Haiku Quotes

Learning without understanding will make your vision of knowledge weak ~ Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka

Mizuta Masahide's haiku: "My barn having burned down / I can now see the moon. ~ Sarah Lewis

Anyone can talk,
but to listen is a gift,
we should all exchange ~ J. Benson

Dude, this isn't cool
Dude just tried to eat my dude
That's my dead dude, dude ~ Rick Riordan

Giddy grasshopper
Take care ... do not leap and crush
These pearls of dewdrop ~ Kobayashi Issa

Dying cricket -
how full of
life, his song. ~ Matsuo Basho

This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds. ~ Matsuo Basho

Sick while traveling
dream of a withered field
wandering around ~ Matsuo Basho

We wear many things,
but that with greatest import
is our expression. ~ J. Benson

He utilizes
form for a striking lecture;
young poets shiver

inexperience,
but thaw over their own work,
fertilize magic. ~ Kristen Henderson

A goodbye at the gate," said Hobie. He seemed to be talking partly to himself. "That's what he would have wanted. The parting glimpse, the death haiku - he wouldn't have liked to leave without stopping to speak to someone along the way. 'A teahouse amid the cherry blossoms on the way to death. ~ Donna Tartt

The Christmas spirit
whispers softly in my ear,
Go be of good cheer. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Old Timer Farmer's Wisdom in Haiku
Keep skunks, city slickers,
Jews, lawyers at a distance
Or else ya' get fucked.

Life is simpler when
You plow around the stump
Or else ya' get fucked.

If you don'tknow bees
Are faster than your tractor
Ya' gonna'get fucked.

Do your pissing down
Stream and your drinking upstream
Or else ya' get fucked.

Fences need to be
Horse-high, pig-tight,bull-strong
Or else ya' get fucked

Cheat an Indian
Out of his liquor money
Ya' gonna get stabbed. ~ Beryl Dov

Putting a few words together does not make poetry. A poem has a soul, a heart and an emotion. Even a Haiku is meaningless without a soul. ~ Balroop Singh

Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution. Take, for example, the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho, the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, the tragicomic brushwork of Sengai or the daunting canvases of Rothko, the luminous self-portraits of Rembrandt and Hakuin. Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth. ~ Stephen Batchelor

Are they beautiful?
The lines left from suffering,
Scars of emptiness. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson

Zero cavities.
Two abortions. One divorce.
Thirty years on Earth. ~ Asa Akira

The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace. ~ Aberjhani

Haiku are meant to evoke an emotional response from the reader ... to light the spark that triggers creative rumination ... They act as literary manifestations ... visions of nature's seasonal modulations ... They're emotionally tinged words, barely perceptible sensory flickers ... literary etchings of lucid visions transposed into the minds of its readers ... They're meant to act as sensory catalysts ... like the passing of a penciled baton laid out upon a piece of paper that a reader might grasp for in their mind's eye ... all of which prompts the reader to continue exploring the sensory experience elicited from the writers pen ... This is how the literary sketching of poets are intended to function ... as creative muses with which readers can draw from and viscerally apply to their own artistic idioms ... from that lucid space within their heads ... where their minds eye can spark their own creative visions"

Bukusai Ashagawa ~ Bukusai Ashagawa

Ghetto Haikus
Friendship needs just two.
Hot relationships needs three.
But bitches can't count.

Nigga don't need no
cherry blossoms to haiku.
Dis niggaz got skillz.

Any of yoos seen
Moesha or Latesha?
Bitches owe me cash.

Obama's whiter
than Spring laundry day at Duke's
house in Baton Rouge. ~ Beryl Dov

I wax poetic
On the beauty of sewers
Real short poem. Done ~ Rick Riordan

You may exist in
this world
but I exist too
and I will not yield ~ Matthew Quick

There is no difference:
Love is love and love is love.
We are all the same. ~ Tyler Knott Gregson

MY BOSS SENDS me home because of all the dried blood on my pants, and I am overjoyed.
The hole punched through my cheek doesn't ever heal. I'm going to work, and my punched-out eye sockets are two swollen-up black bagels around the little piss holes I have left to see through. Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.
Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave

You give up all your worldly possessions and your car and go live in a rented house in the toxic waste part of town where late at night, you can hear Marla and Tyler in his room, calling each other hum; butt wipe.
Take it, human butt wipe.
Do it, butt wipe.
Choke it down. Keep it down, baby.
Just by contrast, this makes me the calm little center of the world.
Me, with my punched-out eyes and dried blood in big black crusty stains on my pants, I'm saying HELLO to everybody at work. HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.
Sigh.
Look. Outside the window. A bird.
My boss asked if the blood was my blood.
The bird flies downwind. I'm writing a ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly. ~ Ben Brantley

I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, but now I want a Russian novel,
a 50-page description of you sleeping. ~ Dean Young

I'll never leave you
Love will keep us together
Or glue. Glue works too ~ Rick Riordan

Wise men come to see
a child of greater wisdom
and honor divine. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

No building should be
A secret from Apollo
Or drop bricks on him ~ Rick Riordan

Oh sun! Fervid sun!
You welcome me with summer.
Drench me in your rays. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If you hate me, fine
Just don't hit me in the gut
Or, well, anywhere ~ Rick Riordan

Hallelujah song
carries on a gentle wind,
heralding a king. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

We are successful
the moment we start toward
a laudable goal ~ J. Benson

Until today, it really pissed me off that I'd become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I'm doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations - there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ~ Santoka Taneda

It's hard to tell where
It is that I end
And you begin, synergy ~ Eric Overby

A bush-warbler,
Coming to the verandah-edge,
Left its droppings
On the rice-cakes. ~ Matsuo Basho

I guess haiku is an inspiration for me. Everyday, simple moments. ~ Misha Collins

I lay next to her,
The sound of her breathing fills
The room and my heart ~ Eric Overby

I'm touched
by this chrysanthemum
it weathered the typhoon ~ Matsuo Basho

opened cage
if only you'd obey the words of spring
go in please ~ Elancharan Gunasekaran

how much longer
is my life?
a brief night... ~ Shiki Masaoka

These are some of the characteristics of the state of mind which the creation and appreciation of haiku demand: Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance, Wordlessness, Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom, Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage. ~ R.H. Blyth

If the world stops spinning, slowing to a crawl. I will continue to dream of you. Until, I no longer dream at all. ~ Jessica De La Davies

Meditation is
The practice of letting go
Of life each moment

Each in breath followed by out,
Receiving life, letting go

Practice letting go,
Then when death knocks on your door
You'll invite him in ~ Eric Overby

You think it's a game?
Unintelligible? Ha!
Envision no spoons.

This is serious.
It is a matter of joy
versus emptiness. ~ Kristen Henderson

Someday I want to write a sixteen-syllable Haiku about the death and disappearance of a monosyllabic word. ~ Jarod Kintz

Renga with Katie


There's no better place
Than in each moment with you
Traveling through life

Regardless of place and time,
Or seasons and location,

I never look back
To a time without you there
And wish to return

We are each other's constant
In an ever changing world





On a pilgrimage
To no place particular,
Destinationless

Each moment we're arriving
At another sacred place

Appreciating,
Remembering life before
You opened my eyes

It's both vivid and soothing
Like I'd never had vision

Now I see the way,
As we travel together
The fog is lifted

Each sight reveals each other
Each step reveals another ~ Eric Overby

If death is like a sonnet then life would be a haiku. The sonnet, a lyrical poem, the beauty and magic with the last breath~ love, words fading and floating off into the abyss that is space whilst our everyday lives or days more important than normal become just a mere whisper in only a few short syllables through which we convey with our hearts the truth of the universe in a single moment briefly. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

Now I'm a suitcase
Duct-taped to a satyr's back.
Worst. Morning. Ever. ~ Rick Riordan

Some believe they can,
Some believe that they cannot.
Both are clearly right ~ J. Benson

Some of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs. ~ Sally Mann

Leave each place you go
Better than when you found it,
My motto in life ~ Eric Overby

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth's four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's] because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen. ~ Reginald Horace Blyth

What is the beauty of the haiku is that it is not simplistic. The beauty of the haiku I just said is very complex. It reaches all the complexities of our life on this Earth. Peace - that's a very complex idea, peace, so we can't get it as human beings. ~ Sonia Sanchez

The behavior of the pigeon
is beyond reproach,
but the mountain cuckoo? ~ Yosa Buson

I usually begin a poem in longhand. I like to sit where I have a nice view, ideally, although I worked on haiku this weekend at an airport. I'm not one to romanticize inspiration. I try to get to the work. ~ Pat Mora

Home at six AM.
Is it still a walk of shame?
I was shooting porn. ~ Asa Akira

...none live less the spark ~ Kurt Brindley

stronger than mountains.
a place where my heart
feels the safest-
underneath his shirt. ~ Sanober Khan

Men know how to read printed books; they do not know how to read the unprinted ones. They can play on a stringed harp, but not on a stringless one. Applying themselves to the superficial instead of the profound, how should they understand music or poetry?From the Saikontan, by Kojisei (circa 1600) cited in Haiku by Robert Blyth, circa 1947 Tokyo, p. 73. ~ Kojisei

A gentleman will
Never allow a lady
To feel less than grand. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Glittering tinsel,
lights, glass balls, and candy canes
dangle from pine trees. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

And so the spring buds burst, and so I gaze,
And so the blossoms fall, and so my days ... ~ Onitsura

Spring irises bloom.
The caged bird no longer sings -
the knee on his throat. ~ Kamand Kojouri

The similarity between Van Gogh, Haiku poetry, and good photography is the concern for mortality. That things are very fleeting, that there are people who are more sensitive to death than others. The threat of time is of great concern to them. And the camera is a very appropriate instrument for many. ~ Dennis Stock

Performance art is going to be the future. Plays on Broadway are so restricted. But performance art is like haikus, just one line thing. And it's more casual but more interesting. ~ Yoko Ono

Down between the walls
Where the iron laws insist
The dusky voices echo. ~ Fuad Alakbarov

wakened by pain
from a dream of pain
I wipe the sweat
and rose petals
scatter ~ Shiki Masaoka

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master. ~ Matsuo Basho

Death stoops over me.
I'm a problem in chess. He
has the solution. ~ Tomas Transtromer

If the dawn should break
and take away this sunrise,
I hope I break, too. ~ Ryan Mecum

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Two men who may be called pillars of the Western haiku movement, Harold G. Henderson and R. H. Blyth ... ~ Reginald Horace Blyth

As an art form, cooktalk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate. ~ Anthony Bourdain

Haikus are quite hard
You always have to count them
...Chunky applesauce? ~ Benny Cramer

What do you mean "Ewww"?
How is my tuna breath worse
than peanut butter? ~ Lee Wardlaw

Hippopotamus,
As the leaves fall to the ground
Mechs now leave Japan ~ Jo Walton

What I'm trying to do is to tell young people that I teach them how to breathe before I teach the haiku. That one breath, that one breath, because the haiku keeps you alive. It keeps you going. If you learn how to breath the haiku, you learn how to breathe. If you learn how to breathe, you're much healthier. ~ Sonia Sanchez

Dreams like a podcast,
Downloading truth in my ears.
They tell me cool stuff."
"Apollo?" I guess, because I figured nobody else could make a haiku that bad.
He put his finger to his lips. "I'm incognito. Call me Fred."
"A god named Fred? ~ Rick Riordan

The good things aren't a movie. There isn't enough to make a reel. The good things are a poem, barely longer than a haiku. There ~ Cheryl Strayed

You burn like a candle
inside my soul,
showing me a way
through this darkness. ~ Vivid Darkness

I stumble and fall.
I weep and struggle to rise.
My mom feels it all. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Relationship Haiku
Friendship needs just two.
Hot relationships needs three.
But bitches can't count. ~ Beryl Dov

Your tummy, soft as
warm dough. I knead and knead, then
bake it with a nap. ~ Lee Wardlaw

It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean. ~ Jon J. Muth

Grammar is nothing
But a slave-master of words:
Unchain your language! ~ Noel Shafi

The world around us
conforms to expectations
we place upon it. ~ J. Benson

Mary and Joseph
huddle snugly together.
They cradle God's son. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Mists may blur vision,
Doubts to lies are heavy mists,
Truth clears for all ways."
~ Angelica Hopes, Haiku
an excerpt from If I Could Tell You ~ Angelica Hopes

It's hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems. ~ Jack Kerouac

the wall iris
opens its buds:
before my eyes
the last spring
begins to fade ~ Shiki Masaoka

Life without challenge
is life denied any chance
for one to achieve. ~ J. Benson

Nobody can be angry and write a Hokku at the same time. Likewise, if you are crying, express your tears in seventeen syllables and you feel happy. No sooner are your thoughts down on paper, than all connection between you and the pain which caused you to cry is severed, and your only feeling is one of happiness that you are a man capable of shedding tears. ~ Soseki Natsume

Snowflakes fall from high.
Flurries lift and twirl below.
The world has turned white. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers ~ Matsuo Basho

In the narcissist's world being accepted or cared for (not to mention loved) is a foreign language. It is meaningless or even repellent. One might recite the most delicate haiku in Japanese and it would still remain utterly meaningless to a non-speaker of Japanese. This does not diminish the value of the haiku or of the Japanese language, needless to say. But it means nothing to the non-speaker.

Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an afterthought…

They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care. ~ Sam Vaknin

Mountain-rose petals
Falling, falling, falling now...
Waterfall music ~ Basho Matsuo

I would hate to see seventeen people with monosyllabic names like Mike or Ann die, but if they did, and you wrote down all their names in groups of 5-7-5, you'd have one tragic haiku. ~ Jarod Kintz

This is a haiku
Haiku's don't have to make sense
Refrigerator ~ Anonymous

Semper Fidelis
Dawn star flares on disk of night
I fall, sun rises ~ Neal Stephenson