Monday haiku and explanation...(National Poetry Month #25)

Cold knife edge cuts deep

Ghosts of the past are restless

Winter wind chills me.

Water like clear glass

Reflecting emerald trees

Topsy turvy world.

Water falls into pools

While the tears fall down my face

Swimming with heartbreak

Okay so these three are just for a friend who felt my mathiku didn't count as true haiku. And in one way he is right. Traditional haiku is about seasons or nature. It's also 100 stanzas long and in Japanese so... But modern haiku is more fluid. A moment in time captured in verse. I don't follow many rules in anything I do. For me pseudohaiku is the best haiku. It makes me pare down a story to not much more than a thought. But here are a few that might satisfy my friend a little more.  At least the first two. They are season, then nature, the last being nature and emotion but much loser than the first two in connection.  

But my main reason for making this post is to emphasize that poetry should be yours. I know a lot of them have rules and structure and it's why I've been struggling with writing a good sonnet, or something in iambic pentameter. To first find an idea, then to find the words, then to fit it in to a prescribed form? So much work. So I generally don't do that. I play with words, with the pattern of the lines, with the shape and feel of the sounds in my head and in my mouth when I read them out loud. And what I really want you to take as you read a poem, any poem, not just my bad poetry, is to take what you want out of it. Who cares if the structure is off? Who cares if it follows no form? Who cares what the author meant when they wrote it? Who cares what it is supposed to REALLY mean? What does it mean to you? What do you take from it? Even if it's nothing more than a word you like the sound of, or an image that makes you pause, that's good. That's what it's there for. 

Or at least that is the way I think about it. So now you understand why I don't get really worked up about following a stricter format. Or a traditional pattern. I am not going to be mad at you for pointing it out. But I'm also not likely to change my ways. Expect more pseudohaiku than structured. Expect prose written in passive voice. Expect the hero to not be all that likable. And then expect me to change all of that when I think you are expecting things to go a certain way. That's the poetry of life...