The madness in the bathtub haiku

Who got her to strip

and sit in the bathtub clutch-

ing the shower head?

 

- Leonard Blumfeld ((c) 2015)

 

Note

Inspired by the above portrait of actress Saki Takaoka by Kishin Shinoyama (2013).

The free pizza online fibonacci

It’s
too
bad you
cannot get
free pizza online.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Notes

What brought this one about?

The majority of mankind is predictable, materialistic and stingy. Our billionaires are shining examples and everyone else would like to be like them. No news there. But on to the topic at hand ...

Why waste your precious money if you can get music, movies, art, novels, poetry, photos and what not for free on the Internet? Who cares about the idiots that actually create the stuff.

When, as technology and virtuality advance, pizza and other food and drinks will become available on the Internet for free, this will undoubtedly be THE BIG HIT.

What about the economy, though? After all, these are the tangible items that still turn over oodles of money. These are items even the stingiest have to pay for because there is no other choice.

Have you ever asked for a free copy of a pizza and been thrown out of the joint?

Have you ever noticed how easily people spend 25 $ or € per person at a restaurant to pay for items that cost perhaps 2 $ or € to make and/or buy, but when it comes to buying a book for 10 $ or € they grind their teeth and say they can’t afford it?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.”

Apple joins the luxury fashion item market

As revealed today, you can now buy an Apple Watch for as much as $ 16,000 or so. Pure umpteen karat gold or whatnot.

This might make it the world's most expensive stopwatch or gadget to keep track of your heartbeat. Not to mention that 50 millisecond time accuracy – anywhere in the world!

But I'm sure this is just the beginning of Apple's entry in the high-end fashion market.

I bet the iBag or iPurse is just around the corner. With fingerprint user identification, theft GPS and artificial intelligence content management system.

Can't wait to gift one to someone who doesn't have any other needs.

– Leonard Blumfeld

The if I could haiku

If I could, I would
turn the I.S. destroyers
of Nimrod to stone.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

The Islamic State has been destroying more than 3000 year old Assyrian monuments in Iraq. The intolerance and bigoted narrow-mindedness of these self-righteous, self-appointed guardians of inhuman faith is unsurpassed.

The concrete haiku

This one is very
concrete – deals only with stones,
rocks, flint and pebbles.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
The counterweight to the recently composed abstract haiku.

The abstract haiku

Shake and melt and shade
do not I repeat do not
(mis)represent me.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
The battle between abstract and representational rages mostly in the art field, but here it is extended to poetry and, in particular, the haiku.

The budding rock'n roller haiku

If it's not base strum-
ming next wall, then it is wild
warbling or whooping.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
Once again a truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth razor-edge-of-time haiku. Next wall is the equivalent of next door except closer. Bless your emerging career, Oriane. It would be nice if it took you somewhere else.

The working day haiku

Working away, cold
feet, cold day, February,
no wild conclusions.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Notes
I needed one more syllable for the last line, so introduced “wild”. But actually there were neither wild nor tame conclusions. So far. Oh, and there's an internal rhyme here, which is frowned upon by haiku purists.

The GMP haiku

You can’t just write it
from scratch. First buy patented
seeds from Monsanto.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Notes
GMP stands for Genetically Modified Poetry.

The waiting for Godot haiku

I’ve been waiting, I’ve
been waiting, I am waiting,
oh yeah oh yeah ...

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Inevitable note
A slightly underfilled haiku celebrating Beckett and the Rolling Stones. Sparked by a still picture from a performance of Waiting for Godot someone posted this morning. Never saw the play performed, but read it (all of it!). Always thought some brevity might have done it a lot of good.

Just read that it’s been voted "the most significant English language play of the 20th century" (according to Wikipedia). The competition must have been really insignificant.

Blunt, drunk and lethargic

Oh husband, what has become of you?
You are now mostly drunk, which means lethargic couch potato, and the few words you say (if you manage to utter any) are blunt, like "Get out of my sight, bitch."
Oh husband, what has become of you? You used to be gallant, spirited and romantic. Think of your loving and devoted Nandini and please change quickly.
Or I'll have to call big brother, who will teach you. Remember the last time? He threw you out of the house with a big kick in the butt and then hosed you down with cold water for half an hour. Remember how that straightened you out for a year?
Your loving and devoted wife.

- Leonard Blumfeld (in a somewhat older Hindi movie vein)

Written for 3WW around the words blunt, drunk and lethargic.

An audio shelfie

A collection of some of my best musical friends...

The give us today our daily grind haiku

Most irritating:
can’t even see what they’ve been
grinding all morning.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the noise front. Picture the building as a giant tooth, with a gigantic dentist going at it. I can feel the damage done to the enamel all the way to my work room on the 1st floor.

You are like a hurricane

Again woke up with a song playing in my mind that seemed to have sprung from nowhere – Neil Young's Like a Hurricane, essentially a one-image song: that of the stillness in the eye of the hurricane while the storm rages, blowing the narrator away.

It is one of my favorite Neil Young songs, but I haven't listened to it in ages.

What could have caused this to rise to the surface this morning?

Musical affliction

Has it ever happened to you that a song implanted itself in your inner ear, seemingly out of nowhere, and would stay with you for days?

Hank Snow's One More Ride has been with me off and on for several days now. Where did it come from? No source I'm aware of. It's unlikely that I heard it somewhere here in Italy. It certainly would not be played in any Roman store or elevator.

I remember recording this song on my reel-to-reel tape recorder from the country music hour at SWF 3 around 1973 and must have listened to it a lot back then. I loved country music at the time and hardly ever missed that radio show on Saturday afternoon.

The clickety-clack of Hank's railroad track has been calling me much too long. What to do? I have no button to switch it off.

– Leonard Blumfeld, musically afflicted

The art movie haiku

So I decided
to make an art movie. Long
long shot of nothing.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
Today’s horoscope said my creativity was going to be low today. But I tried anyway. The picture is a still from the movie – 90 minutes of showing the shadows play on my balcony.

Proverbs from the Chinese XIV

Gifted, intense talk may be another form of rot.

Once again, a piece of Chinese fortune cookie wisdom happens to coincide with Three Word Wednesday's selection of words: gifted, intense, rot.

Whoever wrote this may have been thinking of politicians. Except that what they spout often could neither be called gifted nor intense. Just plain rot.

Rowing my boat in the right direction

Your current situation doesn't allow you to fulfill your potential, and you are now becoming aware of this. You're dreaming of travel, study and different professional experiences. Row your boat in the direction that draws you, for any move forward right now will be a positive one.

This was part of today's horoscope, and it was spot on. At least the first part about my current situation. Better start rowing that boat!

– L.B.

The Anish Kapoor haiku

A gigantic fat
blue donut rolled into my
art field of vision.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
Very much razor-edge-of-time reporting of an actual virtual (because computer screen-limited) visual event.

In a jam

When in a jam
when in jam
when jamming

Jabbering away
with a swagger

You get my drift
you aren’t daft

Riverrun dry
riverrun open
riverrun die

Mikey mukey moke
is poetry a joke?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Notes
What brought this one about? 1. Reading some poetry by an eminent contemporary British poet that did not make the least bit of sense. 2. What's worse: I didn't even feel like trying to read some sense into it or break my poor unpoetic mind doing so. 3. I'd also read the riverrun quote* somewhere today, so it was lurking in the back of my mind.
Have a mukey poetry day!

*From James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939).

The perverse urge to do anything but what is most urgent

I’ve been a practitioner ever since I can remember.

Always thought I was the only one until I saw a German movie, one of those shallow TV productions steeped in exaggeratedly shining colors, in which some middle-aged woman writer avoided writing her urgently needed new novel by doing all sorts of chores in house and garden.

But my avoidance maneuvers aren’t even chores.

Listening to Steve Earle cannot possibly be called a chore, right? What about running downstairs and eating three cherry tomatoes?

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

The May morning stupor haiku

Dazed, coffee did not
help, hay fever-feverish,
typing is a chore.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the work front. The truth and nothing but the (un)poetic truth. What an awful thing to have to deal with in the merry month of May.

101

My new book is out!

Leonard Blumfeld, 101

Contains 101 short poems (haiku and fibonacci)

From the cover text:

Leonard Blumfeld, a character sprung from a story by Franz Kafka, is the part of me that can take virtually any prompt, look at anything around, think of anything or anyone and make a poem out of it – be it humorous, deadpan, philosophical, silly, absurd or reticent. Many of these dash-down instant creations take an appropriately short form – like the haiku and fibonacci assembled here. They are poems about mundane events, such as enduring bad weather or looking at the meager contents of a fridge, about artists like John Singer Sargent or Amedeo Modigliani; they invoke music, like the poems based on classical Indian ragas, digest books read or comment on news events.

Can be ordered from Amazon.de or any bookstore in Germany. ISBN: 978-3844290943. Amazon.de also ships to countries outside Germany. The e-book version and printed version are also available directly from the publisher in Berlin.

Signed copies are available upon request and can be shipped internationally (please leave a comment).

The electric bike ditty

(An electric bike-age homage to Dr. Seuss)

We like our bike, and this is why:
the battery does all the work
when the hills get high.

– Felix Morgenstern (© 2014)

The challenge at Poets United was to write a poem with a bicycling motif.

Toilet bowl smartism

The toilet bowl-proof smartphone has yet to be invented.

– Leonard Blumfeld

Note
Razor-edge-of-time reporting from the toilet bowl accident front. And no, the Samsung Galaxy is not toilet bowl-proof.
What does this teach you? Keep your smartphone away from toilet bowls.

The art gallery haiku

Squeaky clean wooden
floors that squeak when trodden on
as rapt viewers walk.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

A good poem

Never fight a moon.
Where are the misty seas?
The moon dies like a stormy breeze.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
I must admit that I had some help writing this. The original version came from the Poem Generator. I modified it to make it even greater.
Why is this little poem good?
Because it contains some of the most important key words, images and subjects used in poetry throughout the ages. Such as moon, misty, seas, breeze and death.
Guaranteed to work each and every time!

The I could haiku

I could do many
things right now. But they are not
things I have to do.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Notes
Inspired by a poem of the sort that lists things the author could do, like polish his shoes, add more sugar to his coffee, muze about friends, family and pets, muze about the mellow April weather, prune the bushes, etc. In the end he decides to do nothing but listen to the sprinklers come on and observe their “immaculate band of light over the lawns.” The immaculate has become stuck in my mind like the proverbial sore thumb. Seems to be about as debatable as the immaculate conception.
As to the things I could do, there are many, as the haiku says. But bread-winning work calls and needs to be taken care of. Sadly.
Oh, and by the way: I would call this haiku a deadpan poem. As opposed to the immaculate band of light kind.

Best of Meme

My out-of-print book Best of Meme now goes for $67.17 at Amazon. Wow!

The haystack haiku

Today I have to
find three bent needles in a
PC file – achoo!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
In my work as a coordinator of translations, I have to deal with the idiosyncracies and erratic behavior of a CAT software named Star Transit. Most likely three occurrences of an apostrophe in a text file caused Transit to stumble and fall today (it stumbles and falls a lot in general). These are the bent needles I have to find in the haystack. And I do have a highly developed allergy to such problems (which are a great waste of time and nothing else), hence the achoo.

The smartphone disability haiku

For S.

My love sends me lobe,
lisses and all gibbt – please help
me decipher that!

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)


Note
Have you noticed how typing accuracy has gone down the drain with the advent of touch screen keypads? A great big cheer to the advances of technology!

The coherent world view haiku

I do hope that a
coherent world view steps out
of these counted words.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Note
When a well-known poet does not have a major poem to his name (such as, for example, T. S. Eliot would have The Waste Land or Ezra Pound would have the Cantos), literary criticism focuses on the merits of the so-called coherent world view, i.e. it is good for a poet to have one (and, by implication, bad if you don't have one). I remember some article about the poetry of James Schuyler, where the critic spoke of this. Alas, I don't remember what the critic's ultimate conclusion was. I only remember that I strongly disagreed with both major notions of the article: 1. That there are no James Schuyler poems of major importance (to me, many of his poems are by far more important than anything erudite, contrived and sterile T. S. Eliot ever wrote), and 2. That it is difficult to discern a coherent world view in the body of James Schuyler's poetry. (To which I would say that there is hardly anyone else to rival the rendering of 20th century human experience I see in Schuyler's poetry with more coherence.)

Failed in all three

The three-gated word check applied to a poem as it is coming into existence

I
Is it true?
No.

II
Is it necessary?
Probably not.

III
Is it kind?
Definitely not.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)

Written in response to a sufi saying encountered on the Internet:

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates:

At the first gate, ask yourself:
'Is it true?'

At the second gate, ask:
'Is it necessary?'

At the third gate, ask:
'Is it kind?'

This explains why sufis don't talk a lot and why there's a lot of poetry.