1971: Ernie's Epiphany

A massive black car rocks like a boat
as it roars down a dirt road on bald tires.
The driver's shirtless, stoned, and drunk
in desert heat. He smokes a cigarette
with one eye scrunched against the smoke.

He becomes aware he's barreling
down a road, eating dust, sucking
smoke, smelling like a goat,
and seeing double. Also, the radio's
just died. He pulls over

and stops, kills the engine. The
cloud of dust passes by. He listens
to the desert singing scorched blues.

He rests his head on the hot
black steering wheel--which
now seems to him an absurd
auto part. Out loud he says,

"I don't know what I'm doing
or why." Pause. "Well, I guess
that's a confession to build on.
He opens the glove box,
shoves the unloaded pistol
aside, and takes out a map.

Eye Doctor

Asked to read lines of letters and numbers projected
on a wall, my eyes confuse G with O and 2 with Z.

The doctor puts large drops of rain in my eyes,
and my eyes get stoned.

He puts a contraption on his head. To my eyes,
it makes him look like a cyborg ant-eater.

A gentle torturer, he shines bright light behind
my eyeballs, and I feel like I'm in a movie from 1971.

He tells me I have "divergence inconsistency"--one
eyeball's a lazy focuser, or is on a work slow-down.

When the doctor giggles, he sounds like Jim Backus
as Mr. Magoo. My ears see the humor in this.


hans ostrom 2018

For Charles Epps

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For Charles Epps

(1953-1971)

What's left these 38 years after Charlie
died? The same as what was left a minute
after he died: an avalanche of absence.
I've visited the grave. I always go alone. I
let morbidity, a pettiness, arise, think
of what's under ground, including
the baseball uniform in which they put
his body. It's easy to move past small,
awful thoughts. What's left to resolve?

Everything. He ought to be alive. God
knows that as well as I. My knowledge
stops there. I don't know why he died,
only how, when, where, and with whom--
Sonny Ellis. Their death numbed,
scandalized, and scarred me, but so what?
I got to live at least 38 years more
than they. When I die, so will my grief,

and so it goes. Like an instinctive,
migratory mourner, I think of Charlie
at least four times a year and every May
and try to think of something more to say.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

A Visit From 1971

(image: album-cover of Led Zeppelin IV, 1971)












Hey, 1971

1971 rolled up out of somewhere in a 1965
Ford Fairlane, which seized itself with fried
brakes and halted in a heap of smoking steel,
bringing sounds of a baritone AM DJ yelling
over the first thuds of a rock-song. 1971

got out and loped up the sidewalk
toward him. 1971's hair was mismanaged
but sincere; the year's draft number was
low. The clothes 1971 wore looked like an amateur
Cubist installation. Oh, here came 1971,
jogging now, yelling delighted words. It
grinned as it ran up and embraced him, as smelly
and guileless as a dog. He didn't know what
to say to 1971 except the ironic, "Nice Car."

1971 said, "Hey, man, could I borrow, you
know, 25 bucks or so? When I get to
San Francisco, I'll send you a cashier's check,
man. Sound good? Right on." He retained
great affection for 1971 and gave the year
a 50-dollar bill, which disappeared into a
blue-jean pocket, and BAM, the Fairlane
backfired as 1971 took off, no seat-belt.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom