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  • Home/Blog
  • Short Stories
    • Six Quarters
    • Footprints
    • Vial
    • 1=2
  • Poetry
    • Featured Poems
    • Chicago Poems
    • Chicago Portraits
    • Haikus
  • Essays
    • "Buy it. Or Don't. It's cool. Whatever."
    • Let's Send All the Billionaires to Space
    • Skeletonwitch vs. Barenaked Ladies (or On Music, Subjectivity, and Language)
    • The Olympic Spirit: Nationalism and Internationalism
  • Publications
  • Writing Services
  • Speaking
  • About
Derek Lazarski

Haikus

In poetry, as in life, form is a thing that we long for to guide us but break free from when it constrains us.
We are constantly negotiating the polarities of structure and freedom.
The haiku is among the simplest of poetry's guiding constraints. 
​​I really want one
and that is exactly why
I shouldn't have one.


When the leaves fall down 
only the sturdy nests remain 
during the cold months.


Just too many books 
sit on the bookshelf, unread, 
but time dies quickly.


talk behind your back
carries zero relevance 
if you don't hear it


Framing ball-peen claw
Gavel cross-peen mallet maul
Finishing tack sledge

You knew itd break
eventually, so why
are you so upset?


The bee’s carcass was 
found, beneath the back windshield, 
surely there for months.


alone in my bed 
with no hope of sleep because 
I still smell like you


when writing haikus 
sometimes they come from nowhere, 
sometimes they mean nothing


There’s no enjambment
in traditional haiku
but screw the rules.


Online commenting
makes it easy to lie when 
you can't see faces


your self-confidence
is forever justified
by your existence

​
ok, tell you what
give me some of the blanket
and take the remote


opinions are like
assholes, but assholes are like
shit: one job, same smell


Film theater floors 
tackified to fly paper 
by spilt, half-full Cokes.


If you’re in pitch dark
with no one there to hear you
do you still exist?


when the alarm rings
I’ll try getting out of bed
but I know I’ll fail




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