Peter Galen Massey

beguiling motion / thrum and fire of my life / your supple machine

i am warm honey / i am sweet cream and cherries / lick me like candy

today we woke up / to a hundred yellow suns / on the blooming tree

my heart is dark and / dramatic. my body aches / for you. be impressed

see me as i am / every woman has the right / to be beautiful

that shimmering sea / that blue day when our hearts burned / brighter than the sun

our love was a map / to a better world. so how / did we wind up here

no gold more precious / than this light. no pearl’s luster / warmer than your skin

no one will know how / i walked these rooms and hungered / for your smell like food

love is so bright we / see the shadows of the dead / even in the dark

i heard no music / until the music was you / all love songs are true

Watch My Haiku Poems Video

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This video collects some of my favorite haiku about love, yearning, loss, hope, and endurance. It features the song “Drifting By” written and performed by Pineapple Hat, which is used with the permission of the artists.
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Notes on these haiku: This collection of haiku about love tells a story and the poems speak in two voices. The story begins with attraction and flirtation before rising to a moment of perfection (“that shimmering sea, that blue day”). Then something goes wrong (“our love was a map”) and the lovers struggle with their feelings, which are strong but complicated. Finally they reunite, each making a declaration of longing and vulnerability. The dazzling happiness of their first love is gone but it is replaced by deeper, more durable emotions.

I did not originally write these haiku as a sequence. Instead I wrote them one by one, at different times, and eventually realized they could be made into a story. This, according to the rules of haiku, is wrong. These poems feature two characters while traditionally haiku are about nature and human beings are merely observers.

Traditional haiku are also distinguished by a cutting word (“kireji” in Japanese) that divides the poem into two elements which can be images, moods, emotions, or experiences. The meaning should be implied or suggested, rather than the direct statements I often use. Rhyme, metaphor, and other poetic devices should be avoided. And each haiku should stand alone, rather than work as stanzas that interact with each other.

The one rule I follow is the 5-7-5 haiku format of five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five syllables in the third. This is an odd standard to follow because it is arguably the least important and most arbitrary rule, designed to approximate in English the 17 mora of Japanese haiku. I find this format helps me write however, and creates poems that look right to me, so I follow it.

More Haiku Poems About Love

the first rain of spring / smells like your lover’s body / asleep in your bed

your mouth is a rose / the musk of your kisses tastes / better than chocolate

an old lost song and / the fog damp night when your words /were warm on my neck

when you leave, a door / opens on a room i still / forget is empty

this yearning for you / fills my sails, longer than years / wider than the sea