Poet’s  Log: 2015

This Saturday night, October 10, at exactly 7 p.m. the 2015 Haiku Death Match will commence inside Dobama Theater.  Eleven of Northeast Ohio’s best Haiku poets will vie for the title of Haiku Death Match Champion. Pairs of poets will face off, reading their best haiku poems. The audience votes for the best poem in each round, and the poet with the highest score wins.

But wait — 11 is an odd number. “In the case of an odd number of competitors,” the Haiku Death Match rule book says, “the current poet laureate must step in and compete.”  So I will be up there with the most toned Haiku poets in the region. I have a small arsenal of poems, but I am worried about who I’m up against.

At least I’m doing my worrying in 17 syllables:

McNiece will get me

with something locally sourced.

I dread that moment.

And:

Beware Cerveny!

Her complex, subtle Haiku

are chrysanthemums.

Completely above my pay grade:

Landis understands

physics, packs the universe

into seventeen.