The old movie haiku

Dr. Shiv still thriving

on TV sixty-one years

after its release.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Notes

This little ditty refers to a movie which could be called Die Hard No. 2 (Die Hard No. 1 would be Gone with the Wind) because it inevitably keeps coming back to the screen – at least that of television sets. Dr. Shivago, which hit the cinemas in 1965 (sixty-one years ago), turned the impersonator of its protagonist, Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, into a big movie star. He is shown here in a still shot from the film taken from a flat screen TV (hence the horrible moiré effect) with a cell phone camera.

The lucky haiku

Haiku! he said as 
part of a sneeze. As we all 
know, this brings good luck.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

A contemporary haiku

 

It’s adamantly
innocuous, tangibly
delicious, munchy.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
This one sort of parodies the contemporary (over)use of unusual adjective / adverb constructions, which must have originated from some creative writing workshop teachings or simply is trendy. Their purpose seems to be to inject more poeticity.

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.

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.

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.

The things we come to know haiku

Now that we are shar-
ing an apartment, I know
how much she does snore.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Note
I got creative in three short lines due to something I overheard at the next table in a restaurant.

Minimal list of things experienced today

Some cracknut insists
he wants Greenland. Beer bottles
and dog scats galore.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2026)

Notes
This is, of course, a much reduced list of today’s experiences – things heard or seen at home or on walks. Had to keep things short to cram it all into a haiku.

The nicest thing about today haiku

Being out of the
sweltering mid-September 
heat having coffee.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2025)

Note
I could have been more precise and detailed to say that the coffee was a cappuccino and that I had it at a bar in an air-conditioned shopping center in Rome, Italy. But that would have bloated the haiku way beyond what’s allowed. I also could have said that it was more or less one of those Kristoffersonian Sundays Coming Down, but that would have really killed the poetic form, right?

Lily Hearth

What can I add to
one who was in every way
true to her own name?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2025)

Note
This transpired as a response to the daily haiku prompt for May 5, 2025.

What’s that stench?

Is is that painful
smell of someone so rich he
denies his own farts?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2025)

Note
Where exactly this one came from I don’t know. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about these times and some of the rich and powerful personalities they feature oh so prominently. Bluntly put: they do not smell good.

To each its own

 

Complained the crocus:
Rain again! Water, water,
water – so boring!

The sardine: Feels like
heaven. My element! – I
like it, and salty!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
Today’s haiku prompt was this juxtaposition: crocus (North) and sardine (South). I decided to travel both ways.

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

Momentary account

   

Rome, July 31, 2024

Burning heat, sometimes
crying of children, howling
of dogs, power cuts.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the climate change front.

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!