Hi everyone,

I’ve always been fascinated with Mike’s story; how he traded his arm for redemption and a chance to hunt down his former partner.  I wanted to do a special haiku to mark getting to the 200th video I’ve done. Number 200 happens to coincide with my 6th wedding anniversary and I have much bigger plans then, so I decided to do it for number 197 instead.

You can find a link to the video film that I made below. Here’s the poem, which is a sequence of 12 haikus. I used a rhyme scheme in the first two lines of each haiku.

Mike’s Story

That last killing spree

Left a demon’s mark on me

Beyond ink and blood

---

Familiar and I

Walked free of suspicion’s eye

Then came reckoning

---

Memory returned

All chances at life I’d spurned

To kill at his side

---

From behind pale light

A vision appeared of right

Set my path anew

---

But what of the mark

Awful contract with the dark

Surely no release

---

A way then was cleared

To be from me rightly sheared

That ominous stain

---

Steadfast in resolve

With blade my sins to absolve

I lived victim’s pain

---

The arm once severed

Took on life its own, quivered

In evolution

---

Sprouted a body

Danced to silent rhapsody

Then bid me farewell

---

I knew then my crime

In these woods I’d wasted time

Partner gone away

---

To feed on suff’ring

Of those fate would to him would bring

For greedy pleasures

---

My purpose was here

To hunt him down, far or near

Put an end to fear

by Richard Austin

Here’s the video version. I hope you enjoy it.

and here’s some stuff from behind the scenes, like me getting pestered by a wasp and getting caught ‘acting’ by a member of the public.

I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, there’s a whole load more on my YouTube channel – What the Haiku

And, if you want to see more of my Twin Peaks poetry, you can click the links below.

Are you still seeing this…? Some limericks

Shelly’s Tale – a poem

Life’s Intersection – a poem

A Ditty for Donna

The Story of BOB – a sonnet

Palindrome for Dark Woods – a poem

The Battle of the Bob Bubble – a poem

Cinquains for Lucy, Audrey, Candie and others

The Lodge Palindrome – a poem

Two Coopers – Two Sonnets

A Sonnet for Laura Palmer

Cheers,

Richard