Why didn't you tell me?

It's National Poetry Month. I could've spent the last 17 days subjecting you to my bad poetry.

I like attempting haiku because it is both difficult and easy to say something in such a short piece. You have to cut the idea/feeling/moment down to bare bones necessity. I've never approved of calling any very short poem a 'haiku', as is sometimes done because it is so hard to say anything in English in 17 syllables. (Isn't that kind of the point?) Then I read that actually Japanese haiku have 17 sounds (or moras for you linguists) – that just crazy ass short.


For example:

Fearfully longing
For the bright springtime
My wintry heart.

Has 17 syllables (5/7/5) but 31 sounds (9/13/9). If I'm counting right, to say approximately the same thing in 17 sounds you get this:

Fearing
Bright Spring
My heart

But, at least to me, it's harder (because we don't do it much) to count sounds and much MUCH harder to actually say anything that way. I'll stick to syllables.