Addicted to Blue

Once he was addicted to blue.

Life was ocean, lakes, and I-miss-you.
Three chords of dissonance & the color
of mountains furthest back
in a landscape view. Then

came green, as in the great
conifer forests of the Western Hemisphere.
As in lettuce and spinach and lush,
long poems. As in American football
fields where he left too many hours,
too much salty sweat. As in gardens he

planted, doted on, weeded, watched
and watched. And the car, sometimes
filled with women's perfume
and voluptuous presence. Camaro,
the petrol beast was called, silver-green,
and in one of those black bucket-seats,
a wild, witchy woman with green eyes
once sat. Once sat and smiled. And was.

Then wasn't. Dead. And every so often,
blue, he thinks I-miss-you, addicted to blue.

hans ostrom 2023

McCoy Tyner

 (1938-2020)

Once

in Berkeley, smoke like Bay fog lay

over heads of cool-hip-jazz-club-clientele &

waitresses slivered through tables/bodies/chairs,

kept drinks coming, ice and glass and liquid held aloft &

Mr. Tyner

--he hit the mthrfckn keys

so hard one time strings

popped & whipped  like snakes out

‘the belly of the grand dark

piano

& the percussionist had some

mojo stuff hanging from racks—

bones, steel tubes, feathers—

all

humid and scratchy and knock-talk

click-back bicker-bock-a-zone

sounds, & McCoy was rippin and roarin,

working the gift

out

of Keyborderland. And the horns. It was a big

marrow-filling, ear-enlightening night. Outside

after encores:

cool, misty Berkeley. Had a look around

to see which way the karma blew,

got in the ’67 Camaro, drove back up EYE-80

to plain brown-cow Davis, college town,

brain

humming like the lowest pianoforte

E-note pedaled through the measures.

From a Diary of the Plague Year (12)

(song)

When I see us back then
We're laughing in the sun
Back when we were young
And thought the other
Was the one. 

Now that the plague's descended
Priorities amended
I thought I'd beat the rush,
Reach out and get in touch
After so long.

Sorry I mocked your favorite song
And broke your bestest bong
You cooked the clutch on
My silver green Camaro
And stole my cherished vinyl
of Ravel's Bolero.
This all seems so funny
After so long, so long ago.

[repeat chorus]

Hey, I'm glad you married Craig
Hey, please don't catch the plague
I hope this letter is okay
If not, I know you'll say
So, love from so long ago
After so long ago
Some days were great, you know?
Some nights so fierce, although
Our futures were not ever
Meant to be together

[repeat chorus]


hans ostrom 2020

Nude Up and Get in a Pile

It may have been a line
from North Dallas Forty.
Anyway, we’d quote it
at the bar and laugh.
The thing is, pre-AIDS,
you might think you
were headed home
in a silver Camaro after
the bars closed
in California’s inimitable
Central Valley.  Then you might
stop at a red light, two lanes,
and two women you knew
barely might laugh, roll
down the window, and
suggest, “Follow us.”
And, wow, there you’d be,
nuded up and in, no,
not a pile, but an expansive
naked arrangement of
three or four or five.
It was a gas, a blast, a trip:
listen to the lingo change
down the ages. Olive oil
on large breasts, the
several positions, good
clean fun. Of course, in
an apartment of your brain,
you knew the party had
to end—that night; and for you;
and for a generation.  Microbes,
maturity, and so on. None-
the-less: at the stop-light,
in a Camaro, a little loaded
on whiskey and weed and
maybe a line: the light,
the spark, of mischief.
Good clean fun in
an era everybody and
his mother, as we said,
would not just forget but
not know existed.

*
*
hans ostrom 2013