The perverse urge to do anything but what is most urgent

I’ve been a practitioner ever since I can remember.

Always thought I was the only one until I saw a German movie, one of those shallow TV productions steeped in exaggeratedly shining colors, in which some middle-aged woman writer avoided writing her urgently needed new novel by doing all sorts of chores in house and garden.

But my avoidance maneuvers aren’t even chores.

Listening to Steve Earle cannot possibly be called a chore, right? What about running downstairs and eating three cherry tomatoes?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

The May morning stupor haiku

Dazed, coffee did not
help, hay fever-feverish,
typing is a chore.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the work front. The truth and nothing but the (un)poetic truth. What an awful thing to have to deal with in the merry month of May.

101

My new book is out!

Leonard Blumfeld, 101

Contains 101 short poems (haiku and fibonacci)

From the cover text:

Leonard Blumfeld, a character sprung from a story by Franz Kafka, is the part of me that can take virtually any prompt, look at anything around, think of anything or anyone and make a poem out of it – be it humorous, deadpan, philosophical, silly, absurd or reticent. Many of these dash-down instant creations take an appropriately short form – like the haiku and fibonacci assembled here. They are poems about mundane events, such as enduring bad weather or looking at the meager contents of a fridge, about artists like John Singer Sargent or Amedeo Modigliani; they invoke music, like the poems based on classical Indian ragas, digest books read or comment on news events.

Can be ordered from Amazon.de or any bookstore in Germany. ISBN: 978-3844290943. Amazon.de also ships to countries outside Germany. The e-book version and printed version are also available directly from the publisher in Berlin.

Signed copies are available upon request and can be shipped internationally (please leave a comment).

The electric bike ditty

(An electric bike-age homage to Dr. Seuss)

We like our bike, and this is why:
the battery does all the work
when the hills get high.

– Felix Morgenstern (© 2014)

The challenge at Poets United was to write a poem with a bicycling motif.

Toilet bowl smartism

The toilet bowl-proof smartphone has yet to be invented.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Note
Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the toilet bowl accident front. And no, the Samsung Galaxy is not toilet bowl-proof.
What does this teach you? Keep your smartphone away from toilet bowls.

The art gallery haiku

Squeaky clean wooden
floors that squeak when trodden on
as rapt viewers walk.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

A good poem

Never fight a moon.
Where are the misty seas?
The moon dies like a stormy breeze.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
I must admit that I had some help writing this. The original version came from the Poem Generator. I modified it to make it even greater.
Why is this little poem good?
Because it contains some of the most important key words, images and subjects used in poetry throughout the ages. Such as moon, misty, seas, breeze and death.
Guaranteed to work each and every time!

The I could haiku

I could do many
things right now. But they are not
things I have to do.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Notes
Inspired by a poem of the sort that lists things the author could do, like polish his shoes, add more sugar to his coffee, muze about friends, family and pets, muze about the mellow April weather, prune the bushes, etc. In the end he decides to do nothing but listen to the sprinklers come on and observe their “immaculate band of light over the lawns.” The immaculate has become stuck in my mind like the proverbial sore thumb. Seems to be about as debatable as the immaculate conception.
As to the things I could do, there are many, as the haiku says. But bread-winning work calls and needs to be taken care of. Sadly.
Oh, and by the way: I would call this haiku a deadpan poem. As opposed to the immaculate band of light kind.

Best of Meme

My out-of-print book Best of Meme now goes for $67.17 at Amazon. Wow!

The haystack haiku

Today I have to
find three bent needles in a
PC file – achoo!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
In my work as a coordinator of translations, I have to deal with the idiosyncracies and erratic behavior of a CAT software named Star Transit. Most likely three occurrences of an apostrophe in a text file caused Transit to stumble and fall today (it stumbles and falls a lot in general). These are the bent needles I have to find in the haystack. And I do have a highly developed allergy to such problems (which are a great waste of time and nothing else), hence the achoo.