Tuesday January 14th, 2014

The exercise:

Write two haiku about something that is: dwindling.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you, strictly for your entertainment, my three game totals for the last three league nights:

Dec. 17th: 653 (best)
Jan. 7th: 407 (worst)
Jan. 14th: 649 (2nd best)

Am I relieved that tonight didn't go as badly as last week did? Absolutely. Am I still frustrated as hell that last week went so miserably? Of course I am.

I was actually going to skip this week, but then I got a text just as I was sitting down to lunch this afternoon asking me to run things tonight. Good thing, I guess.

Oh, the prompt? Our league, which supposedly consists of six teams, has barely managed to draw out enough bowlers to fill two teams the last few Tuesday nights. The commitment hasn't really been there from the start, but this is getting... sad.

Back to work tomorrow morning for a 7 to 3 shift. I can say with some confidence that this will be the last 7am shift I'll be volunteering for.

Mine:

Inch by heated inch,
Empty word by empty word,
My patience shrivels.

*     *     *

Another year gone,
the planet grows warmer; so
long, polar ice caps.

3 comments:

Greg said...

So your worst score was after a two week layoff that had Christmas in the middle? I feel you're being far too hard on yourself here. It's clear that your standard of play is higher than that of Jan 7th, and that that's just an outlier in the statistics. It's just a flat tyre on the second leg of the Tour De France, nothing more :) And I'm glad you played, letting set-backs get to you and stop you playing will only make the bad scores more common.
I think I like your second haiku better today, though I rather like having polar ice-caps :(

Dwindling
Suzie worries that
Her height is dwindling. She can't
Reach the door-knob now.

Inches seem like miles;
Nches eem ike iles... my words
Keep dwindling away.

[So the two haiku taken together give the acrostic; it seems odd that there are no really short words for short in English!]

morganna said...

Step up, ladies and
Gentlemen, you won't believe
It: The Shrinking Man!

Shrinking so tiny,
Ever smaller, it's the real
Amazing Shrinking Man!

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, I'm not sure the layoff could fully explain how bad that week was. Maybe partially, but... anyway.

I don't know how I keep forgetting, every Tuesday when I sit down to do the blog, that you've been doing acrostics for the haiku prompts. Well, not keeping up with the comments probably contributes...

Man, I love both of your haiku. It's very, very hard for me to pick a favorite, but I'll give the slight edge to the first.

Morganna - okay, I'd probably pay to see that based on your haiku sell job :)