Cat’s going crazy
from being cooped up. So am
I – in inner ways.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)
Note
My own personal quarantine is over, thank God. However, all the restrictions still apply – mask, green pass, uncertainty, rules that keep changing at the drop of a hat without much rhyme or reason. Will this ever be over?
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Whatever rode George Clooney - whom I generally respect both as a director and an actor - to direct and produce this seemingly endless bore of a movie?
Nothing about it feels original or genuine - it comes off as a refurbished parts store. When you enter, you know you've seen all the parts (people, situations, locations) somewhere before, many times, in a variety of places and constellations from Hollywood or TV.
A collection of stereotypes and a waste of acting talent (it's not like Affleck etc. don't perform well).
I did not last through to the end. Maybe I've seen too many movies. But go ahead and see for yourself.
Life dictated by
fever and saturation
readings – sheer terror.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)
Note
Some reality from my battle with the virus. A bloody oxygen reading of less than 90%, so the doctors say, means you should be hospitalized.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)
Note
So I’ve come back to a form (fibonacci) I used to practice a lot for a while and then didn’t for a long time. Nothing but the truth in this one – the waters of the sky are coming down on Rome in varying degrees of mercilessness, and it’s so dark you can hardly call it day.
Brand new: funeral plan offers! Wow, can't wait to get one of those plans from a surely entirely trustworthy source.
Old faithfuls for the last year or so: Bitcoin! As you can see from all the mails I've received, I'm filthy Bitcoin rich by now. Bitcoin spammers - such benefactors to mankind. And not just in English - I've also been identified as a Spanish-speaking Bitcoin aficionado. ¡Ay, caramba!
Apply and receive funds today (Just remember to include the asterisk next to 'today') - That one day was the one that went by me, so did not receive the funds. Ouch!
I also failed to track that package from Royal Mail I never ordered. Ouch again.
Now off they go - there's that handy Delete forever button.
Upon which Google Mail proudly crows "Hooray, no spam here!" like a rooster on a missing pile of manure.
Rain, umbrella and
wind conspire to lift me up
like Flying Robert.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)
Note
Pretty much that kind of weather here in Rome this morning of October 11, 2021. Inspired by a poem in Der Struwwelpeter (1876) by Heinrich Hoffmann, a book of more or less moral tales everyone in Germany knows. The illustration is by the author (Hoffmann) himself.
Can’t tie my shoes –
cat’s playing with the strings.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)
Note
A seriously underfilled specimen of the form, but based on nothing but real events.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
The photo is an instant picture taken from the TV screen.
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...
Have been throwing kind
regards with every e-mail.
Please return in kind.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)
Notes
None (the truth and nothing but).
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)
Note
That is the poetic razor-edge-of-time report on the weather in Rome on this 3rd day of 2021.
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.
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.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note
Actually, I was going to write about my own silence getting too heavy, i.e. not writing was taking on monstrous proportions. The shriek therefore is this haiku. More of the unheard kind. Like one from the stone monster above.
Photo by Johannes Beilharz, taken at the Monster Park in Bomarzo, Italy.
Writing half-withered
letters to Sea, the under-
standing blue houseplant
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note:
Inspired by a haiku by N. Gutierrez, turned inside out and deformed in other ways.
Photo by Antonio Grosz on Unsplash
He had Brahms and Bruno
Walter – both long dead – engaged in
lively conversation.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note
All true! See James Schuyler’s poem A Man in Blue from Freely Espousing (1969).
Bruno Walter, conductor and pianist (1876-1962)
Johannes Brahms, composer, pianist, conductor (1833-1897)
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note
There are some, mostly male chauvinists, who proclaim that they were meant to be hunters (while women were meant to be gatherers, of course) and that the failure of many men in current society can be explained by the alienation that is due to them not being able to go after their hunting business. So I pictured this return to nature for myself for a second, did a mental reality check and quickly returned to contemporary amenities (for example, a computer to write and publish stuff).
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note
The truth and nothing but. The seemingly endless scorchers of summer 2020 have come to a dark and wet end for the time being.
Put the cookie in
your mouth, sip coffee, wait
until soggy, down.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note
There are people with dunking problems, e.g. if the cookie disintegrates when dunked in the coffee (or tea or milk or whatever). Follow the above haiku to avoid this. Try it!
PS: I was going to write “down the hatch” instead of “down”, but that would have violated haiku rules.
Played around with one of Jennifer Dewalt's sites called Leave A Note.
These are notes I left:
No idea why I was thinking of the Beatles, but this sure was fun, like many other of her sites.
By the way: The correct reading sequence is to start from the bottom.
Oh no! What now? So
we’re fucked? Can’t be all true, no
way, Ho Say! Right-ho.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)
Note
I seem to remember having written and posted a monosyllabic haiku (don’t remember it or what it might have been about – but I have a chronically bad memory for things I’ve written, so nothing new there).
Well, here comes another one. It cheats a little bit, because José actually has two syllables. However, I don’t think this will upset anyone excessively.
Anyway, the general bias goes well with this year, which might go down in history as a year that was effed up in many ways.
PS: Did research and found the other one.
