Poems

More to Graceguts than haiku. The bulk of my poetry publications have been haiku, senryu, tanka, and sequences. My longer or other poems, selections of which are presented here, have appeared in numerous journals, mostly in California and the Pacific Northwest, but also in many other countries (translated into at least twenty-two languages). Additional poems are available through the Books, Collaborations, Haiga, Rengay, and Trifolds pages. I have many more published poems still to add (not even counting haiku, senryu, and tanka), and hundreds of unpublished poems that I should spend more time getting published in various journals.


If you have any comments about these poems, please contact Michael Dylan Welch. 

Recent Additions (with dates added)

Five Haiku Masters (limericks) (11 February 2024)

[untitled] (27 January 2024)

The Stuttering Priest (with six poems, 21 February 2023)

Spine Poem (17 November 2022)

Undone (9 September 2022)

windswept snow (9 September 2022)

Wedding Limerick (25 June 2022)

Countin’ Up the Hits (24 May 2022)

Anecdote of a Door (23 December 2021)

Bashō Updates His Facebook Page (23 December 2021)

E. E. Cummings Updates His Facebook Page (23 December 2021)

Gary Snyder’s Earring (23 December 2021)

Pewter (11 December 2021)

Hesitation (24 August 2021)

A Miniature Play (22 August 2021)

Crisis (22 July 2021)

Your Second Heart (16 May  2021)

Zen (27 March 2021)


Longer Poems

★ = most recommended (start with these poems)

     A bird

     A Miniature Play

An Abundance of Caution (first published here, during the pandemic)

     Anagrams of Mass Destruction (first published here)

     Anecdote of a Door

     August Postcard Poetry Fest (30 haiku, tanka, and longer poems)

     Beating about the Bush

Breaking Fences

The Clarinet

     Countin’ Up the Hits (first published here)

     Depression

     Dripping Tap

     Enveloped

“I am half sick of shadows”

Flowers on the Roof of Hell

     Flower Sprung to Life (first published here)

     Gary Snyder’s Earring

     Gratitude in a Pandemic

Grief’s Kitchen

    Gipsy Moth (an old sonnet of mine, first published here)

    Hesitation

How to Respond to a Haiku

     Instinct

     Iraqi Boys

Jim’s Jelly

     Mirrors

     Naming Haiku

     Nothings that Go Bump in the Night (is this a poem?)

Perfection: An Ars Poetica

     Perpetrated Ambiguity (a very old poem of mine, first published here)

Pewter

Picking Up

     Seen and Unseen

Seventeen Ways of Looking at a Haiku (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

Silver Notes (poems for Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park)

Snake

     Something to Harp About

     Thunderbird

     Tusks

     Unbecoming

★  Undone

     Your Second Heart


Ekphrastic Poems

Bedroom in Arles

     Durian (for “Double Vision” exhibit)

The Scarf (for “Ekphrastic Assimilations” exhibit)


Prose Poems

Better Apples

Crisis

Family Business

Foul Ball

Naked

(see also Haibun)

 

Anagrams (not a poem)

Top Ten Reasons to Write Poetry (not a poem)


Parodies and Humour

Bashō Updates His Facebook Page

Clerihews for Haiku Editors—Past (22 poems)

Clerihews for Haiku Editors—Present (23 poems)

Clerihews for Haiku Editors—And Then Some (29 poems)

Cuter Gags (first published here)

Do You Want to Write a Haiku? (first published here)

E. E. Cummings Updates His Facebook Page

Five Haiku Masters (first published here)

The Fourteen Days of Valentine’s (first published here)

Frequently Asked Questions (is this a poem?)

Limericks

The Mouse’s Tale

Ode to Physics (first published here)

On the Worst Day of Christmas, My Ex-Love Gave to Me (first published here)

O President, My President

Thomas and Sarah’s Twelve Days of Christmas (first published here)

Twelve Days of Christmas Pokémon (first published here)

The Twelve Musical Days of Christmas (first published here)

Wedding Limerick (first published here)

When You Wish Upon a Starbucks (first published here)


Stick Poems

After the Argument

at a station

Bud

Corked

do

granite

Kindergarten

Paper Flowers

[pine cones]

[stabs of stars]

this

you

under

Zen


Visual/Experimental/Performance Poems

40 neon buddhas

baby

before I arrive

Blips

children’s

flighght

fog

[if i fell]

jay

minim

night

Nine Waterfall Poems

no thing

Selected One-Liners

Spine Poem

Three Erasures

Three Poems for Bissett

      the bill for poetry

      belt it bliss

      son et lumière

[untitled]

[untitled; for September 11] (first publication here)     +

[untitled]

[untitled]

[untitled]

[untitled]

Permutation Poem

Shake the Shaker Till We All Lie Down (with photos)

Unseasoned

windswept snow


Other Poems

The Stuttering Priest (youthful indiscretions; selections first published here)

      Cinquain for Introductions

      The Scarecrow

      Wind of Change

      August 6

      Things at Sunset

      Starving

Ninety-Seven Poems (youthful indiscretions; selections first published here)

      August 6

      Five Cinquains

      Flower Sprung to Life

      Gypsy Moth (a sonnet)

      Killing at Mill Creek

      Message in a Bottle

      Mirrors

      Ode to a Public Commode

      Perpetrated Ambiguity

      Psychedelic Dream (nonsense poem)

      Reading and Writing

      Repetition for Effect

      The American Dream (nonsense poem)

      The Amnesiacs

      Things at Sunset

      Title