"Rain," by Charles Bukowski

 Reading/video of a poem by Charles Bukowski, one of his classical music ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrSE6cGgnIQ

Under a Roof, Wondering

Environmental doom, catastrophic war: these clots
of syllables squat in my mind when my mind

prefers to ponder cold rain coming in from
the Pacific, coming down with uncanny steadiness,

crackling on roofs and windows like spiders
wearing cleats. I order fresher syllables to arrive

carrying different ideas--rivulets, storm, traffic
rush, water (water!) I offer them a hot beverage,

tell them to let their vowels and consonants
rest a while, because I feel like just hanging out

with some words tonight, under a roof, wondering.


hans ostrom 2020

Over: A Song

Over the bones,
monuments stand.
Over the stones,
dirt, grit, and sand.

Over the stream,
one heron flies.
Over our heads:
banal gray skies.

Now lightning,
now thunder,
now rain.

Umbrellas
will bloom
in the lane.

Over the years
the town's grown sad.
Over the good
runs all the bad.

Over my soul,
crows and owls fly.
Over my days
looms the great Why.

Now silence,
Now whispers,
Now crying,

As always
we're selling,
we're buying.



hans ostrom 2019

Dog in the Rain

Sometimes you feel like a dog in the rain.
Right at that point when the dog's
too tired to make its fur
shake off water. When the dog
aches to smell warmth
and what's hiding inside it.

The dog knows that if going
inside will happen,
it won't be soon because
dogs smell time and know
such things. So the dog
lowers its head and keeps
going to where clouds fall
apart and it can lift up its head again.


hans ostrom 2019

Resistant to Rain

Before I could fire the poem,
it quit. It had wanted it
to concern blackberries
in Fall (ugh), the labyrinth
of language (whatever), or
fatuous dictators--the deadly
clowns of drowning/frying
civilization (fair enough).

I had directed the poem
to be about,  into, and of
poets in the rain, down
through time, across
the planet. Conjurers,
troubadours, prophets,
lazy bastards, scribblers,
hermits, high-toned culture
bosses, seedy professors,
cowgirls, fierce warrior
queens, rappers, gadflies.

All of them with some
connection to the rain
in their hours amid language
alive. Something epic-ish.

The poem said No. I
offered a severance package--
some nice verbs, a packet
of metaphors, certain adequate
syncopations. The poem
resigned, saying something
ugly (but nicely phrased)
as it stalked off. I'm here

without it, listening
to the intricate tunes of
another rainstorm. (I
welcome all rainstorms
now.) I don't think I'll
ever see that poem again,
but I hope it's somewhere
inside staying warm, sipping
soup--and going to hell
(just kidding).


hans ostrom 2019

Oblique

Pavement is silence.
Rain is noise. Air's
a mystery filled
with solutions.
Trees, an anguish;
factories, a
disappointment. I
have heard the music
that results from
your playing. It is
less interesting than
you are, but I don't
blame it.


hans ostrom 2019

Petrichor

Earth, the biggest mouth,
moistens as water squats above
in heavy clouds. Before
the burst, you stand and smell
the rain to come, your brain
enthralled by a wet-soil freshness,
a perfume. Petrichor, they
call it, that smell. How long

have hominids savored it?
When the rain arrives, slapping
and drenching, it drives away
the ancient earthy fragance,
replaces it with something
which can't hold you outside.

Inside you're not quite wistful
at a window. You wish you could
have put that odor in a vase.


hans ostrom 2018

Bar Codes

Draperies, and some of the folds
bunch together. The merchant
has pulled them across the whole
window in order to hide from customers.

Rain came straight down that day.
At the same time, wind plowed
it into mountains like harp strings.
We were desperate for beauty.

Was the wall in that baked town
painted white at first, with black
stripes added later? Or black
first, white lines later?

From my roasting room across
the street, I kept asking such
questions in my stupor,
in my visitor's defeat.


hans ostrom 2018

Semi-Descript Suburb Somewhere

In a semi-descript suburb somewhere,
people believe in Counting Your Blessings
and First World Problems. Some
even get the idea of privilege.

But hedges there become overstuffed
couches. Rain hardens into visual
static. Before people go to work
elsewhere each day, they lie down

on lawns and gnash their teeth
and lash their consciences with
shaming pep-talks. The contents
of one house there rarely

interacts with those of another
house, and this include people.
Everyone's regrets pile up, become
invisible drifts that never melt.


hans ostrom 2018

Hawks Don't Often Perch That Low

A hawk, bedecked in variegated
brown feathers, had parked on a low,
thick fence post. I walked by on
a muddy road. The hawk ignored

me, also two horses grazing in rain.
What did domestication and the
privileges of an American horse
farm have to do with his carved

beak and mythic talons? Just before
the bird leaned forward, pre-flight,
I squinted to see through rain
and wondered what a hawk's

thought looks like. The gone
hawk left that topic open,
and I went on plodding
down the sodden road.


hans ostrom 2018

Busker in the Rain

I am a folksinger
sitting in the rain,
playing my guitar,
very much in pain.

Nobody's listening,
nobody cares.
Someone took the table,
leaving broken chairs.

I am a failing busker.
And I love it so.
I am myself, and that's
about all I know.

Nobody's listening,
they all turn away.
They look like hollow barns
that hold no hay.


hans ostrom 

"Like the Touch of Rain," by Edward Thomas

"The Rainy Day," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"There Will Come Soft Rains," by Sara Teasdale

Have It History's Way

Shaggy evergreens shrug and sway in a rainstorm.
Ezra Pound wasn't much for trees--Wordsworth-weary,
I suppose. Couldn't see history in or through them.
Instead he thought of rocks, layered, and of drills.
He was an American engineer. He wanted

comprehensive control of culture as if it were
acreage for the over-taking. Mineral rights.

But history's circulatory, and it's wet. It's
flexible, weird, and mysterious. Try to package
it, and you'll lose the magic. Impose upon
it, and it will flee like an Idaho mountain lion.

No, don't drill it, as if you were going
to set a charge, blast some ore.  Receive
it easy like a storm, shrug and sway and stay
surprised by it, and you will have its way with you.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Said

Said, "Clouds, go over to my friend's
house, but don't drop rain."

Said, "Hawk, sit on a power-line
that stretches all the way to Paradise."

Said, "River, sip some tequila, then
salt-water, when you get there."

Said, "Star, you are what you are,
and far is your situation."


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Future-Perfect Sighing

)
)
)


Future-Perfect Sighing

Name it rain again.
Then sigh. Love your life
if you can. Pain, worry, fear,
and want make that hard to do
sometimes. Obviously.

Everywhere people are learning
the expression for "rain" in a
language or two different from
their native one. They are repeating
and repeating the expression like rain.
Sometimes these people are loving
their lives. Sometimes they will have sighed.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom