Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, January 21, 2024

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 ahead before I even got home. I knew that the cat would be sleeping. He does that about 16 hours out of 24.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

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!

Saturday, January 6, 2024

Critical Can Opener

 

There’s nothing wrong
with this poem.
No need to look for it.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2024)

Note
A variation of Richard Brautigan’s poem of the same title, in which he says “There is something wrong with this poem. Can you find it?” (Quoted from Brautigan’s collection Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt from 1970.)

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

6 lines

A grinder
is digging into the wall
painfully

And there’s
nothing
I can do about it

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
The reported truth and nothing but. I could have added “except write a pedestrian poem about it”, but then it would have been more than 6 lines. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Blue

 

The year’s first haiku

Bla ble bli blo blu.

Foreign: blé blö blä blò blù.

And so are you too.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
Undoubtedly not a good start. Or is it? Symbolisms galore in the photo: something in the mirror while getting passed by the future.

Saturday, October 29, 2022

My Halloween Haiku


Unbreak my heart, sang
the grey monster chained up at 
the dark Illy bar.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
First-hand experience in Rome this afternoon as the whole city is getting ready for the carved pumpkin festival.

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

Monday, June 27, 2022

Pardon me

 

  

if I sound naive, 
but is baited breath like bad
breath? Would like to know.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)


Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Gianmaria Testa: Aerial View

 

Gianmaria Testa (right) in concert with Paolo Fresu. Ludwigsburg castle,
Germany, June 2011. Photo by Johannes Beilharz.

Aerial View

Of this aerial view 
Almost nothing remains
The ghost of the steeple 
No longer smiles
Gliding over the ancient hills 
Again and again
You meet nothing 
But worn-out straw hats
The glasses are empty 
But no one notices
The glasses are empty 
And no one notices.
And you
What will you do tomorrow
And you
What will you do tomorrow

Of this season gone I won't forget anything 
Unless September insists 
On erasing it
Talking again and again 
About what has just been 
I unwillingly wipe the salt 
Off my hands
The glasses were full 
And someone emptied them
The glasses were full 
But someone emptied them
Now I know 
What you'll do tomorrow
Now I know 
What you'll do tomorrow

Gianmaria Testa (1958-2016)

Title of Italian original: Veduta aerea. Translated by Johannes Beilharz (© 2022). The song is from the album Altre Latitudini of 2003.

The following video shows Gianmaria Test performing the song at another venue in the same area of Germany (Baden-Württemberg), the Franz K. in Reutlingen (May 4, 2010). 


Thursday, April 21, 2022

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...

Friday, April 1, 2022

The unfashionable haiku

    

 
Dedicated to my dear wife

“No-one except you
wears wide cord pants – I don’t want
to be seen with you!”

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)


Thursday, February 10, 2022

The don’t take toilet breaks haiku

Went to the toilet. Came
back – a job had come and gone.
Lucky someone else.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
Once again: the truth and nothing but.
In today's fast-paced always-on environment, going to the toilet for a minute or two can make the difference between getting and losing out on a job.
And I didn’t even go golfing! (Reference to Gary Kildall of Digital Research, developer of CP/M, an early PC-age rival of MS-DOS. Supposedly he turned down a meeting with IBM because he preferred to go golfing. The lucky winner was Bill Gates of Microsoft, who did have time for IBM and sold them on his operating system. This is the story as I remember hearing it in the 1980s - veracity not guaranteed.)

Monday, January 10, 2022

The corona haiku

 


Life dictated by 

fever and saturation 

readings – sheer terror.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
Some reality from my battle with the virus. A bloody oxygen reading of less than 90%, so the doctors say, means you should be hospitalized.

Sunday, January 9, 2022

I’m doing nearly nothing


Ab Har Ho Bhola Nahin Bane - Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur

Fourth day of dreamily
listening to Mallikarjun Mansur -
always the same songs.

Nothing much is happening – 
I’m not listening attentively.
The music is flowing into me.

It feels like a conspicuous momentary
constellation – Mallikarjun Mansur singing
and me doing the equivalent of happy nothing.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Rainy December Day


It’s
as
if a
chasse d’eau were
continually 
being pulled today, and all grey.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
So I’ve come back to a form (fibonacci) I used to practice a lot for a while and then didn’t for a long time. Nothing but the truth in this one – the waters of the sky are coming down on Rome in varying degrees of mercilessness, and it’s so dark you can hardly call it day.

Monday, October 11, 2021

The umbrella flight haiku

 


Rain, umbrella and
wind conspire to lift me up
like Flying Robert.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
Pretty much that kind of weather here in Rome this morning of October 11, 2021. Inspired by a poem in Der Struwwelpeter (1876) by Heinrich Hoffmann, a book of more or less moral tales everyone in Germany knows. The illustration is by the author (Hoffmann) himself.

Saturday, October 2, 2021

The perils of having a pet haiku

Can’t tie my shoes – 
cat’s playing with the strings.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
A seriously underfilled specimen of the form, but based on nothing but real events.

Friday, September 17, 2021

The sad truth haiku

Can’t bring myself to
read poems that are longer
than ten lines or so.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Notes
First of all – why should this truth be sad? Only for myself, I must admit. Others may concur, disagree or simply don’t give a flying fog. It’s a free world, peotry included. (Think I just created a word! Peotry ... like poetry mixed with peyote.) Anyway, all rubbish. What brought about this rubbish? I was looking for enjoyable poetry in the famous Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (famous because – at least in my days at the university – it was a standard book to carry around for English and Creative Writing courses). I started at the back of the hefty volume, thinking those poems had to be by the most modern and least stuffy poets. I believe in brevity in general, so I was really looking for something short, but nothing doing! Even James Tate’s “The Blue Booby”, which starts at the bottom of page 1387 with 3 promising ultra-short lines but rolls on for most of the next page, ending with “like the eyes of a mild savior” – a line I actually like. It really packs a punch. If only there weren’t so much in between. Well, pardon me, it’s the old grouch speaking again, having accrued more than 10 lines of negatively ranty prose by now. I know for a fact that long poems exist. I even know one person personally who wrote a long poem (thankfully it was still in the making when I knew her) and said she loved long poems! The sad truth actually is that people who like poems (period!) are a very, very tiny minority.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Disjunct

A gadget, a card,
several USB cables.
Hot, tedious hours.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
Had nothing specific to say (seems to happen often ... I’m speechless in view of what’s happening in the world) but nonetheless felt the need to assert my cyber presence. Drastic change is needed – but who’s going to do it? 100,000 poets alone can’t. 

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Three Madlib Haiku

In the shweet shugar
These sour mullein
A tall bravery

✧✧✧✧✧

In the silent query
This mute abyss
A menacing sweep

✧✧✧✧✧

In the stupid bitches
This impudent loftiness
A dry swirl

All by Basho & Joanna (© 2021)

Want to create Madlib haiku of your own? Click here.

Monday, January 18, 2021

A pretty haiku

Look at its eyes! Their
sparkle! Its luscious lips! Its 
cheeks! Their modest blush!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
Nothing to be added. Could have made it even prettier if I hadn’t limited myself to haiku size.