attention:

Blowing from the west
Fallen leaves gather
In the east.

- Buson

I kill an ant
and realize my three children
have been watching.

- Kato Shuson

Cool air--
the evening mountain
becomes itself.

 - Issa

(Issa was actually a very prolific haiku poet, and one of the most famous.  Many haiku poets draw inspiration from his haikus.)

Haikus are normally used to represent natural phenomena and happenings, but they can also be used to describe certain mundane or everyday situations.  For example:

Tired cat sleeps all night.
He needs lots of rest for a
Long day of napping.

 - Kenn Nesbitt

This was just to give you an example of how haiku poems are generally written.  Haikus are mostly easy to write, but capturing a whole scene in three lines, conforming to a set standard of syllable counts in each line, can sometimes be more difficult than most poets think (at first glance).

Anyway, here is how I write all my haiku poems (although I haven't written many):

Step One: Decide What You Want to Write.

This is often the easiest step in the process of writing a haiku.  You could write about flowers blooming in spring, leaves falling in autumn, the sun melting a snowman, snow on the sidewalk, a full moon, anything!  Haikus are very diverse in that respect.

Step Two: Condense It.

Decide what exactly you want to depict in your poem.  Describe what you want to write about in four or five lines.

What will the haiku sound like?  Will be happy, or sad?  Will the ending be unprecedented, or predictable?  You choose.

Step Three: Give It Structure.

So now that you've decided what to write in your haiku, you have to structure your idea according to the 'rules' for a haiku.

The first line usually contains five syllables, the second line has seven, and the third line has five again, sorta like this:

My homework is late.
My dog ate it this morning.
I sure like my dog.

 - Kenn Nesbitt

(You have to admit that's funny!)

There!  You have a haiku poem!  

The syllable count isn't always five-seven-five, I've seen haikus (mostly Issa's) that have only two syllables in the first line, six in the second, and three in the third. 

Here are some I wrote:

An apple cries out
In pain, in grief, slices, tortured--
No stains on the knife.

 - Vruta Gupte.

(Poor apple.)

Silence at sunrise
No birds cooing softly;
Concrete everywhere.

 - Vruta Gupte.

Feel free to write some of your own haikus in the comment section below!  (Click on the timestamp or on the post title.  Disqus comments are enabled.) 

Thank you for reading, and keep writing!


References: 
www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Haiku-Poem
www.poetry4kids.com/blog/lessons/how-to-write-a-haiku/