From a Diary of the Plague Year (19)

We're double-bound to home

today. There is the viral reason,

and now smoke

from the Great Western American

Fire of 2020 creams air.

Airborne ash makes

the sun look like the moon.

Birds do their best to eat

out there, but there are

no bugs in that air.

I'm calm. I stare.

I'd like to go into exile.

But where? Nobody

wants to see Americans now,

not even Americans. 

hans ostrom 2020

Humid

 Do me a favor,

says weather,

and carry this anvil

made of steam

around with you today:

okay?

Creeks flow 

off my skin,

turning shirts

into wetlands.

After work, napping

in feverish circumstances, 

I dream of alligators

belching thunder.

Humidity and feet,

I think, make for a fine

Stilton stink. With

sour thoughts, 

I wait for cloud-towers

to collapse into rain:

one wet defeats another. 

hans ostrom 2020

Olfactory: A Poem of Odors

 (in other words, it stinks)

asphalt, freshly wet

chocolate

vanilla

musty villa

sawdust

red rust

perfume

sea spume

diesel oil

black soil

cardamom

dark rum

sweat, also

known as perspiration

irrigation

tomato, just picked--

sauce, garlic-ed

wet dog

thick fog

cinnamon

saffron bun

laundry hung in sun

roasted turkey, done

pickling brine

iodine

shampooed hair

alpine air

hills of garbage

boiled cabbage

rosemary

raspberry

red rose

painted toes

horse stall

snow fall

cedar chest

lemon

zest. 

hans ostrom 2010/2020

"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

"The Sloth," by Theodore Roethke

 Poem by the legendary University of Washington poetry teacher--and the highly successful poet--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). It's about the animal, not the sin or lifestyle choice. Reading/video:

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

Coffee

 Reading/video of the coffee poem recently posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olaWOdLu8ig

Coffee

Of course the coffee nodule

is neither cherry nor berry,

just as you are neither you nor

you before "you" hold the ceramic

cup in that sacred way and weigh

it gratefully, and wait for your hands

to say when the temperature

of the darkness

will love your tongue and mouth

best. You sip and smell

simultaneously. You are soothed.

You are less dim. The sun

rises just above the blue rim

of your stupor. Shapes of

thought become visible,

work becomes viable,

wants become focused.

O thank you Arabia,

thank you Ethiopia,

thank you Sudan and South

America, Indonesia . . .

Such chants continue

silently in your mind,

which small sips of shade

have clarified. Your heart

stumbles into a pace

that brings awareness

to your brain in soft

brown sacks. You begin to flirt

with thought, consider

sociability, tolerate noise,

nearly nod Yes to  life.

You want to tell coffee again

that you love it, but you’re not

quite ready to speak,

and anyway coffee knows.

coffee knows, knows what you need.

hans ostrom 2020

"Survivor," by Roger McGough

 A very short droll poem by Roger McGough--reading/video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZSe6uYQbo

Please Feel Sorry for Yourself

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Such

a tedious rebuke. Often followed

by words about gratitude or

comparative well being. 

I encourage you to feel sorry

for yourself. Feel sorry for other

people, too, but save some for yourself.

Properly calibrated, self-sympathy

dulls disappointment's edge. It can

soothe depression when you're lying

there staring into your mind like it was

a dark, fishless aquarium. 

The pleasure of self-pity

is under-rated. Indeed I think

some people try to shame you

out of it because they think

you might be enjoying it.

I feel sorry for them. 

hans ostrom 

Thanks for Coming

Thanks for coming. 

I was delighted to play

a role in your arrival,

at which point you

uttered words with no

definition but much

meaning. I'm reminded

how pleasant it is to witness

someone's pleasure,

to be brought into it, to

hold it in your hands,

as it were, like a shivering

bird about to be released.

Thanks for coming.

hans ostrom 2020

Grateful for Grasshoppers

Just realized I'd yet to compliment

Life on providing grasshoppers

in the field buttressed by

Sierra Nevada peaks. They

launched themselves, those

bugs, with catapult back legs,

and tried to stay aloft with weighty

art deco wings. The theater 

of tall grass and weeds featured

jazz parabolas, careening leaps,

and caroms off my legs and chest

and cheeks. A festival, a rite!

Bug ballet, nothing like it.

Butterflies applauded. Thank you. 

hans ostrom 2020

Interview with Lolly Vegas of Redbone

 First the universe came into being, then the Earth cooled, and finally the 1970s happened. The best-selling pop/rock song in the U.S. in 1974, I am told, was "Come and Get Your Love," by a Native American group called Redbone, headed up by Lolly and Pat Vegas, who were from a town near Fresno, California. The version of the song from "Midnight Special" on Youtube is pretty good, I think. I always liked the funkiness of the song. 

In 2006 Lolly Vegas was interviewed. Good to hear his history of his music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klShZ7iYUOg

Rest in Peace, Lolly Vegas.

"The Garden," by Jacques Prévert

 Video/reading of a short poem by Prévert (1900-1977), translated by Alastair Campbell--grateful acknowledgement to him: 

Link:

 Prévert