My name is Luka – an ultrashort poem

My name is Luka

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Note For those not familiar, here's the song by Suzanne Vega from 1987 this alludes to:

Other than that:

Just don't ask me what it was.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

No Regrets - one of the best break-up songs ever

Tom Rush performs No Regrets live

   

This gem, written in 1968, is probably Tom Rush's most well-known song, and it has been covered by other notable artists over the years (among them the Walker Brothers and Emmylou Harris). 

To me, his own rendition is the best and most touching by far. He has a great voice and is an excellent guitarist with a distinct style of his own.

From the lyrics:

No regrets

No tears goodbye

Don't want you back

We'd only cry again

Say goodbye again

6 lines

A grinder
is digging into the wall
painfully

And there’s
nothing
I can do about it

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
The reported truth and nothing but. I could have added “except write a pedestrian poem about it”, but then it would have been more than 6 lines. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

The supersonic chewing power haiku

We are moths and can
infest everything! We then
lay a zillion eggs.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
A grim reality report from the afflicted kitchen.

John Prine - Hello In There (Live From Sessions at West 54th)

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much now
She sits and stares through the backdoor screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
(John Prine, from the lyrics of Hello In There)

This song has a story for me. I came to know it when I bought Diamonds & Rust by Joan Baez around 1975, the year it was released. Hello In There instantly struck me as one of the best songs on the album and made me aware of its composer, John Prine. As a result, I started listening to Prine and bought several of his albums.

T. S. was wrong

Thomas Stearns

was wrong:

July is the cruellest month,
sandwiched between June
and August, which are
almost as cruel if measured
by the unbearable heat here
in the Roman stone desert
which comes immensely
close to a waste land
every day from nine to five

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Note
A facetious shot at the beginning of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). Otherwise razor edge reporting from the global warming front in Rome, Italy, on July 11, 2023.

Dream No. 181

 

Had a dream last night
in which, try as I might,
I could not remember
what George Harrison
looked like.

This greatly upset me
in the dream, him
being my favorite
Beatle and all. 10-foot 
pole taste of memory loss.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Photo: Ed Caraeff/Getty Images

How to do Europe in five days

 

Jackie and Jilly, who used to be friends and colleagues while both lived in L.A., are finally meeting again at a bar in Boise, Idaho, for the first time in years.
“I hear you went on a trip last year?”
“Yes, we did Europe in five days. It was great.”
“What do you mean by you did Europe?”
“Well, we looked up What to see in Europe on the Internet and planned accordingly.”
“I see.”
“It worked perfectly. We did France, Spain, Italy, Germany and England.”
“And saw them in five days?”
“Yes! And the beauty of it is we’ll never have to go back there.”
“Because you’ve seen all there is to see?”
“Everything worth seeing!”
“Good for you and your blessed little eyes!”
“Are you being sarcastic by any chance?”
“Never! Europe and the wisdom of the Internet would never recover!”

Photos
Top left: Paris, France; top right: Rome, Italy
Center right: Heidelberg, Germany
Bottom left: London, England; bottom right: Madrid, Spain

A contemporary gesture haiku

Kiss your own palm 
ecstatically while LOL
and jumping up and down

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Notes
Gestural cloning is an essential part of (aspiring to) social media popularity. The above poem is based on one such gesture observed today. Do it, post it on tiktok (or wherever) immediately and get popularity!

For anyone unfamiliar with messaging abbreviations: LOL does not mean “lots of love” but “laughing out loud”. Seems to happen all the time in messages.

For purists: No, I did not quite follow the syllable count and don’t really GAFF.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Mother Mother (1990)

I've had this song in my head for days without knowing why. Usually there's some association that triggers the memory of a song. Nothing like it in this case. Didn't even wake up with it playing in my head as it sometimes happens.

I've been listening to Kate and Anna McGarrigle since 1977, when I picked up Dancer with Bruised Knees at the record store at the University of Regensburg in Germany on a whim because I loved the cover.