Time for Vikings Bye Week Bye-kus
Joe Oberle
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When I came over from Vikings Journal, where I used to cover the Vikings, I brought some things with me. For instance, the “Trending, Worth Defending, Should Be Ending” format for game wrap stories—and my own offbeat brand of humor, I guess. Well, now I’d like to revive another story that we did at VJ—the bye week Vikings haikus.
The idea came from Bo Mitchell, the former VJ writer who also is “kind of a big deal” at SportsRadar.com, and he brought it to VJ from a previous place of employment. So, even though Bo isn’t writing for PurplePTSD.com, his spirit remains this week in what I am calling “bye-kus.”
The idea is to write haikus about the Vikings and have a little fun in the process. I enjoyed doing it so much in the past Vikings bye weeks, I decided to write some more and revive the tradition. Perhaps you were a former VJ reader and saw the haikus there, or you are new to bye-kus—but either way I hope you enjoy them and even offer up some of your own in the comment section.
While these may not be haikus in the strictest sense (see the Wikipedia definition included below), the haikus we are working with here are a structure of a three-lined poem with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line and five again the third. It should focus on imagery from nature or the seasons and it features a juxtaposition of thought—kind of a change in direction or a contrast of feeling from the first part of the poem. We’re not going to hold to you all that (as you can see, my use of Winter Park as a season in the first one takes a little poetic license), but we hope you give them a try.
Here is what I came up with. See if you got what it takes to write a Vikings bye-ku.
Winter Park problem
Which quarterback to play next
Take it case by Case.
Last we saw Teddy
Sprawled hurt on the practice grass
Heal thee and the team
Vikes D leads the way
Play tough as December ice
Course, Zim’s still not pleased
Whither goest friend Sam
His light shone on Monday Night
Deserves better fate.
Sendejo returns
Two weeks gone from any hit
Watch out Washington
One game back of best
Vikes at the bye can smile big
Winter is coming
Cook fell like fall leaf
Vikes fans feared the season’s end
Jet/Lat grabbed baton
Vikes King of the North
Pack ruefully lick their wounds
To meet late winter
From Wikipedia:
Haiku (俳句) listen (help·info) (plural haiku) is a very short form of Japanese poetry. It is typically characterised by three qualities:
- The essence of haiku is “cutting” (kiru).[1]This is often represented by the juxtaposition of two images or ideas and a kireji (“cutting word”) between them,[2] a kind of verbal punctuation mark which signals the moment of separation and colours the manner in which the juxtaposed elements are related.
- Traditional haiku consist of 17 on(also known as morae though often loosely translated as “syllables”), in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on, respectively.[3]
- An alternative form of haiku consists of 11 onin three phrases of 3, 5, and 3 on, respectively.
- A kigo(seasonal reference), usually drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but defined list of such terms.