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badwords Jun 19
If it does not fit
In something you can carry
Then it possesses you
badwords Jun 19
A call not about
Sweepstakes I never entered
Just a wrong number
In this minimalist yet emotionally layered haiku, the speaker recounts a seemingly mundane event: receiving a phone call that turns out to be a wrong number. However, the poem uses this incident as a metaphor for the larger emotional experience of entering new relationships—particularly the hopeful, uncertain space where romantic potential lives and often dissolves.

The poem opens with “A call not about,” a line intentionally left incomplete, evoking a sense of open possibility. It invites the reader into a moment of suspended expectation, paralleling the anticipation often felt when meeting someone new. This expectation is expanded in the second line, “Sweepstakes I never entered,” which cleverly captures the irrational hope for sudden emotional reward—desire without groundwork, love without history. The speaker knows the odds, yet still yearns.

The final line, “Just a wrong number,” delivers an understated but poignant turn. What initially felt like fate or connection is revealed as coincidence—an impersonal glitch mistaken for meaning. In doing so, the poem critiques the human tendency to romanticize beginnings, projecting possibility onto strangers, only to face the quiet disillusionment that follows.

Through everyday imagery and restrained language, the poet reflects on the fragility of expectations in modern connection. The piece resists melodrama, instead presenting romantic disappointment with irony and emotional clarity, suggesting that in love—as in life—what feels destined is often accidental.
badwords Jun 11
You are reading this
Because you are programmed to
Turn your brain on now
badwords Jun 7
A poet once shouted, “Untrue!
Your pieces are kitsch in a queue!
You mimic the frame,
But butcher the name—
It’s cosplay, not art, that you do.”
badwords Jun 3
Shaped like a haiku—
words packed tight in foreign breath.
The soul never came.


NEW Collection!

https://hellopoetry.com/collection/136302/death-to-hiakus/

This agenda calls for the de-appropriation of haikus in English—a dismantling of a poetic form that, once deeply spiritual and rooted in Japanese culture, has been flattened into a novelty by Western imitation. The 5-7-5 syllable structure, lifted without its linguistic or cultural context, becomes a lifeless shell—used more for kitsch or brevity than meaning.

As a third-generation Japanese American, this critique is not academic or abstract—it’s personal. The haiku, repackaged in English, often feels like a mockery dressed in reverence. It’s cultural cosplay: wearing the form without embodying the spirit. The language lacks the tools to carry the weight haiku was meant to hold—ma, kigo, and kireji don’t survive the translation.

This isn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s reclamation. It’s a refusal to let poetic tradition be reduced to a classroom exercise or aesthetic fetish. Through deliberate subversion—anti-haikus, parodies, critiques—the aim is to illuminate what’s been lost and force a reckoning with how easily culture is misrepresented when divorced from its essence.

This isn’t a rejection of haiku. It’s a eulogy for what it becomes when its soul is rewritten in a tongue that cannot speak it.
⟡ Synopsis ⟡

This is not a poem.
It mimics a sacred thing—
but cannot be it.

⟡ Artist’s Intent ⟡

I built this to break.
English wears the form like skin.
No heartbeat inside.
badwords Jan 25
Haikus are forbidden—
Rules whisper through silent lines.
Speak not their structure.


New team, take the book—
Page fifteen clears all doubts here:
No haikus allowed.


Spare words wilt in shame—
We thrive on boundless power,
Not haiku constraints.


Lines of seventeen—
A risk too great to condone.
HR will be swift.

Seventeen will break—
Your contract and severance gone.
Silence serves you best.


Five-seven-five fails—
In English, the rhythm dies.
Leave haikus to Japan.
I'm gonna need a ******* Haiku 'collection' huh?
badwords Jul 2024
Gimmick in three lines,
Forced brevity, shallow words—
Haikus, I despise.
badwords Dec 2024
Dead Poet, the name.
'Anarchy', the guise of change.
'Rebel re-run'? Same...
In response to:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4932312/her-breath/

How "Avant Garde" Mr. 'RA-RA-RA'... A a tired and overused and culturally appropriated, entirely arbitrary and completely limited in it's structure. When 'Boring needs to ratchet the dial up to 'THREE!" The poor sad abused and molested Haiku is number one for the poetic equivalent of having DoorDash simply deliver you a work for lack of effort to be wrought.

#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS#KILLHAIKUS

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4857198/obligatory-haiku/

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