Nobody Beats Tacoma

 (reposting one from a while back)

Here's how it works: Beginning as North 27th Street,

North 21st Street just gets its confidence up

when North I Street slugs it and takes over,

only to be vaporized by South Yakima Avenue,

which morphs into something called Thomson.

The streets of Tacoma are so mean they're

mean to each other. Nobody beats Tacoma. Nobody.

Seattle has forever misread the meaning of Point

Defiance. It's not a park or a peninsula,

or a place to play dress-up on your bike.

It is a destined middle finger pointed

vaguely north. Put a penny

on the railroad track down by the port,

and you might well summon Guy Fawkes,

Richard Brautigan, a Chinese laborer,

or a skeptical Puyallup woman, pre-contact.

Whoever it is will take your penny

and invest it in a cloud-cone

hovering above Rainier like the saucers

Kenneth Arnold saw, 24 June,

1947. About the time

you think you have Tacoma solved,

you find yourself on a suspension-bridge,

with a dog, and the bridge starts

writhing like a boa constrictor. Then

it flaps and twists, snapping itself

free from blueprints, taking a dive

like a punch-drunk stevedore

trying to earn a buck at a smoker

in 1931. The dog lives. If you remind

the tattooed woman at the drive-in

that you ordered everything on your

burger, she will tell you, without

animus, "That is everything."

Nobody beats Tacoma. You have

to understand: Tacoma is more

than a grit city that keeps its

bourgeoisie on a leash like a pit bull.

Tacoma is a sense of humor.

Once you get that, it may take decades,

you'll understand everything. I

mean, really, after embedding

yourself in a group of eccentrics

at the Parkway, the Acme, or

the Goldfish Redux taverns, you'll see

the folly in naming streets

and other ambitions. You'll realize

you are Nobody, the only person

ever to beat Tacoma. Good night.

© a month ago    cities • aliens   

"Clarksdale," by Billy B.

Video: Song about Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the blues. Music composed by Billy B, song performed by Billy B. Lyrics by Hans Ostrom. Video by Dan Callnon.

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

Toad Ode

toads I know

like dry heat,

look like pebbled
fists of meat.

they spit
and stink like
grizzled men on a
sizzling street.

they're not friendly
like frogs.
avoid bogs.
don't sing. thing

is, every memo
a toad sends
recommends leaving
toads alone. so

i've done so.
oh, I might say
hello as I go
on my way.

that's most,
that's all. toads
I know, they kind
of hop-crawl.

hans ostrom 2021

Truck Driver's Aubade

 Listen: sunrise stirs bugs

in dry grass. The long

whine of a steel guitar

curves into a thin blue highway.

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

We kiss, kick off covers

light as dead butterflies,

and grab each other, laughing.

Your radio drops out a three-chord,

two-minute-fifty song,

too much like other songs,

just like those tin napkin

and sugar dispensers

that look alike always alike

on sticky plastic countertops 

at all them truck strops, 

where I’ll rest elbows,

the thick roar of sixteen

tires still in my ears. Darling,

if I chat up a waitress 

while she's filling my 

Thermos with coffee,

know it's only out of

habit and good manners. 

You know my heart growls

like a diesel for you when

dawn spills across the hood

of the Peterbilt, and I think

ahead to gearing down on

the grade sloping into

your place here where 

the creek sings out back. 

circa 1987/2021

Apples of the Ear

[revised]

[one of the great moments in jazz history]

The apple doesn't fall far

from the tree except in quantum summer

when Newton's head doesn't/does

exist and Atom & Eve

know what they don't know, 

a good first step

into the wormhole of Paul

Gonsalvez's "Diminuendo/

Crescendo'" 27 tenor sax 

chorus solos, 1956, in that

momentary eternity

wherein all the tightly knit

notes of Ellington's orchestra

became/become perfectly tart-sweet

apples in a God's-ear of time.

A Night of Bluegrass

 [revised]

Go on and cut the top off-a that mountain

to get your coal, Mr. High Pockets. You

can't cut that high-pitched wail out of the air

where the mountain was

and shall ever be, in God's eyes.

And all them strings get picked and strummed,

chorded and teased, til here comes a

tightly braided tune, careful and true,

like the long gray hair

of a matriarch reading her Bible in blue

moonlight, rocking and praying She's

as heart-broken and reconciled as a ballad

about some young'ns gone too soon. Music

of the hills distills sadness, strains it

through an upright tradition

that Nashville goddamn tried to ruin.

But could not. And will not. 

The Old Cloud Con

 [revised]

A "magician" came to town.

He explained what information was--

different, he said, from our tools,
animals, and plants. He asked

where we kept our information.
The usual places, we said:
Boxes, pockets, minds.
Oh, he said, give it to me,

and for a fee, I'll keep it
in a cloud for you!
In a cloud? we asked.
Yes, in a cloud, he said,

and for a fee! For me! We 
then kept the "magician" under 
guard for a while after
that exchange because

he was so obviously a
scoundrel. Soon we let
him go, unharmed.
We gave him information
A "magician" came to town.
He explained what information was--
different, he said, from our tools,
animals, and plants. He asked

where we kept our information.
The usual places, we said:
Boxes, pockets, minds.
Oh, he said, give it to me,

and for a fee, I'll keep it
in a cloud for you!
In a cloud? we asked.
Yes, in a cloud, he said,

but for a fee! We then
kept the "magician" under 
guard for a while after
that exchange because

he was so obviously a
scoundrel. Soon we let
him go, unharmed.
We gave him information
about where to travel
from here and 
options for 
a new career, 

in a cloud. 

Almost Blue in Chicago

Between Michigan and State,

she was caught without a coat

among wrought-iron intricacies

of histories.  Her sheer blouse

panicked in cold air.  She was

going somewhere.  Her schedule

showed a route of escape.  Not more

than a block from State

and Michigan, she again seized

a grip on fate, held on, got back

in the swing of the thing, yes,

back in the sway of her days.

hans ostrom circa 1990/2021

seagull in time

seagull high

up on a pole

sees dawn come 

early enough 

today to face

fully, light

dyeing white

feathers pink.

to me, it's still

astounding how

this whirling

sphere (which we

don't own) 

sidles so slowly

up to its local

fireball this

time of year,

this time of 

time. I itch

to dig in muddy

soil, the tip

of my old

shovel worn

into a concave

crescent line. 

Silver Valley Vision

 

this river swims in time.  this sky

flies through emptiness.  we live

forever every moment as love

falls into people.  fuel consumes

fire, and rain drinks Earth.  I saw

a thousand angels moving through

a silver valley.  low clouds

picked them up, changed them

into snow, conveyed them over

mountains, let them go. oh, let them go.

hans ostrom circa 1995/revised 2021

 

Silver Boat, Golden Sea

hey stray dog: nobody's

going to let you in.

though human, you 

own a sad canine karma.

hope will only mock you

later. turn back to streets,

lots, woods, or a one-room

apartment. enjoy pungence

and meals for one. watch

the moon get stuck 

in leafless branches. dream

you're captain of a silver

boat upon a golden sea,

a faithful friend at your side. 

hans ostrom 2021

Snapshot

 [second version]

[1860 HERSCHEL in Photogr. News 11 May 13 The possibility of taking a photograph, as it were by a snap-shotemof securing a picture in a tenth of a second of time.]
(Quoted from the Oxford English Dictionary online)


Snapshot

By any means, steal an image,
mark an instant's interplay between
light and facial shape. Shuffle it
off to memorabilia, through which
someone may rummage some day
not soon, in boxes or in Cloud.

Whoever it is will wonder
whose image got swiped
back here, where at the gathering
we think we know who's here, what
they're wearing, what they show. So
yes, of course, seize a sample
the flow, stabilize it in one of
the ways we know. Store it, for it
may be of interest one day, could be.

hans ostrom 2014/2021

Watching Bach Played

 [second version]

Each string ensemble player

leaned, turned, and swayed

in chairs differently as

they played. The women's

backs looked strong in gowns.

The men's feet in black shoes

stayed fixed to the floor.

Sometimes violin-bows poked

straight up as if reach for unseen

clouds just above the players'

heads. Portly cellos had to be

held up like friendly drunks.

They mumbled low genial

gratitude. One man stood

above the players, waving

his arms and a stick as if

to try to get someone's

attention. The violinists

may have glanced at him,

I don't know, but mostly

they cuddled their polished

wooden instruments, and

let their bodies feel the music,

and let us feel the vibrations

that they herded in the hall. 

hans ostrom 2015/2021