Haikus as a Three Line Story 3: Connections, Juxtapositions, and Non-Sequiturs

This is the third chapter in a four part series about my friend and my experience writing a haiku a day for six years. In each part, I outline a different type of haiku we often write. Other parts of the series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4.

Sometimes we combined several unconnected ideas. Maybe, we drew some kind of parallel or or juxtaposition like some traditional Japanese haikus. Other times, we intentionally merged unrelated ideas to create non-sequiturs. I often even took three phrases from books, articles, ads, or other poems and put them together to see what kind of poem would emerge. 

Here are a few examples of each: 

Connections and Juxtapositions

Tick tock of the clock

With the faint trickle underneath

Of a gushing stream

(Originally published here. This juxtaposes the noises from the clock and the stream. It was a reference to the noises I heard when visiting a clock store next to a stream in Kyoto, Japan.) 

The Hermit

To stand here alone

In the desert that’s my life

In search of a path

(This one establishes a connection between the hermit’s life and the narrator’s life.) 

I’m like a glacier:

Slow-moving til you get to

My ice-cracking tip. 

(Originally published here.)

The cold wind howls 

Blowing leaves off the trees, that

Are my inner soul.

(These use a direct simile, metaphor, or analogy to make its comparison.) 

Setting up a Premise

The first line of these haikus establish a premise that the final two lines then define or in some way comment on, another strategy to connect thoughts together:

Joys of sleeplessness:

You get to marinate in

Every useless thought

Shores of Babylon:

While the just weep for Zion 

I’m finally home. 

Conjure the devil:

You better know what you want

He certainly won’t 

Tragedy of life:

Everyone is fighting for

What they think is right.

Non-Sequiturs

I frequently cobbled together interesting five and seven syllable phrases from newspaper articles, billboard ads, books, etc. to see what kind of narratives or meanings would emerge by putting them together into a poem. Normally, when writing a haiku, we have a feeling, idea, or narrative that we are trying to convey, and we figure out how to mold that into the haiku’s stringent “requirements.” 

But sometimes, I enjoyed turning that process inside out. I would start with words themselves and see what kinds of meanings could emerge from putting them together in different and interesting ways. 

Do more than see. Seek. 

The assent to the finite.

Desire to create.

The hustle is real

You will need experience

Ride for free after

(This second one is originally published here. I pulled each line of these haikus from ads I saw on billboards around town. To me, they represent the artificial, consumerist language common in the ads that bombard our daily lives.)

Desire to create 

Nothing mattered except life

Self-interest undermines

The forgotten fire

Took almost nothing along

The road not taken

Hello to radiant

You could be solowaving

Get your FYP

(This final one is originally published here. These next two are compilations of phrases from articles and books to see what new narratives emerge when taken out of their original context and put together in this order as a haiku like this.) 

Ineffableness

Immeasurability

Deification

(Another form of non-sequitur: three words, two five syllables long and one seven syllables long. I put them together into a haiku poem to see what kinds of narratives emerged in that process.)