Poems

Metrodome Deflation Haiku

75 Comments

Minnesota was making some progress, reputation-wise. We used to be known for miserable weather, but thanks to the efforts of many thousands of stalwart, politically active, civic minded citizens, we were well on the way to becoming famous for election recounts.

Now it’s back to weather.

This weekend’s snowstorm put the upper Midwest front and center on many news summaries coast-to-coast. Apocalypse in the Heartland! We could have withstood that negative publicity by sharing the weight with Iowa and Wisconsin, but Sunday morning’s deflation of the Metrodome re-reminded the rest of the nation that Minnesota is part of the upper Midwest. Dang. And as the repairs are made over the next few days, it will be bitterly cold. Double dang. They were just starting to forget!

All we can do is graciously embrace the climate we were given with a zen-like acceptance. Toward that end, I suggest you consider writing a Metrodome Deflation Haiku. It’s fun. And once you’ve done it you can read your work of artsy genius out loud, using a breathy, downward vocal trajectory. Just like all the air rushing out of something.

The Americanized version of haiku uses three unrhymed lines a 5 – 7 – 5 syllable sequence.

My bumpy pillow
Feels as cold as a blizzard.
White sand fills my dreams.

Fully inflated
They call me impervious
But I don’t like snow.

Brett Farve’s shoulder must
hurt like torn fabric panels
waving in the breeze.

See? Easy cheesy.

Write your own!

75 thoughts on “Metrodome Deflation Haiku”

  1. Just heard a story about the dome on NPR, so this is what I have for now.

    Metrodome cave-in
    Louder calls for replacement
    There go my taxes

    Just finished catching up on yesterday.

    tim-garage door is non-functional and garage itself needs replacing rather than new door, but will mean relocating garage (and on and on). Street parking seems easier right now.

    Linda-don’t ask me why, but our little day plow street got plowed, but none of the others in the neighborhood did. As it was, one neighbor left a car out, they plowed around it, leaving a street narrowing pile in front several houses, including mine-I had too much experience of the impound lot 12 years ago when the s&h was born (and still in the hospital), so back to the alley we went last night.

    Dale- bakery I work for delivers bread and pastry to the Metrodome on game day-drivers were also out Saturday morning in the storm. Today should be an interesting one. No school in St Paul due to wind chill and lack of plowed streets(a cancellation they almost never make early, nice to actually get it the night before)-wish I could just stay home, but the bread must go on.

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    1. Snowplow arrived on Colorado Street at about 11:05 last night. I watched from the porch as the driver worked on it. Get a running start from intersection, plow blade down. Push for 25 feet, get mired. Lift plow blade. Back up to intersection. Lower plow blade. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

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      1. Big pile is still in front but the rest of the neighborhood looks good. Imagine said pile will stay until next plowing (or spring)

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  2. I didn’t believe.
    Two feet piled in the back yard.
    Cold reality.

    Teenager is happily drowsing back to sleep right now. We just got a call that Minneapolis Public Schools are closed today. First snow day since she started kindergarten!

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    1. We got that call, too. Darling Daughter is still asleep (at 8:30), and I am recently up (figured if I didn’t have to be up for work, I could sleep in too – sorry MiG…hope the bread is sallying forth as it should).

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  3. Good morning, all.

    It certainly was a weekend to show deference to weather. I thought I had an 18 mile run planned for Saturday…

    Though traffic resumes,
    The world just got smaller than
    It was before snow.

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  4. Good frigid morning, baboons!

    Although I have yet to knock back the first cup of coffee, I have written a Metrodome haiku of Shakespearean grandeur. I’ve spent a lifetime writing lesser stuff just to be prepared for this moment. My haikuish salute to Minnesota weather is good enough to be immortalized in the cement of a sidewalk. Here ’tis:

    What should be turgid
    Is comically flaccid
    Our dome has ED

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      2. I would offer to award you the Golden Banana for your very fine Haiku, but what if, in the spirit of the metrodome and the implications of your Haiku

        it just collapsed?

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      1. This is what happens to a grown woman’s mind as she drives about in the zero-ish snowbound streets Christmas shopping. The mind wanders at red lights. It starts to toy with yesteraday’s and today’s blog contents while I wait through 1,2, 3 cycles of lights. And poof, there is a rhyme. Alzheimer’s cannot be far behind.

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    1. Great, tim. I like the continuity represented by the two lines “Hemingway will have to wait/ no toilet nailed it.” Reminds me of that joke about how someone stole all the toilets from the Fifth Street Precinct Station and now the cops say they have nothing to go on.

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  6. Up, down, in and out
    I’ve lost my way; lack control.
    Fallen. Can’t get up.

    Fallen. Can’t get up
    Like an old lady on TV
    Call Dome Squad, Stat!

    Morning–
    My neice and brother in law have tickets to next Monday nights game so they are hoping it’s repaired by then…
    School is out in Rochester too… but I’m off to work.

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    1. we won’t be ready my next monday but if we lose in dertroit tonight it won’t matter. last time this happened it took a week to get the replacement panel. this time we need 3. i was happy to hear the game was moved to sunday. first time ever for back to back monday night games, the only hope for next weeks monday night game being played at home is an outdoor game at new u of m field if they care enought to clear it off. the problem as i understand it is that htey store all the snow in the parking facilities because they know it would not be used until next football season so there is no parking on campus for the extra visitors. beer should be served. hell whiskey should be served (at least irish coffee) cmon all ye hardy minnesota pirates, captain billy and the boys wouldn’t be whining like a bunch of little babies about over a little snow now would he!

      billy haiku

      the blow was white arghhh
      me,the boys, minnesota
      hardy we are arghhh

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  12. OMG!!!! I thought I’d never type that, but I just had the most perfect internet moment of my life, a moment of ultimate surrealism. I just ran across tape of Vladimir Putin singing the old Fats Domino number, “Blueberry Hill.” With Goldie Hawn and Mickey Rourke in the audience (and I’m not making this up!!!). This was at some benefit to raise money for a cancer center (the report didn’t say if it was FOR or AGAINST cancer).

    Blueberry Hill is a real place, by the way. It isn’t far from my Wisconsin cabin, in Douglas County. Also near the unincorporated community of Blueberry. I’m not sayin’ Bueberry is small, but you could probably throw Vladimir Putin over the whole town.

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    1. If you type OMG one more time, you will turn into a 14 year old girl wearing Lip Smackers holding a cell phone to text incessantly. You will then get tendonitis of the thumb due to over use. The prognosis for OMGitis is very, very poor.

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  15. Dome deflated – poof
    Street finally plowed last night
    My taxes at work

    Schools closed for weather
    Another snow day at home
    Thanks Mother Nature

    Plows finally came through last night after I went to bed (so sometime after 11 pm and before 6 am when I got the robo call saying Minneapolis schools were closed). Working from home today in my jammies and fuzzy slippers. Glad I have that option.

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  19. I heard that by trying to avert the crisis, workers may actually have caused it.

    Perhaps proaction
    Instigated deflation
    We may never know

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      1. My husband’s conjecture on something he read. It involved trying to melt the precipitation as it was falling and ending up with ice instead of snow. No confirmation, I’m just a rumor monger.

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    2. I had about 30 last lines and then I chose one with the wrong syllabic tally.
      So make last line
      A pregnant pause, please.

      I am off on a drive across the drifted frozen prairie to fill a grandparent duty.

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  23. Afternoon…

    We have a smaller inflatable dome on our campus; just big enough for the field; doesn’t cover bleachers or anything…
    They put it up around Dec 1 and take it down May 1. This year we had that snow storm Dec 2. They had it put together but not inflated… then, when they simply tried to inflate it the snow fell to the middle and there wasn’t enough air pressure to move anymore snow. So then it was lots of guys and shovels. On this thick plastic roof. The next day there was less men and shovels. The next day there was just a couple guys with shovels and one guy with a ‘snow pup’ type thing. I heard they tore a few holes in it… the next day there was more guys and big piles of snow… They finally got it inflated Thursday; got lights and speakers installed Friday and had events in there Saturday.
    While the snow falls off the sides of this one, the maintenance crew spends a great deal of time removing the snow from the bottom sides… carefully I’m told.

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  24. The wind blew around
    The ice and snow made us frown
    The d@*n dome is down!

    Sorry, I don’t have much today… it’s been a long year this week and it’s still only Monday. You guys are really wonderful!

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    1. suck it up krista, the art of optimism is the ability to remain positive when there is no obvious reason to. you may as well. the other options are no fun at all.

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  25. Greetings! My 16-yr old son offers the following:

    Cold Minnesota
    Metrodome is falling down.
    Better luck next year.

    I’m just feeling like a worker drone doing dataentrydataentrydataentrydataentry all day long and my brain is turning to mush. Thanks for the laughs and creativity ‘Booners. We just got back from my son’s holiday band concert. Fun stuff — he is so talented! Tootles …

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    1. Thanks to your teenager, Joanne, for providing a perfect ending for our day of deflation haiku.
      The last line says it all for this post and the Vikings season: Better Luck Next Year.

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  26. the snow falls all day
    we clear it and then more comes
    alas frustration

    the dome falls so fast
    cold follows and make fix fail
    vikings play away

    abbreviated
    english sounds choppy to me
    thats how I speak too

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