Morning impression

Neighbor's out
on her balcony

Taking quick
decisive puffs

It's that neighbor
whose age

is in hot dispute
between Sadhana

and me. I
make her younger,

she insists on
beyond forty.

It's difficult
to tell

because we
only ever see her

in the shade
of the drawn

sunblind, always
puffing away

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2013)

Proverbs from the Chinese XII

"Never ponder a heave unless it is valid."

One more of those puzzling Chinese proverbs, but possibly just another bad translation. Anyway, it nicely contains today's three words from 3WW: heave, ponder and valid.

Somehow this leaves me pondering ...

Was it meant to say "Never heave a ponder unless ..."?

But even that does not seem particularly valid.

– Yours in Chinese mode Leonard Blumfeld

James M. Cain, The Cocktail Waitress

James
Cain's
Cocktail
Waitress is
the potboiler that
is boiling in my pot right now.

– Leonard "Crime Reader" Blumfeld

First fibonacci in a long time ... written upon inspiration by Poets United.

Mona Lisa Has Found Her True Calling

 

 Picture taken in Città di Castello, Umbria

The filthy poor rhyme

The filthy rich get
rich by making sure
that most others
remain filthy poor.

– Leonard Blumfeld  (© 2013)

Inevitable note
Somehow yesterday's Filthy rich haiku stuck in my mind, demanding more treatment. This resulted in the above poem, which is no longer a haiku by count of syllables & lines. For obvious reasons, I'm calling this filthy poor metric companion to the filthy rich a rhyme.

The filthy rich haiku

The filthy rich get
rich by making sure others
get very little.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2013)

Inevitable notes
Who ever said haiku should be limited to gentle muzings about bonsai in the mist and could not be used for succinct statements of fact? Facts such as that the gap between rich and poor has never been more extreme than right now.
Last year, Apple’s CEO earned about 1 million dollars a day while the workers making Apple products at Foxconn in China earned about 10 dollars a day.
China, a nominally communist* country, now boasts the world’s second largest number of billionaires, right behind God’s own USA.
*Part of the communist doctrine, if I remember right, is a very negative attitude towards private property.

Infinite wisdom I

I was going to start the year with a new column titled "The infinite wisdom of Leonard Blumfeld" or something along those lines, imparting to the world my precious gems of infinite wisdom.

But the fact is that I have come to dislike aphorisms and most of the pearls and beads of wisdom quoted or shared on Facebook or in other books at any opportune and inopportune moment and time of day, telling you in flashes of deep or shallow insight how to live your life, how to be happy or unhappy, how to treat thy neighbor or thy neighbor's dog or how to make or keep friends, enemies, etc.

Therefore, instead of adding to the heap, the above little rante & rave shall remain the first infinite wisdom of the year. That's all, folks!

– Leonard Blumfeld

No fury like one scorned

So you don’t like my gift?
Well, let me tell you
that a lot of others
have liked my gifts,
and they were smaller
than this one I gave you,
less smelly, less offensive,
less aggressive, not
nearly as loud and dirty.
So I’ll tell you what
you can do with this gift
of mine you don’t like –
you can throw it
in the nearest ditch
and kiss me good-bye
forever, you jackass,
see if I give a toss.

– Leonard “Giver of Gifts” Blumfeld (© 2012)

Posted as a 'gift' for Poets United.

My Nature Haiku

Damn Nature! Why does
it include mosquitoes, a-
phids, gnats, bats and moths?

– Leonard “Loves Nature” Blumfeld (© 2012)

The call at Haiku Heights was for haiku on Nature. Not to be taken all that seriously – in fact, I quite like bats.

Feeding the birds at EUR lake

For S.

Last Saturday the women
of the Gugnani clan
and I as their chauffeur
went to EUR lake
to feed dry bread
and chocolate-coated
rice crispies to the birds –
droves of ducks, geese,
pigeons and seagulls.
I was reminded of my
mother and how, even
during her last days
at home, her first priority
in the morning was
to feed the birds, come
sunshine, ice or snow.
I remembered how
she'd walk out
on that terrace in
slippers and gown,
oblivious of everything
except the birds
and the seeds
she had for them.
I cried for her,
perhaps the first time
since she died in 2009.

– Leonard "Loaded with Memories" Blumfeld