Wednesday, March 30, 2011

This Is Your Uncle Vinton

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This Is Your Uncle Vinton


This is your Uncle Vinton calling:
You say you don't have an Uncle
Vinton, and you close the call.

Actually you do have an Uncle
Vinton. He's a secret, me. I was
going to mention a few other things

you may not know. But that's all right.
You'll be fine not knowing them, me.
You may recall in quiet moments

the calm assurance of my voice when
I said, This is your Uncle Vinton calling.
Our disconnection will be our only connection.

--Unless of course you call me some night
and say This is your niece, Verona, calling,
and I say, "I don't have a niece named Verona."


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Gray Boulder

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I Say That Gray Boulder


I say that gray boulder will always be
there, knowing it will be gone--but long
after I am no longer. I say it because
I need at least a stone to stay where
it was, where it is in my mind,

which needs  rock to be more
than memory. Mind wearies of its
memories, its common stock. That
gray boulder's under cedars.

I sat on it, age six, and experienced
the expansive fluidity of sight, thought,
light, impulse, and sensation all children
know but don't know they will lose.
I say "that gray boulder," and I know.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Monday, March 28, 2011

Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing (1975) HD

Rush Hour Poem

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Rush, Our

Convenience, steel, and efficiency
in automobilian form get reduced
to viscous troughs of traffic, giving
us time to work on futility, self-loathing,
and heart-attacks. Someone named it

the Rush Hour. It's when rushing ceases,
and it lasts several hours; otherwise,
it's a great name. The oligarchs prefer
that we travel this way, stopped

in vehicles built to go, sitting in a
holding-cell atop rubber tires and
with payments due. It's a great system.
It really is. And so sometimes we

lean on the horn or shout at the
windshield, our impotent spit
flying, to express sad rage or
to misbehave farcically.


Copyright 2011

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Marvin Gaye "What's Going On / What's Happening Brother"

Woody Guthrie- "Don't Kill My Baby & My Son"

The Alchemist

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The Alchemist


Umber smoke, flashed flame,
a bizarre stench: all this delights
the alchemist, whose brow
and cheeks are carbon-smudged.

The base metals stare up
at him like indifferent pets.
He stares back, smiling.
The alchemist knows gold

is far off, welded to quartz
inside mountains under snow.
Facts are tedious to know.
In the windowless room

allowed him, the alchemist
transforms fact into gilded
hope. His crucible holds
a desire: that wealth can

come from want, reverence
from boredom, love from
indifference. He breathes
the fumes of failure and smiles.

Golden bees of possibility hum
inside the realistic head of
the alchemist, who must go to
his job the next day: welding

gray cargo-ships beside the bay.