The Sky is Blue, Unless It's Azure.

Legs rasping in time,
Cricket plays beautifully.
Dance tiny Cricket!

“I wrote it for you.”

“I get that. Who else do you call Cricket?”

“No one.”

“That was a rhetorical question - and for the record, female crickets don't chirp.”

“Oh.”

“It's essentially the orthopteran equivalent of gorillas pounding their chests, there's nothing beautiful about it.”

“It never hurts to portray things in a positive light.”

“So if I write a gentle, metaphor cloaked haiku on orchiectomies, would it make the subject matter any less grotesque?”

“I suppose not.”

“A stunning metaphor for our relationship! An attractive, ill-conceived mess wrapped in your optimism and nailed to the floor by my immovable realism.”

“I love you.”

“I know. Is that all you wrote to say?”

“Mostly.”

“I love you too... don't ask for me back.”

“Why?”

“Because female crickets don't chirp.”

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

Haiku time -- but first, a brief anecdote. The other day I went to burn a pile of personal documents in the wood stove. Shortly after setting a blaze the ashes of old fires came to life with a buzzing whir, launching themselves into the room. After a brief panic, I realized the wood stove was filled with stinkbugs. The bugs make there way indoors in the fall to keep warm -- I slammed the stove door, (startled and enraged) and allowed them all the warmth they could handle. Up until then my hatred for the invasive pest (in spite of their congregating en masse on my home's exterior)  had remained passive. The next day I worked my way around the house killing every one I found...

Chitin crunch abides.

Battery acid stink drifts,

when boots meet beetles.  

And there are still beetles in the wood stove.