Sunday, October 19, 2014

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.

Monday, September 29, 2014

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.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

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.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

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).


Thursday, September 4, 2014

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)

Thursday, May 22, 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.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

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.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

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.

Friday, May 9, 2014

The art gallery haiku

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


– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2014)