Looking at the form

In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed as a single line, while haiku in English often appear as three lines. There are several other forms of Japanese poetry related to haiku, such as tanka, as well as other art forms that incorporate haiku, such as haibun and haiga. The tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as "short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form.

 

Short song of Sunnyland: Denton

We had a lotta cane /
rattlesnakes, bears, panthers /
come up to you alot /
we chewed the sorghum that grew on stalks /
Cleaned up the land at six bits a day.

Spann was bad /
Im gonna tell you
Spann put out a sound /
he didn’t have nothing to do after he got with Muddy / If there’s whiskey there.
That’s what killed him
Whiskey.

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In that time /
there was a thing /
called cotch balls /
cotch is just a three-card game / And I was very bad / I could steal with the back of my hand /
palm a dollar /
I was a hustler.

I played Portersville, Osceola
but now /
I would play for you according to how your joint was
situated
y’understand
All up and down 61 I played there and in Arkansas

I could steal with the back of my hand
Palm a dollar
I was a hustler.