Stephen L. Thompson’s Published Works

Stephen L. Thompson’s
Haikus


For the longest time, I just listed my haikus on my Other Published Works page with my poems and other stuff, but I started posting more haikus – to eventually, hopefully, fill out a collection – and it seemed like a good idea to just make a separate page for them.









Steve’s Homepage Main Publication Page




“brilliant sky flowers”

July 4, 2024 My Bluesky profile

This is my default Fourth of July haiku.

Click here to read it.

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“rumbles in the night”

July 3, 2024 My Bluesky profile

I was looking for a haiku to post around the Fourth of July, and this seemed to fit. I don’t remember the original reason I wrote it.

Click here to read it.

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“burning need to write”

June 24, 2024 My Mastodon profile

Somedays, you just have to work with whatever embers you have.

Click here to read it.

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“cancelled TV shows”

June 24, 2024 My Bluesky profile

Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common occurrence for me.

Click here to read it.

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“tea and buttered toast”

June 15, 2024 My Bluesky profile

It’s probably a safe bet that I came up with this sometime while I was under the weather.

Click here to read it.

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“each night projected”

June 10, 2024 My Mastodon profile

A nice, poetic view of dreams, I guess.

Click here to read it.

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“hours becoming days”

June 6, 2024 My Bluesky profile

Somedays, the sentences do become novels. But most days they barely count as sentences. But life continues.

Click here to read it.

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“unpaid assassin”

May 28, 2024 My Bluesky profile

For some reason, the phrase “unpaid assassin” came to mind, and I knew I needed to use it in something.

Click here to read it.

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“rumble of thunder”

May 19, 2024 My Bluesky profile

The opening of many movies.

Click here to read it.

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“day after day spent”

May 13, 2024 My Mastodon profile

I’ve had too many days of just going through the motions.

Click here to read it.

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“when your pounding head”

May 10, 2024 My Bluesky profile

I think we’ve all, unfortunately, have experienced this.

Click here to read it.

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“blank notebook pages”

May 1, 2024 My Bluesky profile

This has happened … many, many times.

Click here to read it.

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“since the accident”

April 29, 2024 My Mastodon profile

What kind of accident would do that?

Click here to read it.

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“Mother Earth broken”

April 22, 2024 My Bluesky profile

It’s not the best, but what do you expect for a last minute Earth Day haiku?

Click here to read it.

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“being denied worlds”

April 15, 2024 My Mastodon profile

My “To Read” book pile would agree with this.

Click here to read it.

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“warm breezes taunt me”

April 13, 2024 My Bluesky profile

I wrote this years ago. I don’t remember what exactly led to it, but I was probably stuck at work on a nice day.

Click here to read it.

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“slow, rainy commute”

April 4, 2024 My Bluesky profile

I wrote this at work. I don’t think it was raining, but my coworker was in a mood, for justifiable reasons.

Click here to read it.

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“painted, rotten eggs”

April 1, 2024 My Mastodon profile

Given that this year April Fool’s Day was the day after Easter, it seemed obvious to combine the two.

Click here to read it.

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“ink splattered pages”

March 26, 2024 My Bluesky profile

I do think writing is an attempt at immortality.

Click here to read it.

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“aching back and joints”

March 18, 2024 My Mastodon profile

I was on my lunch break at work and I was trying to ease my aching back. So I wrote that down, and it didn’t take long to finish this.

Click here to read it.

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“countless people cry”

March 4, 2024 My Mastodon profile

A sadly accurate view of too many.

Click here to read it.

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“morally bankrupt”

February 19, 2024 My Mastodon profile

This sums him up pretty well.

Click here to read it.

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“heightened emotions”

January 8, 2024 My Mastodon profile

Every four years.

Click here to read it.

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“joyous Christmas morn”

December 25, 2023 My Mastodon profile

I think a lot of people can relate to this.

Click here to read it.

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“fireplace aglow”

December 11, 2023 My Mastodon profile

Some years ago, a writing group I was in put together a little collection of stories, poems, and artwork. I ran out of time writing a story, so I submitted a couple of haikus. This was one. I’m trying to post more haiku, but I don’t have that many new ones, so I just reposted this one.

Click here to read it.

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“interesting site”

November 27, 2023 My Mastodon profile

It seems like half the websites I go to show me ads, while the other half are like DISABLE YOUR AD BLOCKER, OR ELSE!

Click here to read it.

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“doped-up old hippie”

November 13, 2023 My Mastodon profile

I first posted this some fifteen years ago on MySpace. I figured it deserved a reposting.

Click here to read it.

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“dark shadows will laugh”

October 30, 2023 My Mastodon profile

A somewhat spooky haiku for the spooky season.

Click here to read it.

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“horror of today”

July 10, 2023 My Mastodon profile

I can’t remember when I wrote this, but it was probably during a power outage.

Click here to read it.

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“Brilliant Sky Flowers”

July 4, 2023 My Mastodon profile

It was the Fourth of July and I remembered I had a firework haiku, so I reposted it.

Click here to read it.

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“Empty cubical”

June 12, 2023 My Mastodon profile

I used to work in a lab, and one of the things I enjoyed doing was running some test that took twenty minutes where I didn’t have to do anything, so I’d just go outside on nice days and walk around for a bit before going back to work.

Click here to read it.

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“warming weather brings”

April 17, 2023 My Mastodon profile

I wrote this because it was a warm spring and I wanted to get started gardening. And then it rained for a week.

Click here to read it.

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“Too busy to write”

March 20, 2023 My Mastodon profile

Life imitating art?

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“scribbled paper bits”

January 16, 2023 My Mastodon profile

It would be faster to just read it.

Click here to read it.

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“temperatures rise”

January 11, 2023 My Project Mushroom profile

If you don’t have a Project Mushroom account, here it is: temperatures rise / fires and storms and flooding – but / the economy

Or click here to read it, if you do have a Project Mushroom account.

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“you would not believe”

December 19, 2022 My Mastodon profile

It would be faster to just read it.

Click here to read it.

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“heightened emotions”

October 26, 2022 My amanfewwords Twitter profile

Ew, a political haiku.

Click here to read it.

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“welcome to the web”

September 28, 2022 My amanfewwords Twitter profile

Probably an accurate description of the internet.

Click here to read it.

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“fireplace aglow”

May 8, 2014 Writer’s Stew, Volume Two (Defunct)

The writing group I’m part of has started putting together a little collection of poems, artwork, short stories. I wanted to do a short story, but I ran out of time so I just submitted two haiku.

The haiku is not online.

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“branches creak above”

May 8, 2014 Writer’s Stew, Volume Two (Defunct)

The writing group I’m part of has started putting together a little collection of poems, artwork, short stories. I wanted to do a short story, but I ran out of time so I just submitted two haiku.

The haiku is not online.

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“mug of steaming tea”

July 2013, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

I was in a coffee shop to do some writing, and this just came out.

Click here to read it.

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“dripping sweat upon”

May 2013, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

This was just something I came up with after thinking about working in the garden.

Click here to read it.

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“some jackasss bomber”

April 2013, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

One of the writing groups I’m in had a poetry reading event that started a few hours after the bombings in Boston. This was just something I whipped out that night.

Click here to read it.

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“pen scratching paper”

April 11, 2013 Writer’s Stew (Defunct)

The writing group I’m part of got the idea of putting together a little collection of poems, artwork, short stories. I wanted to do a poem relating to writing, and I came up with this haiku.

The haiku is not online.

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“black shape upon snow”

March 2013, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

This stems from a real – and somewhat unpleasant – experience.

Click here to read it.

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“a list of ideas”

February 2013, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

I have too many ideas, thus I wrote a haiku about that.

Click here to read it.

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“blustering wind strikes”

January 2013, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

My internet often goes out when it is windy, but I was unsure if other people had the same problem. So I switched it to cable.

Click here to read it.

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“deep blanket of snow”

December 2012, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

What else do you do when there’s a “deep blanket of snow?”

Click here to read it.

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“rattling windows”

October 2012, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

We’ve had some storms lately, and this seemed to fit in with that and Halloween.

Click here to read it.

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“modern day horror”

August 2012, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

My internet connection isn’t always reliable. There are days where it seems it connects for a couple of minutes, only to lose it for five or ten minutes. It’s annoying, and at times extremely frustrating. So I turned part of that into a haiku.

Click here to read it.

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“snow covered mountains”

July 2012, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

I had just returned from a bus trip out west where I saw numerous mountains not capped with snow but at least with some snow on them and there were a few times where I had a nearly dead camera battery

Click here to read it.

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“air conditioning”

May 2012, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

I was having lunch at Subway trying to think of something quick to write for my newsletter. The AC was on a bit high, and I joked about it was freezing my ideas. So I came up with this.

Click here to read it.

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“first snow, then sunshine”

January 2012, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

I needed to write something quick for my newsletter. Given the weather, this is what I came up with.

Click here to read it.

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“Late at night it calls”

November 2011, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

I had the idea of leftover turkey coming back to life, so I wanted to do something with zombie turkey.

Click here to read it.

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“All the time falling”

October 2011, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

It had been a rather rainy month, so I wrote an haiku about it.

Click here to read it.

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“Delving into words”

February 2010, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

The other day I was watching a marathon of episodes of this one show that I watch for fun. What sucked was that every commercial break they had a promo – or two – for their latest “reality” show. It made me feel a tad bitter because I spend so much time crafting stories with plot and character, whereas these schmucks just get drunk and yell at people and make it on TV.

And now – as I’m typing this – I’m somewhat watching a movie that’s beloved by millions. I probably haven’t seen it for ten years, and it’s not that surprising because it sucks. I mean there are more holes than plot. Here I am, trying to write good stories, and crap like that is on TV.

Now if I could turn my bitterness into words on a page.

Click here to read it.

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“At bedtime I pit”

September 2009, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

Have you ever woken up one morning to realize that it was the end of the month? That happened to me. I never got around to writing a story for my newsletter, and I didn’t want to do nothing, so I took five minutes and wrote out a haiku about not having enough time.

Click here to read it.

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“rugged snow capped peaks”

November 2008, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

Some time ago, I came up with the phrase “brick and steel leech” as a poetic description of a place of work. It’s not that I hate my job, but it feels like so much of my life is being sucked away by this ominous … thing. And recently at work we had things “shuffled” and I was moved to a new lab. I’m not complaining (as such) but I was comfortable where I was. I mean, I knew how to look busy and how to hide my mistakes. Now I have to relearn all of that. So this month I was feeling kinda down about work and started working on a story dealing with the “brick and steel leech” idea, but I didn’t really get that far with it. On an entirely different matter, I was going through a book of Ansel Adams photographs. As often happens with me, the two ideas fused, and since I was short on time, I wrote a haiku.

Click here to read it.

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“Too busy to write”

July 2008, Stephen L. Thompson Newsletter

This just shows a fear I have of life getting in the way of my writing.

Click here to read it.

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“You Would Not Believe,” et al.

May 2008, oneoveralpha MySpace profile (Defunct)

These are just four haiku I put up on my MySpace page.

These are no longer online

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“Bitter Cold Darkness”

November 2007, Scifaikuest (Defunct)

It’s a scifi haiku. What can I say about seventeen syllables.

This is no longer online.

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“Brilliant Sky Flowers”

July 2005, Sigla Magazine (Defunct)

I was just playing around, trying to write a Fourth of July haiku, and this is what I came up with. Since it is so short, I’ll just put it here.


Brilliant sky flowers
Breaking the still, silent night
With blooms of thunder


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