Sorrow in 17 Syllables – A Year’s Haiku from The Dassler Effect on Grief – In Catapult Magazine

Dear readers, Thank you for your patience with a spate of posts on grief. Perhaps that is not what you expect from The Dassler Effect. I cannot promise that this is the absolute end of such posts–I am a melancholy fellow–but as the first anniversary of my father’s death passes, they will certainly not be [...]

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“the dream, the sort you” – Haiku on grief

the dream, the sort you claw to stay asleep — you, sick; me, your care to keep

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Pulling Weeds, a Reflection

Bending down to my task, I see him. The legs bent and wide apart. The left elbow braced against the knee. The belly, covered by the grooved fabric of an a-shirt, centering the gravity of it all. And the right hand gathers, grasps, and pulls-gathers, grasp, and pulls. Bending down to work, I see as [...]

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remembering rains – three haiku

we always had two minds on rain; its lovely greys, its melancholy in the chair asleep, the afghan nestling legs that always found the breeze we take lunch and tea, the rain still falling; your smile to me like sunshine

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my gas bills lower – Haiku / Poetry About Grief

my gas bills lower patching through winter doing without you to warm

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now the sod is like

now the sod is like patchwork from grandma’s quilts; you sleeping till the day

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St. Louis Murder Rates in Maps – Visualizing Despair

the murder maps each year just bleed the same dark stain; drops like question marks __________ While reading the paper online, I came across these horrific interactive maps from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Each image below is linked to its source page and clicking on any drop on the original tells you, in police blotter [...]

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Between Fall and Winter, Springtime’s an Eternity Away

Fall has pungency 
 Like nard. Summer’s fullness crushed
 Anoints the late year. Winter has the scent 
 Of absence. Nothing. Death. Life.
 Shrouded under snow. Spring is memory.
 Fragrance from a walled garden
 Calls to the lover. Summer will not end.
 Here at this wedding: wine, bower
 Evermore and more. ________ Please permit another [...]

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funeral haiku

death sharpens the nub of life for writing full-stops. our words more clearly full-stop is all. then another then another are drawn…ellipsis

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if tears, i hope he

if tears, i hope he also keeps these tangled threads; neurons wiring griefs __________________ My outlook at this very moment is not really as bleak as my last two haiku might suggest. Thank the Lord However, inasmuch as Wordsworth is right about poetry being, “emotion recollected in tranquility,” they do reflect strong emotion, specifically emotion [...]

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