Tuesday December 7th, 2010

The exercise:

Two haiku about: the drunkard.

Lazy day today, had a nice sleep in after getting up early yesterday and knowing I have to get up early again tomorrow. I'm bringing the car up to Penticton to get it inspected before the warranty runs out next week.

Random picture I took yesterday:


Mine:

Whiskey in his veins
and cigar smoke in his lungs,
he's unstoppable.

*     *     *

He talks too much and
listens too little. The wine's
in control again.

12 comments:

g2 (la pianista irlandesa) said...

I've nothing to really share because I'm so tired I can barely think in complete sentences, let alone haiku... but I'm just reminding you to do a time-traveler related prompt tomorrow! Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day's tomorrow! =D

Greg said...

Days off from hard work are always the most pleasant I think. I hope that the car's in good shape for you, this is the wrong time of year to be getting expensive bills :)
I had to do Christmas shopping yesterday, and it was not fun. Despite it being early enough in December for the crowds to have not yet descended in full force on London. I shall email you the story of it, it's a bit too long to post here.

The Drunkard
I'm really not drunk!
I'm just a time traveller,
Here a day early.

----
He drinks to forget,
She drinks to keep up with him,
And now their child drinks...

Zhongming said...

The Drunkard

Besides being a fine chef,
Heineken proves to be his only companion,
Be it happy or sorrow.

---

Heineken becomes part of his
Life, indispensible as it is. Before
Alcohol poisoning took his life.

---

These two haiku meant a lot to me. He is my staff sergeant when I was in Taiwan, serving my nation as a chef. He is a true drunkard but has superb culinary skills. It hurts me to hear that he left the world for good. Even though he and I do not indulge in much conversation, I still learnt a lot from him.

He will always be remembered…

morganna said...

He staggers left, right,
Almost meeting sidewalk, he
Looks for warmth this cold night.

Kicked out of the bar,
The fountain looks attractive.
A final resting place.
-------------------
Sorry I don't seem to be able to get down to 5 syllables in the last lines. :(

summerfield said...

he goes for detox
but sneaks in with a flask of
gewurztraminer.

---

Hiram Walker Old
Seagram's, Black Velvet Deluxe
his favourite things.

-o0o-
i love that picture, marc. makes me forget about the jester story :-P

good haiku's, gang.

Marc said...

g2 - thanks for the reminder, I would have certainly forgot otherwise :)

Greg - you first one is brilliant, the second rather tragic. Quite jarring to see them one after the other like that.

Zhongming - thanks for sharing that, I'd say that was a fine tribute to him.

Morganna - the third line often gives me trouble too. I think you did well with them otherwise though :)

Summerfield - I love the fact that you managed to squeeze gewurtztraminer into a haiku :D

Anonymous said...

Marc - wonderful. I’ve met too many captured in your alst haiku!

Greg - Haha to the first one; recount that last line on the last.

Zhongming - Haiku follows the rule of 3 lines in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern; that is, line 1 has 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables, line 3 has 5.

summerfield - by haiku tradition, each line stands alone and unbroken. splitting sentences is cheating. :)

Zhongming said...

allycatadventures - ah, thanks for the repeat reminder and specific instructions on the rules of haiku. Thats very kind of you to post a comment indicating what I often overlooked. 

Anyway I wonder if you have any suggestions that I can do to improve my overall writings and haiku? 

I'll be most happy to hear comments from you guys about it, don't worry if its negative. I'm here for practice and that's rule number 3 here :)

Marc said...

Zhongming - further to Allycat's point, I noticed that your haiku this week had five words in the first line, seven words in the second, and five in the third.

The problem is that a word can have more than one syllable. For example: 'besides' is two syllables, so after that you'd only have three syllables left for your first line. 'Being' is also two syllables.

So using 5 words / 7 words / 5 words would only fit the haiku rules if all the words are one syllable each.

I hope that helps :)

Zhongming said...

Marc - thanks! I think I misunderstood the rules between number of words and syllable. I thought they were the same. But a quick question, how do I know check how many syllable is in each word that I come up with?

Marc said...

That's a very good question, and I don't have a very good answer (yet).

For now, you'll probably find this helpful (though I already searched for several words that hadn't been listed yet):

http://www.howmanysyllables.com/index.html

Zhongming said...

Marc - thanks a million for that website and your helpful tips! Now I have a reference where I can check on! hopefully I can write some real haiku :)