Okay, not magic, but I got your attention.

Or maybe it is magic; somewhere in a little town 20 miles off the interstate somebody gets drunk and does something unwise and perhaps unbelievable. And because it’s not a major crime it’s relegated to the Police Blotter column of the Daily Blat, where I find it and make it into a seventeen-syllable haiku for reasons of zen and personal challenge.

Here then are ten haiku from middle America, a strange land moody and if there ever was one. You should know; you probably live there.

Enjoy.

He jumped on the hood
and claimed her car had hit him.
Then he asked for beer.

Two men throw punches.
And when he sought to stop them
they threw some at him.

What is this “amuck”
that the young boys were running?
Just fun, the cops say.

He enters the bar
and the staff throws him out, and
He enters the bar…

Something large, chewing.
In the dark beneath the house.
Care to take a look?

Old, alone and drunk.
With only a landlord to,
reluctantly, care.

Her heartless tenants
harry her with taser guns!
She can take no more!

It takes a stout heart
to call Dispatch and confess
that you rammed a cow.

911 could, at least,
listen as he tried to name
his nameless terror.

Gunshot? Transformer?
Hard to say, in a town where
things explode hourly.

Oh yes, I’ve published a book of the best. With actual pictures. Take a look.

Taxes are a great goad to creativity: you can be creative, or you can give up and do your taxes. Creativity wins every time. Except perhaps on April 14.

As always, these haiku are taken from police blotter items in the nation’s newspapers. I’ve written them for years, and there’s a book of the best. Enjoy.

Good-natured screaming
isn’t appreciated
after 1 am.

He was on cocaine.
And on his cell phone, trying
to buy more cocaine.

A good caregiver
won’t order pay-per-view on
the patient’s TV.

Their son, they complain,
sneaks off with his girlfriend
to attend her church.

Filth is his weapon.
He wields it, nameless, by phone.
And he knows her name.

She’s been acting strange
for the past six hours and just now
someone called it in.

They like their guns, but
automatic weapons fire
lights up the switchboard

A pant-less young man,
outside, on their toddler swing.
He seems to be stuck.