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I like this poem. It has very succinct imagery, and the metaphor of fighting against your 'white whale', the moth in your face, is apt and relatable.

This is a really interesting use of juxtaposition. The form suggests that this is a haiku or at least haiku-adjacent (we have three uneven lines in two uneven units with a kireji ';' separating them)--but we are not juxtaposing two images but rather an image (the white moth) and a reference (Moby Dick).

When we consider the relation between the moth and the novel there are two obvious analogies: between the white whale (as u/ptolemy23 pointed out, given that both are white animals) and with the ship (given that the moth is also propelled by death). The moth the thing which is the object of a dangerous, obsessive hunt or it could be the vehicle of such. The latter interpretation plays nicely against moth's proclivities to seeking out open flames (which would make the moth a nice metaphor for Ahab).

In some ways this poem works against the grain of typical haiku. While the master Basho counseled capturing a phenomena in itself--present and uninfected by the subject--this poem draws attention to the subject and removes us from the moment in two ways, principally by the interjection "please, call me Ishmael." and secondly by the rendering of "'gainst". Instead of receiving the immediate, revealed reality that haiku aims for we instead get a removed, mediated fiction.

(As a minor suggestion, I'm not sure 'gainst really works here--it blunts a bit of the force of that subversion. I also have not figured out the function of "please"--it's not part of the quote and also serves to soften the jarring reference of 'Call me Ishmael'.)

I find that the self-aware antagonism of this poem with the body of haiku, while interesting, distracts from the actual content, which an alternate rendering might not do.

Despite that, this is a very interesting piece and well done.

Wut