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.

Desperate heroine

 

Film still from the Tamil thriller Aadai (2019), which can be streamed on Amazon Prime.

Despite the trite synopsis (something like "A young woman finds herself naked in an empty building after a night of hard partying"), this gripping film starring Amala Paul has some surprising depth, twists and turns and even a message.

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. 

Green-eyed

I called my fly
Prezzemolo because
it has one green eye

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
“Prezzemolo” is Italian for “parsley”.

Photo by Phillip Larking on Unsplash

The bark haiku

A bark echos an-
other bark, joined by more bark,
two more – a chorus.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
Now you know what’s happening around here at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning. Could be any day, though, any time. What is it with dog owners sequestering their beloved pooches on the balcony so they can vent their jealous anger at anything that moves freely below?

Mare of Easttown

 

Watched the first two episodes of Mare of Easttown, an HBO crime series released in spring of 2021. It is directed by Craig Zobel and stars Kate Winslet (who is also one of the executive producers) as a detective investigating two similar murders in a suburb of Philadelphia, PA, called Easttown.

So far my impression is favorable – a solid, reality-steeped drama with credible characters that is well-filmed and well-acted. And it is suspenseful – can’t wait to see the next episodes. Hope they'll live up to the excellent start.

More details about the series

The photo is an instant picture taken from the TV screen.

Proverbs from the Chinese XV

It is foolish to expect a cat to lay eggs.

Source: fortune cookie. 

Another definition of what fools might expect, I guess. Along the lines of the commonly quoted (and usually misattributed to Albert Einstein) “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

With the difference here being the point of view. This proverb does not claim that the cat might think it’s stupid. A true cat couldn't care less anyway...

The flowers of speech haiku

Have been throwing kind
regards with every e-mail.
Please return in kind.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Notes
None (the truth and nothing but).

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.