Get ready, it’s almost National Haiku Day! You know – the Seventeenth! You know what to do (google it people – there are a lot of good haiku sites out there):
Some warm up haiku
For National Haiku Day
All in seventeenApril Seventeen
in two thousand and sixteen
write haiku all dayThis clump of haiku
written late on the sixteenth
should get you going.Tomorrow’s the day
It’s National Haiku Day
Embrace the haiku.
A true story
A surveyor’s stake with a hot pink flag
stood sentinel above the highway’s bank
The wisp of marker tape fluttering free
as wind sailed by above the commuting
cars which sped along the road each morning
Seeing the flutter who could help but ask
what was being staked out, what was measured
so far from the shoulder and the pavement.
But there, mere yards away from the marker
Another straight and still above the road
not so gaily flagged but a stroke of white
dashed near the top of the brown and black head
Looking again, I saw the eyes first one
then the other meet my own, and fly off.
Heard this on the radio on the way home and thought – that’s it. What is going on with this? From Berkshire Employers Focus In On Millennials:
Citing statistics, Lande says millennials want to feel connected and fulfilled in their job while being able to recognize their impact on the business and community they live in. He says younger people also want their co-workers to be their second family. One of the area’s largest employers of millennials is General Dynamics Mission Systems, which creates and maintains products for the armed forces. Deputy Director of Engineering Wayne Marzotto says 530 of roughly 1,200 employees at the Pittsfield site fall into the age range.
“We’re seeing an attrition rate that is kind of unprecedented in our business,” Marzotto said. “Normally we’ve seen attrition rates around two to three percent. We’re seeing attrition rates that range around eight percent. That’s one of the challenges, to not only attract millennials, but actually to retain those type of folks.”
———
“Today the workforce, and I say ‘workforce’ because it includes millennials, but it is not only them, they crave a work-life blend,” Lande said. “Or the grey, as we call it.”
You can listen to the whole radio piece here. The grey? seriously?
Meanwhile, here’s the poem du jour. I wrote it tonight, after thinking about the radio piece some more. If you want to read the other earlier poem, it’s here.
The Black, The White, The Grey
“A work-life blend, the grey, as we call it.”
What is black? What is white? Work, home, other.
Who decided that blending the two realms
making it all a smudge of grey is best?
How fuzzy would you like my life to be?
How much do I have to like this or that?
How can I not leave home and shut the door
and feel like I am leaving it behind?
Not just the cats will grudge my time away.
I think of what I’ve done in hours pieced
together from the nights and the days off
nudged towards being finished slow bit by bit
It’s not just home I leave for a commute
I leave home but the door never closes.
Hey look who’s coming
a standard issue hipster
skinny jeans and beardSeen at every turn
a standard issue hipster
plaid shirt, skinny jeansstudied casual:
a standard issue hipster
savoring a brew.
Today’s poem.
Writing poetry, one hundred forty
syllables, ten or so beats to a line.
Fourteen lines. eight and four or twelve and two
the turning in the middle, there somewhere.
You can talk blue sky as long as you want,
the rivers can ramble, the heart can break,
the great gods may confound your epic quest.
All that is fine. It flows onto the screen
Or onto the paper from your fav pen.
Lines of iambic pentameter, free!
Pouring down your arm to your fingertips!
The sky, your heart broken, the river’s rage
At the end, when reader and poet leave,
Both of you holding hands like a sonnet.
I have an alternate ending but this one feels like the better. (As always, these are first draft or slightly edited.)
Life is never more fun than when you’re the underdog competing against the giants.
