Daily Archives: September 21, 2014

Haiku from a Different Sort of Town

When you read enough police blotter columns, you learn one thing: men get into more trouble than women.  Especially drunken men.

But there are are exceptions, and one is a small city in northeastern Tennessee where the air smells like rotten eggs and everybody drinks too much.  And I mean everybody.

The newspaper has a police blotter, and the first item I read generated this haiku.

She borrowed Mom’s car
to commute to her fake job.
And never came back.

The second item generated this haiku:

She borrowed his cell,
went outside to make a call
and never came back.

I wondered: is this a one-woman crime wave?  But no: in Rotten Egg, Tennessee, the women get into as much trouble as the men.  And drink just as hard.  The results are interesting: the haiku practically write themselves.  Enjoy.

Three kids in the car,
she went after (and ran down)
his other girlfriend.

“Someone attacked me,”
he said, and then pointed out
invisible men.

She told her ex to
“Come alone,” and when he did,
she punched his mouth, hard.

“He’s been gone for months,”
she told the cops, while he hid
beneath her floorboards.

His ex-girlfriend stole
his wallet, clothes, and false teeth.
“How” wasn’t revealed.

It’s a trucker’s life:
bombing down the interstate,
exposing yourself!

A good fathers should
teach his son what he knows, but…
he was a burglar.

A stove in the yard.
A sign reads, “Do not remove.”
But it was ignored.

Dispatch implored her
to let nature take its course
when stray dogs have sex.

A reminder: Police Blotter Haiku, the book, is for sale on Amazon.  If you’ve already bought a copy, please leave a review on the book’s Amazon page.