Monday, August 25, 2025

Butterfly Dream: Daybreak Haiku by Vladislav Hristov

English Original

daybreak
no load
on the crane hook

Frogpond, 45:1 Winter 2022

Vladislav Hristov
 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

黎明時刻
一架起重機吊鉤
沒有負載重物

Translation result


Chinese Translation (Simplified)

黎明时刻
一架起重机吊钩
没有负载重物

 
Bio Sketch 
 
Vladislav Hristov is a Bulgarian short form poet. He works as a journalist and a photographer. His haiku have been published in FrogpondWorld Haiku ReviewSketchbookThe Heron’s NestModern HaikuAsahi Haikuist NetworkThe Mainichi Daily News, and Presence. He is a 2020 "Basho-an” Award Winner. 

Sunday, August 24, 2025

Biting NOT Barking: Words Tanka by LeRoy Gorman

English Original

unhoused
or homeless
as if words matter
ice rain
or sleet

Ribbons, 21:1, 2025

LeRoy Gorman


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

無房子可住
或無家可歸
彷彿用詞遣字很重要
冰雨
或雨夾雪
    
Chinese Translation (Simplified)

无房子可住
或无家可归
仿佛用词遣字很重要
冰雨
或雨夹雪


Bio Sketch

LeRoy Gorman lives in Napanee, Ontario. His poetry, much of it minimalist and visual, has appeared in publications and exhibitions worldwide. He is the author of two dozen poetry books and chapbooks. He is also the winner of the 2017 Dwarf Stars Award.

Saturday, August 23, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on UN-Declared Gaza Famine, A Famine on all of Our Watch

(FYI: +972 Magazine,  independent, non-profit media initiative, Israel-Palestine

August 21, 2025: In a joint investigation by Israel's  +972 Magazine and Local Call and UK's The Guardian, Yuval Abraham reveals that: "Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians")



My Dear Friends:

Democracy Now, August 22, 2025: U.N. Declares a Famine in Gaza, Where Over 500,000 Face “Starvation, Destitution and Death”

The U.N.’s top humanitarian official, Tom Fletcher, spoke from Geneva earlier today:

It is a famine in 2025, a 21st-century famine, watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this. The Gaza famine is the world’s famine.


smoky twilight ...
will starving babies in Gaza
heal the broken heart
of an Israeli mother
whose children were kidnapped


in memory of the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 

word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza



"Israel's oldest dailyHaaretz," which was was sanctioned by the Israeli government on Nov. 24, 2024

August 21, 2025: "Starvation Is Everywhere," Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose the Scale of the Horror


a dull-eyed baby
with loose skin over bone ...
red glow of Gazan skies


                      aid
out of reach            air            ops
                                       dr 

and a dead child’s stare


thousands of Gazans
pressed against one another ....
in the dusty air
one man cries, do I have to pay 
with my life for a sack of flour?


her gaunt face 
swollen and covered in burns ...
this one-legged girl
the luckiest one while others are
buried under the smoky rubble



And August 22, 2025: Starvation, Destitution and Death' | In First, UN Says Over Half a Million Gazans Suffering From Famine; Netanyahu: 'Outright Lie'

For the first time since the war in Gaza started, the UN food security agency's report found that residents of Gaza City and nearby areas are suffering from the highest level of hunger. Netanyahu rejected the report as a 'modern blood libel' and accused Hamas of 'stealing aid' and staging a 'starvation campaign'


To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share the following latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXIX: "UN-declared Gaza famine"

a roadhouse
burnt-out and half ruined ...
under the roof
a patched tent and children
with thin arms and bloated bellies


FYI: The latest news about Israel's genocidal war against Palestinians:

Haaretz, August 22, 2025: Israel's Foreign Ministry Says West Bank Is Israeli Territory, Contravening International and Domestic Law

On Thursday, 25 countries – including the United Kingdom and France –issued a joint declaration against Israel's decision to approve construction in the E1 area, a plan designed to bisect the West Bank, calling the plan a "flagrant breach of international law" that would undermine the idea of a two-state solution. 

Friday, August 22, 2025

A Room of My Own: Smoky Silence Haiku

smoky silence
crater after crater
rainbowed with oil


Added:

elbows up, elbows down ...
the PM's mouth opens and closes
in summer heat


FYI: CBC News, August 22, 2025: Unfortunately, there may not be a hockey analogy for the challenge Canada faces: Are Mark Carney's elbows up or down? Does it matter?

"There is a time in a game, in a big game — and this is a big game — when you go hard in the corners with your elbows up. There's a time in the game when you drop your gloves in the first period and you send a message. And we've done that, pretty uniquely in the world," Carney responded, attempting to broaden the hockey analogy.


Added:

berry picking
I lick the stains
off her fingers


Added:

after our picnic
the heat comes on
between us
the honey melon juice
dripping off the table edge

Thursday, August 21, 2025

One Man's Maple Moon: Petunias Tanka by Thelma Mariano

English Original

rows of petunias
all pink and evenly spaced
to think
my life could have been
that predictable

Thelma Mariano

 
Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一排排矮牽牛花
全是粉紅色, 間距均勻
想一想
我的人生本來可以
如此地可預測

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一排排矮牵牛花
全是粉红色, 间距均匀
想一想
我的人生本来可以
如此地可预测


Bio Sketch

Thelma Mariano is the author of Night Sky: a Selection of Tanka Poetry. She lives in Montreal and has published her tanka in literary journals as well as in various anthologies including Fire Pearls and Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Hot News: New Milestone, 2.5 M Pageviews and Call for Submissions

My Dear Friends:

NeverEnding Story reached a new milestone late this morning: 2.5 M pageveiws (FYI: On June, 13 2024, it reached 2 M pageviews) 

I am grateful to everyone who has been a part of this poetry journey. And NeverEnding Story now seeks the haiku and tanka that can bite and bite hard. 

The accepted haiku and tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and X. And you are welcome to follow me on X at @ericcoliu (4 following, 4,922 followers).


on the windowsill
two canaries singing
to each other
I tweet and retweet
NeverEnding Story  😋


In a war situation or where violence and injustice are prevalent, "poetry is called upon to be something more than a thing of beauty.
-- Seamus Heaney

And

What poetry can, must, and will always do for us: it complicates us, it doesn't "soothe."
-- Jorie Graham 


I would like to conclude today's "Hot News" post with the following latest entry of Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXVII: "'relocation plan'"
written in response to Haaretz, Aug. 20,2025: Defense Minister Approves Plan to Conquer Gaza City; 130,000 IDF Reservists to Be Mobilized

"Relocation Plan"

summer odors  ...
nowhere to go, no way
to get pieces of bread

ghost town
a Gazan's mind a labyrinth
of dead bodies


FYI: Haaretz, August 22, 2025: 'Gates of Hell Will Open': Israel's Defense Minister Vows to Level Gaza City After IDF Takeover Plan Approved


Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXVIII: "bloodied keffiyeh"

a single sneaker
amid the twisted rebar
a bloodied keffiyeh


FYI: For many Palestinians, the keffiyeh symbolizes their yearning for freedom and serves a nod to their history. For some non-Palestinians, it's a show of solidarity. 

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Butterfly Dream: Lanterns Haiku by Robert D. Wilson

English Original

starlight sky ...
the river lined
with lanterns

Mann Library’s Daily Haiku, July 3, 2021

Robert D. Wilson


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

星空 ...
河岸一排排
的燈籠

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

星空 ...
河岸一排排
的灯笼


Bio Sketch

Robert D. Wilson is Co-Owner of Simply Haiku.

Monday, August 18, 2025

Butterfly Dream: River Baptism Haiku by vincent tripi

English Original

The turtle’s plash
just around the corner
a river Baptism

Global Haiku, 200

vincent tripi 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

烏龜的濺水聲
就在轉角之處
一場河水洗禮

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

乌龟的溅水声
就在转角之处
一场河水洗礼


Bio Sketch

Founder of The Haiku Circle, vincent tripi was closely associated with the spiritual movement in American Haiku. He wrote haiku for over 35 years, and published 14 books of haiku. Most of his haiku reflect a Buddhist foundation.

Sunday, August 17, 2025

One Man's Maple Moon: Lover Tanka by Hortensia Anderson

English Original

by moonlight
through the screen window
my lover climbs
in the darkness
between the sheets

A Hundred Gourds, 1:1, December 2011 

Hortensia Anderson


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

月光下
穿過紗窗
在黑暗中
我的愛人爬進
兩張床單裡面

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

月光下
穿过纱窗
在黑暗中
我的爱人爬进
两张床单里面


Bio Sketch

Hortensia Anderson is the author of numerous chapbooks as well as a volume of poetry, Trust. Her work has been published in many oneline and print magazines. Her awards and other honors include: Best of 2002: Haiku in English, The Mainichi Daily News; 5th Annual Suruga Baika Winner; Honorable Mention, Mainichi Contest (2003); Tanka Splendor Awards (2003 and 2004); and Third Prize, Kusamakura (2004).

Saturday, August 16, 2025

A Room of My Own: Skin against Skin Tanka

Yellowing Memories, VIII
written in response to The Telegraph, August 15: Putin prepares nuclear missile tests in veiled threat to West

we ducked and covered
like Bert the Turtle at school
as sirens howled ...
decades later, I still feel the heat
of our skin against skin


FYI: "Duck and Cover" staring Bert the Turtle is a 1951 "Civil Defense film"/propaganda, as the cornerstone of the government's "duck and cover" public awareness campaign.



Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LII
written in response to The New Yorker, August 15, 2025: Trump’s Self-Own Summit with Putin
Even the puffery-prone President couldn’t alchemize his non-deal with Russia into Trumpian gold.

Staging/Self-Owning

on a red carpet
the Convicted Felon
and the War Crimial
shake hands with pats on the arm ...
both grin broadly to the World

President Putin
will you stop killing civilians?
with a dead-eyed look
he shrugs before entering
Trump's bulletproof Beast


FYI: Highly customized and heavily armored, the presidential limo, officially known as the presidential state car and nicknamed “The Beast” in 2001 by President George W. Bush, is more a tank than a limousine for the President.


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LIII

warm handshakes 
on a red carpet 
and a joint limo ride
as fighter jets fly overhead ...
made-for-Fox-News non-event


FYI: Fox News, August 16: Putin ‘got away without doing anything’ at summit with Trump

The Daily Beast, August 14: Longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff: Trump Circles Drop F-Bomb After Failure Trump-Putin Summit

And NPR, August 16: Government papers found in an Alaskan hotel reveal new details of Trump-Putin summit.


Added: Trump Empire, Inc, LIV

Epstein files news
the rasp, rasping
of cicadas


Added:

gathering dark
beyond the barbed wire fence
a shrill squealing


Added:

the long strip
of neon-lit roadside motels
a woman in red

Friday, August 15, 2025

To the Lighthouse: Effective Use of a Run-on Title

A run-on title is a phrase in the title space that starts a grammatical unit in the following poem text.

For example, my tanka prose below:


Sunflowers deepen into the soil 

striving to live.

more war news ...
weeding the flower bed
I don't feel deserving
of this small plot of earth,
an Eden of sorts 

Will these sunflowers flourish in this place I've claimed as my “own?”

Ribbons, 18:3, Fall 2022


The title, "Sunflowers deepen into the soil," is a run-on title, that segues into the brief opening prose:  "striving to live." When evaluated in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as implied from L1 of the tanka, the opening prose can be used to describe both "sunflowers," intended to remind readers that they are the national flowers of Ukraine, in the title and the "I" in the tanka, one that conveys a feeling of guilt about the speaker's own relative good fortune when there's an ongoing war elsewhere.

And the concluding prose/question enhances this feeling of guilt by challenging the legitimacy/certainty of claiming for one's exclusive use any bit of this planet we share (in this place I've claimed as my “own?”) in a time of war with global consequences.

The use of a run-on title connects the fate of Ukrainians and the guilt of the speaker.

Another example, 


It is always three o'clock in the morning

day after day.

the ghostly past
lurking around the corner
of my mind ...
with a scalpel of words
I stab into its heart

However, my immigrant past is never ...dead -- gone and forgotten. It is not even past. 

Distressed and alone by the bedroom window, in the wake of a dream about a Taiwan blue magpie disappearing into the dark forest, I hear Time passing in the sound of snow.

Ribbons, 19:1, Winter 2023
contemporary haibun, 19, 2024
(annual anthology showcasing a state-of-the-art selection of haibun, tanka prose, and haiga from journals around the world)


The title, It is always three o'clock in the morning, can work as a run-on title because it, along with the opening prose, alludes to the following:

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up"

The use of a run-on title makes the "dark night of the soul" allusion effective, adding emotional weight and psychological depth to the poem.


To conclude today's post, I would like to share with you the shortest haibun I've ever written.

Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXVI: "Christ's thorns"

Smoky fireball

after smoky fireball ... the weight of this hushed silence.

a skeletal house
amid debris and pot shards
Christ's thorns


FYI: "According to a religious legend, the crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ at the crucifixion was made from the stems of this plant, euphorbia milii , also known as Christ's thorn, a pretty succulent plant that can bloom almost year-round, even indoors."

Haaretz, August 16, 2025: 'They Need a Nakba' | Former IDF General Calls Palestinian Death Toll in Gaza 'Necessary' in Recording

The former Israeli military intelligence chief said the high number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is "necessary for future generations," according to recordings broadcast Friday on Israel's Channel 12 News.

In the recordings, Maj. Gen. (res.) Aharon Haliva can be heard saying that "50 Palestinians should die" for every victim of Hamas' attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. "There's no choice, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the consequences," Haliva added, referring to the 1948 displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of what would become the border of the State of Israel.

"I'm not saying this out of revenge, but as a message for future generations," he added.

And Al Jazeera, August 16, 2025: Arab, Islamic countries condemn Netanyahu’s ‘Greater Israel’ remark

When interviewer Sharon Gal with the Israeli i24NEWS channel asked Netanyahu if he subscribed to a “vision” for a “Greater Israel”, Netanyahu said “absolutely”. Asked during the interview aired on Tuesday if he felt connected to the “Greater Israel” vision, Netanyahu said: “Very much.”

The “Greater Israel” concept supported by ultranationalist Israelis is understood to refer to an expansionist vision that lays claim to the occupied West Bank, Gaza, parts of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

Thursday, August 14, 2025

Butterfly Dream: Doe and I Haiku by Michele Root-Bernstein

English Original

evening hush
the doe and I
in one regard

Modern Haiku, 43:3, Autumn 2012

Michele Root-Bernstein 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

傍晚的靜謐
一隻母鹿和我
沉寂不動

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

傍晚的静谧
一只母鹿和我
沉寂不动


Bio Sketch

Michele Root-Bernstein appears in A New Resonance 6; the 2016 chapbook, Scent of the Past…ImperfectHaiku 2014Haiku 2016; and on three rocks in Ohio. She is co-author with Francine Banwarth of The Haiku Life, What We Learned as Editors of Frogpond and facilitator of a Michigan haiku study group. 

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Butterfly Dream: Summer Nights Haiku by Masaoka Shiki

English Original

how much life
is left to me --
brief, these summer nights

Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 2018

Masaoka Shiki


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

還有多少剩下的生命
留給我 --
短暫的夏夜

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

还有多少剩下的生命
留给我 --
短暂的夏夜

 
Bio Sketch

Masaoka Shiki (October 14, 1867 -- September 19, 1902) was a Japanese poet and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku, and he also published articles on the reform of tanka. Some scholars and poets consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

One Man's Maple Moon: Burden Tanka by Aya Yuhki

English Original

there is no way
but that one carries
one’s own burden
I walk
in the dimness of day

Eucalypt, 3, 2008

Aya Yuhki 


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

別無選擇
只能背負
自己的重擔
我行走
在昏暗的白晝

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

别无选择
只能背负
自己的重担
我行走
在昏暗的白昼


Bio Sketch

Aya Yuhki was born and now lives in Tokyo. She started writing tanka more than thirty years ago and has expanded her interests to include free verse poetry, essay writing, and literary criticism. Aya Yuhki is Editor-in-Chief of The Tanka Journal published by the Japan Poets’ Society. Her works are featured on the homepage of the Japan Pen Club’s Electronic Library.

Monday, August 11, 2025

Butterfly Dream: Wildflowers Haiku by Jane Reichhold

English Original

wildflowers
the early spring sunshine
in my hand

Frogpond, 23:3, Autumn, 2000

Jane Reichhold

 
Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一叢野花
初春的陽光
在我手中

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一丛野花
初春的阳光
在我手中

 
Bio Sketch 
 
Jane Reichhold was born as Janet Styer in 1937 in Lima , Ohio , USA . She had published over thirty books of haiku, renga, tanka, and translations. Her latest tanka book, Taking Tanka Home was translated into Japanese by Aya Yuhki. Her most popular book is Basho The Complete Haiku by Kodansha International. As founder and editor of AHA Books, Jane also published Mirrors: International Haiku ForumGeppo, for the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and she had co-edited with Werner Reichhold, Lynx for Linking Poets since 1992. Lynx went online in 2000 in AHApoetry.com the web site Jane started in 1995. Since 2006 she had maintained an online forum – AHAforum