Fun with Haiku and Tanka

Another evening at the poetry class, and I learn that the haiku form, which I've known about since high school, descended from a much earlier Japanese poem type called tanka.

Longer than the 5-7-5 syllable lines of haiku, a Japanese tanka has five unrhymed lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, but English writers of tanka take more freedom with the syllable count, and mostly produce five-lined poems with lines that are short-long-short-long-long, with as few as ten syllables total, up to the standard size of 31.

Anyway, we had some time to write, and examples ranging from classical descriptions of nature to cynical and angry poems about modern life. Here's what I came up with:

Stomp brake pedal down
Omigod; where'd that come from?
This time, I still live.

White mold on my cheese.
I guess it has been too long
since I cleaned the fridge.

Smallness is Asian
My cars are all Japanese
I'm really quite short.

Sturdy old Bay Bridge,
Rust like cancer in your bones,
Please don't fall on me.

I'm on a Segway
Lean into the turns
Can't seem to shift my weight forward,
My feet hurt too much.
Oh boy, a panic attack.

I can write haiku;
English class in seventh grade.
Tanka not so much
Because I'm used to ending
after the third line.

Naked ladies grow
Next to the Berkeley sidewalk,
Shiver without leaves
But beautiful nonetheless
Even as the blossoms droop.

Why would a cop shoot
A boy with his hands in air?
Bigotry unleashed
Little man with a big gun
His guilt has turned into fear.

Convoy of white trucks:
Humanitarian aid
or troops with more guns?