The Artemis Haiku

Moon oh moon, old grouch:
if you say you’re surrounded,
we’ll say we’re circled

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
Artemis is preparing to circle the moon as this was written, while the moon was circling us as usual.

The cleaning lady vs. books haiku

Now that she’s dusted
them, they have been rearranged
in order of height.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Notes
Once again, the more or less poetic truth and nothing but. Even though not the whole story has been told  – as can be seen in the photo, some of them are also upside down. Fortunately, she did not have a height problem with the CDs, some of which are also present in the same piece of furniture. I dread to check what she’s done to the original sequence, though.

Aftertought
Sinclair Lewis is present three times in the picture, but World So Wide, his posthumous 1951 novel, after which this blog is named, is not among them.

Dreading white space

In my younger days

all it took was a pen

and a piece of paper

and some time by myself

to write something.

Some record of what

had happened during the day,

some observation, including

stuff that, when told to my

then girl friend Mary B.,

would cause a chuckle.

However, there was also

something about a dog – 

a black bulldog I’d seen

in France on a hot day,

when it had collapsed

in the gutter exhausted – 

that annoyed Mary B.

She called it a tacky story

that should neither be

remembered nor told.

So there I was – stunned;

my entertaining attempt

had been dealt a severe

blow. And it had all been

because she seemed to be

in a devilish mood, riding

the train across from me

silently and with a black glare.

Oh Mary B., what have you

done to me! Now black

glares tell me to avoid

well-meaning bulldog-in-

gutter anecdotes and best

just shut the fuck up.

I had an empty white

computer page in front

of me, dreading that

emptiness, but then

ended up filling it after all, 

with some lengthy bullshit.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2025)

Notes
All true, except that some of this happened around 2003, and that part may have undergone some memory mutations. Dreading white space is definitely a problem these days. I might suffer from something vague like writer’s block. 

Haiku mishap

Was going to type 
furry cricket but then wrote
flurry cricket. Brain!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2025)

Note
That’s what I did about the suggestion for 2/23/2025 from Daily Haiku Prompt.

 

Six Haiku Madlibs

In the dense mouth

these tepid lights – 

an artificial dust

– Lee Nao Doh and Basho

✧✧✧✧✧

No one bulge

along this mouth but I,

this dense light.

– Lee Nao Doh and Basho

✧✧✧✧✧

A dense tepid mouth...

A light bulge into the dust,

bellyache! Daffodil again.

– Lee Nao Doh and Basho

✧✧✧✧✧

Dense mouth,

the light

is tepid of dust.

– Lee Nao Doh and Buson

✧✧✧✧✧

Don't bulge, mouth

light, dust themselves,

must nip.

– Lee Nao Doh and Issa

✧✧✧✧✧

Bulge me,

as one who nips mouth

and light.

– Lee Nao Doh and Shiki

✧✧✧✧✧

Note
Once again I felt the urge to test the poetic vein of an artificial intelligence (even though of an apparently very lowly kind) in creating haiku out of a list of words I, Lee Nao Doh, had defined. The AI then mixed this input with haiku from the masters: Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki. Rendering poetry that is partially reminiscent of slightly surreal Chinese proverbs or fortune cookie stuff.

Feel like doing the same? Click here.

An earlier attempt, from which I picked three haiku.

Yours,

Leonard B., aka Lee Nao Doh

Seems like a repeat

Dogs barking in the back alley
for invisible reasons (as if they
ever needed any),

fan whirring, installing a semblance of cool
in here while the immense summer heat
drags on into September.

While I’m trying to keep my cool
as I’m going through rows and rows
of written materials that would most likely
not be missed had they not been written.

But that’s what ya get paid for, me boy.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
This should be blunt enough not to require any explanation.

Part of Weary Outpourings of a Grump Ground Down by Life and Other Things.

What is the title of this poem?

 But, more importantly, what is its content?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
Inspired by a similarly titled poem by Kathryn Bevis, which has lots of detailed content, I came across at the Poetry Society UK site. I decided to not only question the title of the poem but also the content, thus taking it up one notch.

The drab streets haiku

 

Read today we should
all be grateful for any-
thing and everything

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
I really did read that today somewhere on the oh so social media. “Anything and everything” would include drab streets, right? Like the Roman street with its crumbling brutalist architecture eternalized in the photo above.

PS:
Anyone interested in drab street photos like the one shown here please get in touch!

Photography haiku

 

Found out this morning
I have neither spider web 
photos nor smoke pix

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Notes
I’ve been known to participate in some photography challenges where you’re invited to post a photo to match a given topic. This made me realize that I have nothing suitable for at least two topics. The above smoky picture is actually a fake – the interior of this room looks smoky but in reality the smoke was the result of a dirty window through which I shot the photo. As to spider web photos, I have nothing to show. Must try to look for webs!

Blues - a haiku

 

Irritable sky
then a classy big blues run
because of the greens

by Shinji Murakami

Note

Blame it all on the greens! An Internet-generated haiku based on personal input. The author chose to delete the poem from the site, which generated the following message:

Poor dog!

The snot catcher haiku

   

Silver horseshoe 
dangling from mademoiselle’s
dainty little nose.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
I occasionally wonder whether there is a practical reason for this facial jewelry...

Happy Sunday!

Some nasty little
yapper is spitting venom
outside and loves it.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
That too on Valentine’s day – when everything’s supposed to be lovey-dovey.

P.S:
You know me – when I come up with a title like ‘Happy Sunday’, it most likely won’t be all that happy. But there’s ‘loves’ in it after all.

LoL. – The Old Grump.

The dark day haiku

Carry a flashlight
to walk the streets of Rome – it
is that dark today.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)

Note
The truth and nothing but. The seemingly endless scorchers of summer 2020 have come to a dark and wet end for the time being.

Dunking simplified

Put the cookie in
your mouth, sip coffee, wait
until soggy, down.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)

Note
There are people with dunking problems, e.g. if the cookie disintegrates when dunked in the coffee (or tea or milk or whatever). Follow the above haiku to avoid this. Try it!

PS: I was going to write “down the hatch” instead of “down”, but that would have violated haiku rules.

The monosyllabic haiku

Oh! So, no if but 
and or what not like that true
no, no, it ain’t bro.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)

Note
The year and my blogs have gotten off to a slow start – took me until February to even think of posting something. And now it’s this mono-syllable thing that doesn’t say much, does it? Yes, I think it could be safely said that it is somewhat reticent in the meaning department.

The stopped on Via Laurentina haiku

All five fingers of
right hand on her face, middle
pushing up nose tip

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2019)

Note
The truth and nothing but. Observed the driver of a car in the right lane while stuck in traffic this morning.

Sunday haiku

Most haiku
fall flat
on their you know what

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2019)

Note
Lo! He’s broken his lasting poetic silence to come out with an underfilled haiku denigrating the genre, and that on Sunday. As to the you know what, there are two principal possibilities.

The jomo haiku

Dear John, enjoyed not
being there among dfs
slurping aperol

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2019)

Note
As you (all 3 of you constituting my dear audience) know, JOMO stands for “joy of missing out.” It is with that emotion that I missed out on yet another apero party organized by a well-known expat yuppy organization in yet another umpteen star hotel bar in that capital of apero parties of the land of aperol spritz. As to what “dfs” may mean, give free reign to your imagination.

The instagram profile haiku

Lives in Japan, has
Japanese name, takes pictures
of his aging cats.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2019)

Notes
What do you really know about your numerous social network friends (apart from the ones you actually know in person)? Sometimes just some surface facts – as in the above haiku – that don’t amount to much. They remain, in E. M. Forster’s terminology (cf. Aspects of the Novel), rather flat characters that can be (insufficiently) described by one or two or three features.

Hell hath no fury

greater than a 
next door neighbor with a 
hammer drill

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2019)

Note
The truth and nothing but, first hand. This man won't stop until there's a zillion holes in every wall. Here’s to William Congreve who is misquoted here.