Year: 2026

10-04-26 A New Haiku for a New Day

Photo Credit: Sam

Only remembered
For your death and for those you
Brought down with you

Context (if you’re interested):

I visited the Terracotta Army that day. It’s a real marvel of human ingenuity. I was learning about how often Chinese emperors would bury wives, servants, and others with them to serve in the afterlife. Nowadays, some of them we know very little about them except the humans they killed with them. Sometimes in life, the main lingering impacts we have are the destructive ones. It can make you think.

10/02/26 A New Haiku for a New Day

Photo Credit: Blake Wisz

Fine food costs hundreds of yuan
Fine delicacies on a plate of jade,
But I set my chopsticks down, unable to eat
My mind lost in a maze
I want to speak with the others,
To hear their stories and share adventures,
Not to sit here alone eating fine food

Context (if you’re interested):

Loosely based on “Hard is the Journey” by Li Bai, but I am not satisfied with it. I decided to write my own story in a poem that follows the story beats he set out. This is my first attempt to do that.

10/01/26 A New Haiku for a New Day

Photo Credit: James Forbes

Tell me the way to
Heaven. This? Or that? Or, which?
What maze of paths!

Context (if you’re interested):

I wrote this to express feeling confounded when I see others so confident they know what is best for everyone.

09/30/26 A New Haiku for a New Day

Photo Credit: Spenser Sembrat

Each night we’re apart,
I look up at the same moon
Like you smiling down

Context (if you’re interested):

Based “Water Melody Prelude: When Will the Bright Moon Appear?” By Su Shi. This is also a tribute to the Mid-Autumn Festival in China, although I am a few days late. (At the time of the festival, I was running around too much to be able to pause and write a poem about it.)

09/29/26 A New Haiku for a New Day

Photo Credit: faespencer

Come as you aren’t
I’ll be better able to
Make you how I want

(The story behind this poem; only read this part if you’d like to hear my personal story. Skip if it you’d prefer to glean your own meaning from the poem: I wrote this poem to help me vent my emotions about a specific dispute that happened. I am trying to convey how humans tend to event more and more arguments to solidify their initial impression in their mind even as more facts made it clear their position was wrong.)

For me, this poem is about conformity, about the pressure to be a blank slate so one can conform to how others want you to be.