I want my writing, poetry and blogs to improve, to be something more, and I find it so easy to be my own worst critic. This fact can often make it easy to accept feedback more negatively or personally than it is meant. Since travelling, there has not been enough time to think and take notes, to read and take notes, to listen and take notes, to watch TV and take notes, to listen to music and take notes, or to write and take enough time. My life now very simply revolves around taking notes and writing, and living and loving. And of course, food and eating! Today on our travels I decided to write poems and tried to be inspired by some of the things we were seeing. I’m aiming for a book of 100 haikus, and so I have focused on this style of poem today, writing about 15 of them, a few of them about dementia. This volume of poetry is in progress, but I am finding is quite challenging to do. I wrote one yesterday that works with the 5-7-5 syllables that these poems must comply with, which I thought I’d share here rather my poetry page, as it may help me find more words for my blog today, and did not require any notes.

I have dementia

It’s a terminal disease

Hard to understand

I’m not sure if I need to title haikus, as they are so short they don’t look as if they need them. If anyone has the definitive on this, please let me know. I probably learnt this at university, but have forgotten… I cannot imagine my brilliant poetry lecturer would have not taught this detail. I suppose I could Google it, but having someone respond here is so much more fun, and so much less like fast food, which I seriously dislike. In a funny sort of way, haikus and fast food look as if they go together, but the meanings behind many haikus have so much more depth and it can take a lot of thinking to make them work. A fast read, but a much longer thought process. I find this style of short poem a really good vehicle for helping me to think with more clarity, and allowing me to more fully understand why so often less is more. I also find I don’t need to make notes to get me to where I want to go with them, which is sometimes a relief as it is less work. Taking notes, writing, haikus, blogging, eating, loving and living all fit perfectly together in my new world, one which is evolving through living with dementia as positively as I possibly can.