A mostly stolen haiku

In the box
nothing
laughing

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2017)

Note
What happened here is that I read someone’s haiku, which had something (some object I can’t recall) in place of the nothing and seemed quite flat. So, to pep things up a bit and introduce some leaping* element, I used nothing instead. Try to imagine nothing laughing. What would that laughter look like/sound like? Nothing has no face, no voice. Quite apart from the fact that this haiku is seriously underfilled by common syllabic standards.

* Cf. Robert Bly, Leaping Poetry

Today’s misread haiku

So it was the mush-
room’s black underpants that made
me smile and write this.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
Sometimes misreading something results in something more interesting than the intended word. Anyway, what I was supposed to read was “of the mushroom’s black underpleats” in Amy Newman’s poem Sylvia Plath Is in Paris with a Balloon on a Long String. That’s rather stating the obvious. We all know that mushrooms tend to be dark on the underside, even though it might not occur to just anyone to call that “black underpleats”. But a mushroom with black underpants – now that’s something that makes a leap as prescribed for poetry by Robert Bly.