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 and moody land 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.