Dear you,
I asked my friend Eric for an assignment yesterday,
something schoolish and diverting. He
said do a crossword puzzle and pick three words from it for a haiku. This would satisfy one of my basic needs to create
order out of chaos, shape something into a disciplined form. I know I am not alone, feeling rattled by the
cacophony of current events. Like Yeats said, “things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold”. With that in mind, I
adjusted the assignment a bit; instead of a crossword, I would use the news as
a base. Headlines read like poetry
sometimes, dry facts delivered with cold concision, like Morissettte’s jagged
little pills.
So, here are my adapted headline haikus, honoring the 5-7-5
syllable form (minus referencing nature):
From The New York Post:
Last night mass shootings
Stoke fears in three shaken states
A bloody summer
From The Hill:
China takes
a stand
“Days
of small groups ruling world
Are
very over”
From CNN.com:
Trump’s
tariffs haunting
Kentucky’s
whiskey makers
Red
state self-destruct
From ABC News:
McDonald’s
patron
Spits
at one poor worker bee
Then
shoots another
From NBC News:
She is
like my Mom
Says
Biden post tea party
With iconic
Queen
From Joyce News Wire (a.k.a, the voices in my head):
In Floribama
Sunburnt
anxious souls acting
As if pain
is fun
Another from Joyce News Wire:
In
spite of all this
Earth
on fire and dissonance
My cat
naps smiling
And to close, I mimic the famous words of newsman Walter
Kronkite as he signed off every night:
That’s
the way it is
This
good Sunday June Thirteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Haiku, over and out.
I may not be able to adjust the reality of current events,
but at least I can mush them into a 5-7-5 pattern.
We do what we can.
Thanks, Eric!
Joyce
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