#NaHaiWriMo 2026

February is National Haiku Writing Month, during which participants attempt to write at least one haiku every day (February being the shortest month).

As in previous years, I may or may not try the occasional "traditional" haiku, and hope you will allow me a little leeway to try some micropoems and to ignore the supposed 5-7-5 rule/ format.

There are many other intriguing waka forms that incorporate haikuic structures: katauta (5-7-7), sedoka (5-7-7-5-7-7), tanka (5-7-5-7-7), bussokusekika (5-7-5-7-7-7), choka (5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-7), and haibun (a prose/poem with a haiku ending) -- and I may  try some of thos ethis year.

Perhaps some of you would be willing to join me for a renga (a collaborative haiku sequence with alternating stanzas of 5-7-7 and 7-7)?

Once again, I'll be using the februllage prompts as a starting point.

Feel free to join me, or at least follow along! 

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day thirty

1.      define “fool”.

2.      can you find it in a book.

3.      the foolishness of strangers can be a revelation (never mind your friends’).

4.      i have been foolish too (often).

5.      even so, i will continue to sing.

6.      or is it better to be silent.

7.      foolishness is a bitter fruit.

8.      is it something we share.

9.      i don’t have the answer.

10.  is it like worship; an emptying?

11.  am i repeating myself.

12.  i keep wounding; loudly.

13.  foolishness is an emptying.

14.  *

15.  words and actions / thoughts and prayers.

16.  promises. regrets. promises.

17.  i have been a fool for love.

18.  words filigreed about your waist.

19.  until you were buried.

20.  until you emerged again.

21.  until you were no longer afraid.

22.  or tired.

23.  desire is a fool’s weapon.

24.  it turns to dust in our hands.

25.  i didn’t mean to.

26.  what else can i do.

27.  i have suffered fools too often.

28.  all those words. and actions.

29.  such a fool.

30.  Oh! deliver me.

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentynine

it could be worse
it could have happened
twenty years earlier
it could have happened
twenty years later
 
i wouldn’t trust myself
to make the right decisions
and you would have
trusted me too much
to make the right decisions
 
there are so many stories
i’ve never shared with anyone
there is no evidence
you can touch with your skin
it is better that way

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentyeight

Sometimes I talk too much.

*

(I have entire conversations in my sleep.)

*

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

*

The limit of my world is the limits of my language.

*

No ideas but in words.

*

You are not your words.

*

Are you talking to me?

*

You have the words of life. Or death.

*

I’ve wanted to tell you that for so long.

*

It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.

*

Come; let us reason together.

*

The right words in the right order?

*

That’s enough, now.

*

Use your words.

NaPoWriMo 2025 - day twentyseven

We were looking for ways
to move a body through space.
And time. We were looking for more
ways to reflect the body
with words. With light.
 
We spent so much time
in the dark, light leaking
through the cracks.
Lines spidering the lens
every time the eye moved.
 
Or the body. Perhaps
the body is an eye, a hand, a mouth.
A song, a regret, a mystery to be solved
or never solved.
 
Or it is a surrender.
A decision to wait and keep
waiting. To fill ourselves
with light as it etches
the details onto the eye.
 
I wish only to see you
how I once saw you.