The Domestication of Cats

Cats domesticated themselves--how

could it have been otherwise?--ten

thousand years ago. Farming brought

grain, which brought rodents, which

enticed cats out of the forest. Impeccable

feline logic connected such exquisite

dining with the large lumbering 

two-legged beasts who made such noise,

lived in crowds but were lonely,

and couldn't resist two moon-eyes

glowing at them. That cold stare

above a permanent frown and below

radar ears, the subterranean surf

of purring, day-long languor, 

explosive honed rage: all of it

belongs to a calculation that padded

out of timber and brush, sniffed, leered,

hired us, and moved in. 

hans ostrom 2021

No One Home

Light lives here, comfortable anywhere,

Especially in darkness. Appliances quibble:

A refrigerator toils

Constantly for cold, a furloughed

Oven chortles with its pilot light,

A furnace mimics a howling wind.

Astoundingly, all clocks here agree.

You aren’t about, except in DNA 

Traces, scents in a bed, a crumbed

Dish in a sink. Now emerges a cat,

Walking on hushed paws, Interrogating

Silence for slightest

Noise, sniffing for food at floor level, 

Owning the place with power far beyond

Your sad legalities. When your key

Teases the lock, the place gets a little

Sad, as in you’ll stomp with your

Beastly size, baggage, and 

Unconscious belligerence. 

Hope Is the Original Revolution

 

While I’m waiting for the Revolution,

I’m going to wash clothes,

Turn soil in a vegetable garden,

Cook meals, read books, and sleep.

While I'm  waiting for the Revolution,

I’ll clean the toilet, take out

The garbage, cook meals, read books,

Eat,  and sleep.

While we’re waiting for the Revolution,

We’ll go to work to earn our pay,

Listen to what people say, and wonder

Whether, when the Revolution comes,

It will make things better, worse, or

The same. I’m not here to buy or sell

Or blame. I’m just saying revolutions rarely

Turn out well because power plus weapons

Make for hell. The revolution isn’t up to

Me. I could tell myself otherwise,

And tell other self-deluding lies. 

I get enough of that already. I know

Some people who need clothes and food.

I take them some, so very little, nearly nothing,

Once a week. I’m weak, I’m small, I’m one

Among us all. While I’m waiting, also

Dreading, the Revolution, I’ll do what I’ve

Done ever since idealism got away from

Me. Tasks in front of me. I wish I could do

More, but wishing doesn’t get

The dishes done. I hope you still have

Your idealism. There’s nothing like it.

It opens big spaces in the mind

And in the future. It’s a kind of

Revolution in itself. Even as you

Work and read and sleep and fall

In love, it fires up your spirit

And opens up your hope. Your hope. 

Date Palms in San Diego

 [slightly revised]

Calm palms in San Diego look like crooked

columns composed of brown-gray stones stacked

slowly over years by Franciscan monks. When

the columns reach a height uncertain, bladed

fronds formally erupt. Golden dates

materialize, suspend themselves like surreal

swarms of gemstones. A brown-grey bird

stretches upside-down to pick a piece

of date-flesh with its beak. Pacific breezes

nudge softly like seduction. The tapered

columns bend, nod, never topple. Flexibility

of vegetation, patience of stone: palm.

hans ostrom 2021

Apertures

Life imposes on us.

Memory superimposes,

layering life’s imprints.

Into an aperture
between life and memory
moves the photographer,

who listens to light,
convenes shadows,
constructs position.

In the dark room,
life and memory wait
while hallucination bathes,

inscribes itself on a
pane of white-space,
coalescing like epiphany

and now rising from the
translating pool, prepared
to confess to eyes.

hans ostrom, circa 1990/2021

Ideology Makes Me Tired

sometimes political

ideologies suggest to me

train stations for which

someone forgot to build

tracks. they look

impressive, well

designed, with angles

and edges. fun

to wander around in.

but they seem to lead

only to themselves.

do I need an ideology

to tell me society

needs to get somewhere?

get to a place

where it doesn't just 

pretend to care

but cares well for

people who need food

shelter water work sleep?

sometimes political

ideologies seem intent

on fulfilling their theories,

regardless of practical failure

or turns to violent authority

pledged madly to

shibboleths of theory. 

in place of debating,

I'm going to help make

someone not hungry today.

I think I'll add in some

nice clean clothes.

that's it that's all.

hans ostrom 2021

Gull Amongst the Crows

 the gull's a white viceroy

in pink rubbery footwear,

strolling stiffly

amongst a dozen crows

outfitted in workaday black.

they respect the gull's

size but not its authority.

an improvised contest

for useful slimy stinking

morsels sauteed 

in city refuse juice ensues.

the crows of course caw-cuss,

bounce on wire-feet,

wield their gleaming beaks.

gull says nothing,

gobbles great pieces

of anything likely 

to nourish. and finally

rolls out a rising shriek,

a fantastic prophetic scream,

an explosive ode to life. 

hans ostrom 2021

Yes We Saw the Sea Again

upon further refraction

that piece of golden

sea we saw smeared

itself with a pink sheen.

language, our tour

guide, narrated

the event with syllables

marinated in purples,

blues, yellows, grays.

as such, the sighting,

a constant birthing

of scene, seemed all

the more profound for

having nothing to do

with our seeing. still,

sacredly we saw the sea.

hans ostrom 2021

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.