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.

Example of a 3rd person biography

 

“A windy and somniferous birdwatcher, Lean Mean Moran is an ambitious young dynamic emerging writer who roams the high and low lands and some more or less dubious neighborhoods of a lesser known Balkan country. On warm summer days you can find him in somebody’s backyard with his bong. He enjoys short and mindless hikes in the company of his I-Pod, expired USSR army outlet biscuits and reading Sylvia Bletch. One day, he is sure that he will die and hopes so. He has bled and published profusely in the realms of desktop perpetrators.”

The above recent photo shows Lean striking a favorite pose on the way to his Italian podologist.

Note
All aspiring writers looking to have their outpourings published are faced with the demand for that 3rd person biography that makes editors gasp. The above is a good example of what to write if you want to (not) get published. Of course, a hard-hitting bio such as this must go hand in hand with the proverbial poetry that contains fresh imagery and surprises even the most inured editor.

The onset of dementia haiku

Could not remember

Alka Yagnik. Thought her name

started with an S.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Notes

Managed to remember this super-important piece of poetry for several hours after composing it in my head in the car on the way to the dentist this morning. Not bad for an ageing memory, if I may say so myself. However, this should not detract from the alarming fact that it took me more than a day to remember the name of Alka Yagnik after hearing her sing in a Hindi movie a few days ago. Whereas I could easily remember the others whose voices graced the same film: Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan and Lata Mangeshkar (who is impossible to forget anyway, right?).

Happy Sunday!

Some nasty little
yapper is spitting venom
outside and loves it.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
That too on Valentine’s day – when everything’s supposed to be lovey-dovey.

P.S:
You know me – when I come up with a title like ‘Happy Sunday’, it most likely won’t be all that happy. But there’s ‘loves’ in it after all.

LoL. – The Old Grump.

Baghdad Central: We Leave Tomorrow

 

Still picture from the British crime thriller series Baghdad Central (2020), based on the novel by Elliott Colla from 2014. 

The gripping and beautifully filmed series follows Iraqi policeman Muhsin al-Khafaji (shown in the screenshot above, played by Waleed Zuaiter) as he searches for his missing daughter in dysfunctional Baghdad. The series is set in Iraq in 2003 in the aftermath of the Second Gulf War.

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.

A multilingual rain haiku

Rain. Regen. बारिश.

Pioggia. All day long il

pleut. ¡Para, lluvia!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
Let’s hope this multilingual admonishment will help to put an end to the endless rain.

Today’s weather haiku

Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.
A little lull. Rain. Drops. Rain.
Puddle. Rain. Rain. Rain.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
That is the poetic razor-edge-of-time report on the weather in Rome on this 3rd day of 2021.

Poltava to Lviv, January 17, 1942

Field marshal, felled by
stroke while jogging at minus 
forty. Passed on plane.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)

Note
Refers to German field marshal Walter von Reichenau, responsible for the massacre at Babi Yar in 1941. Reichenau was an enthusiastic supporter of sports and went on cross-country runs regularly. Having died in 1942, Reichenau was never convicted of war crimes but most certainly would have had he survived WWII. This haiku was indirectly inspired by reading about Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem Babiyy Yar (1961), which is about the massacre. 

A lesser known Neruda quote

And when I swanned myself again, I had become my own swimmer, my own beak.

Attributed to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, translator and source unknown.

Notes
Came across this on a social network page today that, going by its other postings, is a jumble of things gleaned from here and there and anywhere. Of course, there was no mention of a source or context. Therefore it’s quite possible that someone made this up and attributed it to a famous poet to elevate its importance.