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!

A Korean move

Drop sideways onto
bed in desperation, then
sad eyes on pillow

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
Inspired by watching yet another South Korean TV series – Dr. Slump (2024). The photo is a film still of actress Park Shin-hye in a scene from this series.

Today’s observation haiku

Stout Roma woman
seated on a concrete block
outside the market

She had removed one 
sock and was massaging the
toes of her bare foot

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
The truth and nothing but.
Was this worth noting and being poeticized/documented?
Not entirely sure. But what’s done is done.

A lazy Sunday afternoon haiku

 

Sunny afternoon,
late January. At home
alone, cat sleeping.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
Razor edge of time reporting, glimpse of a time span that lasted for a while. I’d actually planned to write this in my head before I even got home. I knew that the cat would be sleeping. He does that about 16 hours out of 24.

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!

The supersonic chewing power haiku

We are moths and can
infest everything! We then
lay a zillion eggs.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
A grim reality report from the afflicted kitchen.

A contemporary gesture haiku

Kiss your own palm 
ecstatically while LOL
and jumping up and down

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Notes
Gestural cloning is an essential part of (aspiring to) social media popularity. The above poem is based on one such gesture observed today. Do it, post it on tiktok (or wherever) immediately and get popularity!

For anyone unfamiliar with messaging abbreviations: LOL does not mean “lots of love” but “laughing out loud”. Seems to happen all the time in messages.

For purists: No, I did not quite follow the syllable count and don’t really GAFF.

A moocher haiku

 

A haiku and I
were having coffee at Star-
Bux. You pay! it said.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Painting by J. B. with a little help from Artifice. As can be clearly seen, the haiku is only present in spirit.

Las palabras y los días

También
hay unos días
sin palabras

– Leonardo Blumfeld (© 2023)

Nota
Hoy me he metido en vena castellana, inspirada por el libro de Octavio Paz con el título arriba.