TABLOID HAIKU!
By
Charles Webb
SMASHWORDS EDITION
*****
Copyright © 2010 Charles Webb
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Tabloid Haiku are haiku based on tabloid headlines, most from Weekly World News and The Sun. The inspiration for composing these haiku came to me one afternoon while standing in a supermarket checkout line. A sonorous, British accented voice boomed out behind me and everyone in the long line fell silent as a tall, immaculately tweed suited, gentleman read the headlines from the Weekly World News…perhaps the most notorious of tabloids…as if they were Shakespearean sonnets. Off the wall and beyond the fringe pulp poetry resonated down the supermarket aisles as the man read through the paper, then folded it neatly and placed it back on the rack. There was enthusiastic applause and demands for more, but the store manager insisted that business resume.
Tabloid headlines as poetry…maybe…but Shakespeare…maybe not.
Haiku immediately came to mind, since the utter strangeness of many of these gems gave them an almost koan-like quality.
Most of the “haiku” presented here are Westernized 17 syllable, compositions …without the typical 5,7,5 structure and without the Japanese seasonal reference. These are followed by a group of even more “free style” tabloid haiku.
Pack of blood-thirsty
Cocker Spaniels wreaks havoc
in Wyoming.
Istanbul business
tycoon is killed by flying
carpet.
Son observes.
Fat-sucking vampires
claim two hundred and fifty
nine lives in
Lima.
Cannibal chief eats
mail order brides in New Guinea.
Cops launch man-hunt.
Nun wins wet T-shirt
contest in Barcelona.
Chastised by the
Church.
Alien mummy
goes berserk! Trick-or-treaters
flee
undead E.T.
X-ray reveals whole
human finger in sick man’s
belly. Man is
booked.