After Death Haikus

The following poems are from an unpublished manuscript, After Death Haikus: Jisatsu 自殺 (a semi-finalist for the 2025 Orison Prize in Poetry), which is a collection of unfiltered experiences in response to Japanese death haikus. Haikus written on the verge of death were common for Zen monks, priests, and poets. Sometimes they wrote poems; sometimes they simply drew a character.

There is nothing more intimate than engaging in dialogue with the last words of someone on their deathbed—especially when one is on their own deathbed. These poems were written in contemplation of personal suicide attempts, overdoses, and incarceration, as well as finding a new path of sobriety and wholehearted meditation practice. Through deep internal reflection, I was working on removing disparaging thinking, making amends and helping others, and examining the deep-rooted seeds of personal and intergenerational trauma.

These five poems coincide with my learning to meditate in a correctional facility, finding a sangha upon release, abstaining from toxicities, and living in a halfway house in the Bay Area. Even though they are not written in strict haiku form, they are guided by the energy and influence of the last words expressed from our teachers and ancestors. These poems of death kept me alive when I was relearning to live.

–Tony Koji Wallin-Sato

The trail of smoke falls off my finger
coils across ivy stretched from a clay pot
the scent of sandalwood and tobacco.
I chant early morning mantras
before anyone in the halfway house wakes up.
The wind this morning is so loud it too is chanting,
it carries a sweet virtue of today’s gratitude,
the chimes on the deck halo, percussion together like a gong.
When my eyes open, the cat on the other side of the glass door
is smiling.

I fall within the rooted cracks
a part of me lost in the system
my head breaking the concrete slabs
I feel like I’m stuck between a pine
forest and a pack of stolen cigarettes

why have we always been dealt low cards?
I’ve been told illiteracy is a weapon
but the 6th ancestor was illiterate
he expressed a poem that led to transmission
there is no mirror to wipe dust from

so why even carry a cloth?

we stare at blank white walls
reflections like disturbed river surfaces
soon the walls come alive
rotating like film wound too loose around a reel
patterns form and swirl like galaxies
shaping into intricate designs spread as webs
jewels placed between the connection
where Indra’s net fastens together
they sparkle but cannot be seen
the plaster is uneven and takes infinite shapes
today it appears as a turtle carrying a heart

the goal is to not have a goal
to do not-thinking

some days are easier than others
today I only see a turtle with a heart atop its back
why is it carrying such a heavy load?
where is it going?
whose heart is it?
I leave the questions and just sit
the gong is rung
the turtle disappears

My legs fall asleep on the riverbank slope
buried among wet reeds covered in frost,
the current carries fishing lines interrupted
from motors upstream, a few ripples fade out
light pierces between tan oak and light grey
alder, bending sideways through morning
shadow, a bicyclist ascends up the crooked
levee, magpies swirl beneath a cloudless sky
a few steelhead poke their heads above
the surface, dodging hooks and tangled nets,
the only sound drifting in the emptiness
are the treetop nests, revealing naked
and hungry swallows, grasping for air

my golden skin sheds
like autumn leaves crumbling onto
a dry sea floor

red lights flicker
bouncing atop white granite slabs
handcuffs cuffed into flesh
voices trail behind obscenities
that fade into barrel smoke
my legs are wrapped with prayer flags

what are these sorrows we write down
and throw into the flames?

tiny pieces of ourselves
drifting like embers

will I be re-born to walk
among the headstones once again?

careful to dance within
the graveyard markers

plucking every daisy I pass
as church bells echo into the empty spaces

I toss the dead stems
where my body rests

and my golden skin
crumbles again and again.