More green, more pastoral

All in green my love went riding

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

e. e. cummings

From Tulips and Chimneys, 1923

Cf. Still life with tulip and chimneys written by my alter ego.

Pastoral fib

Moo
waits.
She does
not stray, not
one bit. One sylla-
ble words do it simply better.
Oh but she has strayed.
By one blade,
one shade
of
green.

– Len Blumfeld (© 2007)

Not only elegies can be pastoral. The blues can be ("Milk Cow Blues"!), and so can fibs.

Afterthought
Had this in green originally to go with the pastoral theme and the blade/shade of green. Changed it to Allgäu cow color because green on black is a harsh contrast that did not match the meekness of the intended cow.

An immodest proposition

Shouldn't you, like, show some involvement in the real world? Like occasionally at least?

This could have been said by my friend Karraine, a confirmed Californian, even though it's me saying it now while muzing – once again – about the purpose of writing in general or my writing in particular. You see, I'm one of those occasionally self-destructive, morbid, tormented souls* who go back to point zero at times to question the very ground they stand on, aka the validity of it all.

Like, shouldn't we all be working and earning something instead of doing useless stuff like writing?

What do you mean by writing anyway? Are you like some published guy? Like Dan Brown?

– Len B.
... in a somewhat grey Sunday morning mood on an overcast Sunday.

*This again could have been a quote from Karraine.

Rebuttal
But I did situate myself in some reality recently, by watching last night's soccer match between VfB Stuttgart and 1. FC Nuremberg. To see (Jeronimo Baretto) Cacau cry on the bench about his team losing, perhaps as a consequence of his red card removal from the match.

Blogger & Firefox

Blogger and the Fire Fox
Play ring around the rosies.
What a bunch of posies!

Put together Mother Goose, Blogspot and Firefox, and you get this ... or an endless cycle of log-on attempts. It's very much like watching the window of a front-loading washing machine. So, sorry to say, I've been forced to use MS IE Explorer to log onto this blog for several weeks.

Anybody out there who knows why this is happening and how it can be stopped???

Masks

Prompt from Sunday Scribblings:

Masks. Literal: making or wearing masks for Halloween, Carnival, Mardi Gras, the theater, any other masky occasion. Or, you know, psychological: a mask you wear, that you hide behind; the face you present the world, or that you present just to one person. Happy scribbles!

M. asks
crazy but wily Marianne
who says she knows such sadness
behind masks,
the perfect housewife, for example,
the perfect mother,
she cannot run far enough
when she gets that queasy feeling
around the kidneys
that somebody’s tailoring a mask for her

M. answers
NO MORE MASKS
I’m sick of hiding
It’s tough enough coming into myself

Pipes in cheerful Maurice,
who just the other day
first wore his ski mask,
then his diving mask
and finally his chameleon mask at a party

Why wear that last one?
M. asks
You are a chameleon in real life,
take on whatever color surrounds you,
reflect any mood,
mold yourself to anything

Why not?
says Maurice,
masks are perfect mirrors
of whatever’s going on
at the time

And that can never be avoided

I am a permanent mask,
perfect incarnation of circumstance and time

– Leon Blumfeld (© 2007)

Mists gave way fib

Mists

gave

way to

full-bodied

blue sky, with languid

white animal clouds drifting by.

– Leonard Blumfeld

From an office

Here I am back home again,
I'm here to rest.
All they ask is where I've been,
knowing I've been West.

– Tim Hardin (from Black Sheep Boy)

... quoted not-so-golden not-so-black-sheep-boy Len, home from the windy North Sea coast. Sad to say, I haven't come to rest (but do we ever, unless it's for that final rest in peace) but am in an office for work. Things happen to be very quiet here, so I can take a minute for blogging.

Quiet, in keeping with the outside: a quiet cloud cover, hardly a sound in the building, the occasional bird chirp through the tipped window.

A duo

I. Nobody knows him

This man
is doomed.
Noone
will ever
know him
for the
wonder-
fully
mediocre
poetry
he wrote.


II. Everybody knows him

And
nobody
knows him
for real.
He wrote
“The
Achiever,
A Poem
In Eight
Acts,”
which
became
famous
because
of the
unspeakable
seventh
act.

– Len Blumfeld

The trepidation rumor

It has been said
that trepidation is unnecessary,
but what other stage
quite so disquieting is there
between serenity, calm,
uncertainty and gloom of doom?

– Leonard Blumfeld

Invigorable note
The trepidation in the signature to the preceding fib demanded to be expounded on. The above rumor is an attempt to do this.

Warm-up fib, May 2, 2007

It’s
thought,
but does
that make it
poetry? Wishful
thought, longing for the poetic
world – part of the world
out there, a
mix of
sun,
shade.

– Leonard Blumfeld (working up to inspiration through some trepidation, but not quite there)