By: Robbie Whelan

No movies tonight
The drama is in the streets
See yinz on Monday
–Manny Thiener, Pittsburgh, PA

Today, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page soft feature article about a Haiku contest held by the organizers of the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, which starts next weekend in my hometown. Entrants submitted predictable banal lines of verse, in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each. Stuff like this, from presumed Pittsburgher Kelly Lynskey:

Neighbors of the world
Welcome to our three waters
Share with us your peace

As a fan of the World-Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, I am, like one or two other members of this newsroom, acutely aware of how high emotions run between these two cities, so I sent out a mass email to the newsroom asking for Haikus from our staff about Pittsburgh, or about the G-20, or about anything they felt moved to write after reading the WSJ story. Predictably, even though I didn’t mention football, most of the poems I got were Steelers/Ravens-related. here is a sampling.

From copy editor Wayne Countryman:

Roethlisberger won’t
End inequality or
Win the Super Bowl

From sports business reporter Liz Farmer:

Pittsburgh’s on a roll
G-20 and the Super Bowl
Luck always runs out.

Hm. Does this mean Liz is rooting for Pittsburgh’s misfortune in areas other than football? Economic development and international recognition, for example?

Associate Editor Paul Samuel was more of a civic-minded Balti-booster:

Why go to Pittsburgh
For G-20 summit?
Baltimore has much more charm

That one, however, I’m going to have to disqualify, because its syllabic scheme is 5-6-7, or so unorthodox that I’m not even sure it qualifies as a Haiku, if any poem not written in Japanese, can indeed qualify as a Haiku (energy and finance reporter Danielle Ulman, who did not submit a poem, insists that in order to qualify, a Haiku must have a reference to the seasons in it).

Richard Simon, our multimedia supporter, wins the prize for Haiku most heavily reliant on a patently false version of revisionist history, but his second line shows impressive lyrical promise, in my opinion:

Santonio Holmes
Big catch on the biggest stage
One foot in, one out

Business Editor Ed Waldman sent this in, and if anyone out there can figure out what it means (beyond the fact that Steelers rookie cornerback Keenan Lewis wears #20), they get a prize:

Steelers fans thinking
that ‘G-20′ is number
of Keenan Lewis

The last three Haikus that I’ll share are the ones that had the least to do with football. Because ultimately, the G-20 isn’t really about football. It’s about macroeconomic cooperation and public relations. Legal reporter Caryn Tamber took the high road:

I wish I could write
Pithy words about football
Sorry, no can do

Government reporter Andy Rosen, true to form, did his homework. His Haiku references the Allegheny County Department of Sanitation, Pittsburgh’s waste-disposal authority. He gets points for being both wonkish and disparaging in only 17 syllables:

Three Rivers are joined
But do not swim or sip them
It smells. ALCOSAN.

And finally, the winner of the Daily Record G-20 Haiku prize, comes from legal reporter Brendan Kearney, who got my email requesting submissions right before lunch, apparently, and we were planning on hitting up the Kooper’s Chowhound Burger Wagon for some burgers (they were delicious). He read the article, then called on all his powers of rhyme and composition to compose the following mellifluous lyrics:

Yes I am hungry
For a juicy slab of meat
And maybe bacon.