Yojimbo would understand.

There are some days when I know exactly what I want to say. There are many days when I know exactly what I will say hours in advance. However, the most perplexing thing for me comes on what I conveniently call haiku days when I cannot for the life of me construct a basic thought, a basic emotion, and a basic reason for wasting paper, pen, and ink. I am that dawn rider on a runaway horse. My mind sees a landscape of bizarre imagery, emotions become characters, and the beat of imagined drums spur me on to pull a Leary (turn on, tune in, drop out). I hit tight bends, catch crooked corners, and bounce around landscapes of grandeur that seize my breath in a manner which has become all too familiar; comfortable even. I am a paragraph in a later obituary, I am the headline of self-fulfilling prophecy, I am an expendable afterthought in a world of expensive emotions.

I once threw lamps against walls in bitter fits of infantile outbursts, crying out with indignant rage. I didn't understand back then that even caged birds will break their beaks for a short-fall to freedom. A fall is still a flight even if it's in the wrong direction. And somewhere in between the shards of broken glass next to a marked wall, I know the prelude to my story unfolds like almost-perfect origami. My imperfections are crumpled rough drafts, unedited manuscripts, and stacks of shredded ideas that cast doubt, spiritual cancer, and improvised tempests upon almost-perfect aspirations.

There is a lot to say about this world, the things I've seen and the people I've known, the whole process of living and trying to be reasonable in an unreasonable world. What did I do that was so wrong? Dreaming should never be a sin. Nobody gave me a life manual so I've sort of written my own version. Oh yes there have been many drafts, indeed. I'm on My Life Manual, Version 7.0 and I can't find a publisher. Maybe that's life's biggest joke and I'm supposed to be a cosmic punchline? Why am I always the last to know that there is no Publisher, no Manual, no one to blame but the idiot who writes his own downfall? Maybe this, maybe that? Why do I have so many goddamn questions that I don't want answers to? Have I asked five (5) questions in a single paragraph, again? Make it six, seven, a thousand eight questions...it doesn't really matter if I solve the riddles, koans, puzzles, and elaborately simply paradoxes. No matter what? I will still always hate sodoku.

Haikus, I get...but, today, I don't have one. Maybe when my horse slows down and I come upon the next town then I'll be ready for the old 5-7-5. Until then, sodoku still sucks.