New Delhi at Night

Posted for Wordless Wednesday.

Diagnosis

 I went to see the doctor.

“What are your symptoms, Mr. ... Um?”

“For a while now I’ve found it hard to enjoy myself, to see the funny side of things. Whatever the news, things are always on the sad side. Global and personal.”

The doctor took out his stethoscope and started listening to my inner workings in various places. Finally stopped to follow up with palpitation. Sat there without saying anything for a minute.

“Doctor?”

“Mr. ... Um ... Blumfeld. Your funny bone is broken.”

“And what can be done about that? A cast?”

“Nothing whatsoever. It simply takes a lot of self-healing. And the realization that both sad and humorous things don’t depend on you. It’s all about what you make of them.”

“Thank you, doctor. I could have come to the same conclusion reading Deepak Chopra.”

“That will be 120 euros. The receptionist handles payments.”

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Written for the prompt “down to the bone” at Poets and Storytellers United.

Hamburg Skyline

 Posted for Wordless Wednesday.

The August in Rome Haiku

 

It’s brutal out there –
feels like getting cooked as you
walk on the pavement

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
Nothing but the not very poetic global warming truth.

Blurry and red

Ostiense

Part of Rome, Italy. Hanimex 110 IF pocket camera on Lomography Lobster film (a redscale film). A contribution to Wordless Wednesday.

Meta Haiku

Trying to write one
based on reading one about 
writing a haiku.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
That’s exactly what happened here. Plain, flat truth! If we were in frog land instead of poetry land, one haiku would be leapfrogging the other.

You must haiku

Like you must see this
hyaluronic acid eye
commercial. So good!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Notes
So he said let’s haiku – too much time has passed without. Nothing but the truth as usual. Except the invented parts. 

The summer moon haiku

 

The summer moon im-
bibed God knows what and spat it
out disgustedly

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
Derived from today’s prompt from Daily Haiku Prompt, which was “Summer Moon” for north and “Imbibe” for south. Once again, I combined both in an entirely unhaikuistic manner.

The bonnet haiku

 

The confetti trees
and somewhere among them your
calico bonnet. Yes!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
This one came seemingly out of nowhere and but also resulted from a confluence of things that occurred: a) I read someone else’s haiku, b) I walked by Barbara Guest’s The Confetti Trees lying on a chair in my office, and c) I thought of the song Return of the Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons, which has the line “And I thought about a calico bonnet from Cheyenne to Tennessee.” To my knowledge, this is the only instance of a calico bonnet in contemporary music.

Applied math

 

The proverb says:

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Hence, applying simple math:

Five apples a day keep five doctors away.

This is definitely mathematically correct. Right? Or did I get it all wrong?

Maybe the proverb actually says:

A doctor a day keeps an apple away?