Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The Adolf fibonacci

That
name
never
did regain
popularity
 
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
I wrote this poem in my mind early this morning while still half asleep.
Initially it was going to be a haiku, but then the syllable count never worked out, turning the words around as I might, so it become a fib.
The poem was triggered by the 2014 Italian comedy Sapore di te watched last night, in which a girl owned a cat named Mao, which got into a fight with the neighbor's dog named Adolf. As a consequence, the respective pet owners accused each other of being fascist and communist.
When I grew up in Germany in the 1950s and 60s, there were still some Adolfs around, no doubt named after Hitler and born before May 1945. Nowadays, however, nobody in their right mind would name their kid (or pet, for that matter) Adolf. At least I would hope so.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

The surgical enhancement haiku

Some Angelina
lips she has – art by same wiz
of the costly knife.


– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
As seen on TV last night.

Friday, June 12, 2015

How ...

How can a lopsided blemish be so erect?

– Leonard "Minimalist" Blumfeld

Packaged for 3WW, where something was to be written using blemish, erect and lopsided.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

The art series production haiku

And – finally! – the
precise hammer aiming to
smash the cover glass.


– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
This one was inspired by a picture of an exhibition of black and white photos, with the special feature being that the glass of each and every frame had been smashed to give it ... well ... that extra evanescent touch.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

The Virginia Woolf dismisses James Joyce haiku

... a dog that pisses,
a man who farts ... the topic
is monotonous.


– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Elucidations
Watched about one half of The Hours (2002) last night, which is about 1/3 or more about Virginia Woolf and two incarnations of Mrs Dalloway. Read up on Woolf today, including the bit about the Woolfs turning down James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1918. Apparently, it did not find favor in Mrs. Woolf’s eyes ... among the reasons for this being those outlined in the poem above.

Friday, May 15, 2015

The state of the art in subliminal advertising haiku

Oh give me one film
that does not show a bitten
apple product somewhere.


– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
Have you noticed how many movies show people (mostly cool, of course) with electronic products from one particular vendor nowadays? I hereby declare that particular vendor the king of subliminal advertising.

The jury was announced haiku

It is composed of
members with a proven track
record of bad taste.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Inevitable note
One's good taste is the next one's bad taste.
And the notion of good taste changes with time, that's for sure.
For example, in the second half of the 19th century it was considered good taste to paint stuff derived from biblical and other mythical sources, all loaded with heavy symbolism and executed in a realistic manner. This also gave painters an excuse to paint busty nudes in an otherwise puritanical environment.
Most of the resulting art is considered bad taste nowadays.
Just to elaborate on the fickleness of taste.
On the other hand, it could be said that the state of current taste is that everything goes.
But beware: not just anywhere.
It's like an American highschool with its cliques: the expensive ones, the trashy ones, the weird ones, the geeky ones, the minimal ones, etc. You must to remember in which corner to sit and which lines not to cross.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The MLA comma correctness haiku

Dedicated to the moronic inventors of the comma, and rule

, and, or, and, and, or,
, and, with, with, out, and, or, and
, so, what, and, the, eff

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Un Rothko

Tu es rouge,
même noire parfois,
grise très souvent.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

The NaPoWriMo prompt at Poetry Super Highway for today, April 18, was:
Write a Rothko.
1. A Rothko (poem) can only be written while standing in front of a Rothko (painting).
2. A Rothko is three lines, three words per line.
3. Three of these nine words must be colors, and their position in the poem must be a tic-tac-toe.
4. Like all rules of poetry, break at your own risk.
For some strange reason, it instantly occurred to me to write this in French. Rule no. 1 was violated because I had no Rothko around to stand in front of. (The one we keep on the floor next to the bed is currently at the cleaner's.) But I pictured myself in front of one.

Friday, March 13, 2015

The ivory tower haiku

No complaints about
this abode. Comes with Buddhist
emptiness. That’s good.


– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
Inspired by an incredibly poetry-informed and informative quote from German magazine Der Spiegel, which might read like this in translation: “Those who write poetry do not always sit in their ivory tower, but sometimes simply in their own garden or at a table.”