It's 1949 . . .

... and the rural mountain saloon's
full of cigarette smoke and men, maybe
a woman or two, though the word gal
is still in use. One man's missing
a leg up to the hip. Another's
almost blind: the war. No one
shares their most private thoughts--
of death, desire, fear, poverty.

Glasses of beer and whiskey
go to lips. It's an age of basic booze.
Smoke goes in and out of lungs,
spiders up to the stained wood ceiling.

The bartender, red-faced, washes
glasses, empties ash-trays, wipes
the dark varnished bar, counts back
coins stained with dirt and grease.

Already another war is coming. Like
waves, wars keep coming. The bosses
of history don't visit bars like this
or live in towns like this or work
with their hands. Calendars
and clocks trick the mind,
and it's almost dinner time.

hans ostrom 2023

Ponca City Poem

Centuries later I'd learn
that Ponca refers to a subgroup
of Sioux and their language.

At the time, the car had broken
down in tornado heat,
vomiting oil. On our way

to OKC, we found a mechanic--
a biker with seasoned tattoos
who lit cigarettes with a blowtorch.

His wife ran the place. She was
stylish, wry, and composed
among the invoices, racket,

and grease. We weren't the first
to wonder how she and the sinewed
man came to meet and marry.

None of our business, her smile
assured us, before we could ask
out loud. I'd bet anything,

except the car, they were happy
in Ponca City, which repaired our means
of transport and gave us an anomaly

to ponder down the years. 

The Collector

The Collector

If you’re his wife, you’ve quit

asking why it all piles up out there

in the yard for everyone to see

from the highway.  Hubcaps from ghostly coupes.

Beer signs in neon cursive.  Coke machines,

cars, cars, cars.  You keep the house

and the backyard according to your principles.

You hate the mechanism in men

that drives them to love machinery.

If you’re his dog, you

urinate on tires encircling weeds.

You sniff varieties of rust,

chase squirrels until they disappear,

until you ram your hot wet nose

into angle iron; it all

makes the yard difficult.

Now, supposing you’re the younger son,

you don’t hate him yet.

Your friends think he’s a wealthy man,

a pirate maybe; they beg

their parents to let them come over,

Crawl through doorless cars, turn

cranks, patent imaginary uses

for useless contraptions.  You know

what it’s all for.  It’s there

to look at, to touch; it’s part

of a big landscape that whirls by

every day outside of School.

You’re the collector.  You can’t

help yourself. You’ll fix one thing

and trade it away for three things

you can’t fix.  The dog pisses on it all,

knocks over cans going after squirrels,

laps up rust-water.  You can’t

keep The neighbor-kids away. 

The younger boy, he follows you around

all day asking What’s this for?  What’s

this for?  You can’t understand why

your wife can’t understand why iron

and motors and axles are necessary,                                       

why strewn is the best way to keep

it all in order.

You stare right back at people

who drive by and scowl at your yard.

You know they’re driving junk.

Their houses are filled with junk that works.

You’ll get hold of it soon enough.

Hans Ostrom, from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006

"The Poor," by Carl Sandburg

"Truck Driver's Aubade"

Listen: sunrise stirs bugs in dry grass.

The long whine of a steel guitar

curves into a wide blue highway.

This peace is easy to take, I'll tell you.

We kiss, kick off the covers

as if they were dead butterflies,

and grab each other, laughing.

The radio drops out its three-chord,

Two-minute-fifty songs,

most of them the same

except for the names, just like

the matchbooks in amber ashtrays

on the sticky counter-tops

on outdoor tables at truck-stops.

--Where I’ll rest elbows,

the thick roar of sixteen

tires still in my ears.

Darling, if I look at the ass of the waitress

while she's filling up my Thermos,

know it's only out of habit.

If my heart growls like a diesel for you

when dawn spills across the hood

of the Peterbilt, know I'm thinking of this morning

and of gearing down again on the grade

a full two miles from your place. This place. 

copyright Hans Ostrom 1983/2014

Voting Biblical Principles

Someone encouraged me
to vote for Biblical principles
in a recent election. I didn't
see any on the ballot.

Well, now, there was
this one thing about supporting
a bond to maintain bus-routes
in this city. I know how
working people have the Devil's
own time getting to and from
work, shops, family, and clinics.

Although Jesus Christ
never rode a bus, only
a donkey, I still figured
voting to pay to keep up
the bus-routes wasn't
anti-Biblical.  Right?

The measure failed.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Brief of History of the Working Class

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Labor Day seems like a good occasion to mention the following book:

A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century (Revolutionary Studies), by Paul Le Blanc (Humanity Books, 1999).