A glum day for multiple reasons. So I decided to make a lowest budget music video of a song that Roger Illsley (music) and I (lyrics) wrote that Roger recorded. We hope it's smile-worthy. Well, here it is:
Friday, June 24, 2022
Thursday, June 23, 2022
"In 1940," by Anna Akhmatova
The Penguin Selected Poems of hers, translated by D.M. Thomas, is a great intro to her poetry in English. Somehow she survived WW2 and Stalin's terror--many of her compatriots did not. The Akhmatova House in St. Petersburg, Russia, is now a museum. And there is a Joseph Brodsky room near the entry. You go through a small tunnel just off the street to get to the house, and the walls are covered with poetry graffiti. It's as if everyone has agreed to put only poetry graffiti up there; pretty cool.
A reading of a short portion of "In 1940", with short video:
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Ragusa, Sicily: Festival Blues
"Memory of My Father," by Patrick Kavanagh
Reading/video of a short poem by Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), well known Irish poet and novelist:
Saturday, June 18, 2022
Closing Time
Tonight my cabaret of fears
glowed and hummed.
A band played anxiety
in sharp keys. We asked
the bartender to remove
his Death costume and put
away the scythe. Insulted,
he yelled, “Drink up, last call!”
A good time was not had by all.
hans ostrom 2022
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Treasure Enough
slices of yellow peach
with a few blueberries
in a bowl. some water
and homemade bread.
outside, birds make
raucous noise, manic
after rain-showers. all
this is treasure enough.
hans ostrom 2022
Monday, June 6, 2022
William Butler Yeats goes full gothic!
I hadn't read this poem until recently. A vampire poem from WBY. Short poem, with reading and video:
Sunday, June 5, 2022
The Bees Work in the Rain
The bees work in the rain. Some climb
Into the orange of poppies, some
Into the blue and purple lavender.
So cold, so wet so late this year.
We have the Winter blues in June,
While elsewhere draught and fire say
The future's now. Do not begrudge the rain,
We whisper to our consciences, which will
Not hear. I dive into the weeding,
Get wet and chill and caked with mud.
But it's all right, as everything
From peonies to roses now
Is bursting into bright, and bees
Work in the rain and don't complain,
Must move the nectar now into the hives.
hans ostrom 2022
Concerning Bob the Bull
(Lincoln, California)
I'm feeding sweet green clover
to a black and white bull
under powder blue sky. Through
silver fencing, I poke the offering,
a gesture of friendship to Bob
the bull, bedeviled by black flies
and close farm heat. Bob stares
and sniffs. Leans into me, almost
breaks my hand--a gesture
of friendship. I talk, he listens.
He snorts, sucks cud, and grunts.
I listen. I poke more green past
that glue-thick slobber on his black
lips, past his keyboard of square
ivory teeth and onto a pale pink
slab of tongue. Bob accepts
the clover without chewing.
He has a lot going on.
His patience in the midst
of fly-swarms and de-horning
outstrips Zen perfection. I tell
Bob of his greatness. Mourn
with him his lack of cow
companionship. His mucous
drips like icicle melt. We'll not
meet again--a scheduling thing.
I feel a sadness as sweet as
Bob's inner pools of cud.
How fine it would be one day
to hear Bob's story from Bob.
hans ostrom 2022
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Abandoned Gold Mine
In the mine, looking at gray
soil oozing water,
you feel the folly of digging
a hole in a mountain and hoping
wooden beams and air will hold up
all the rock above you. Mining
is faith. You look at rusted
iron tracks and the one tiny-
wheeled ore car no one stole yet.
This is a burrow where the Gold Rush
came to die. Yet even you,
fever -free, son and grandson
of gold miners, look at quartz
around your feet and want
to see deep yellow flecks,
desperately want gold to be.
Building, blasting, mucking,
loading, pushing, lifting. Sucking
rock dust in, coughing it out.
Stripping at end of day to show
you didn't steal high-grade ore.
Cuts, contusions. That's the search,
the work. The mine was not theirs.
Decades later, you stand in the cool
tomb and feel the drive that drove
them all here to lay down tracks
to trek into a mountain's dream.
hans ostrom 2022
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Simple Wishes
8 Billion Hearts
At this instant 8
billion hearts pump
fuel to burn for birth,
work, war, talk, love,
joy, grief, hope... and
to keep greed, fear,
faith, and learning alive.
Each heart the same:
muscles, valves,
arteries. Electric
currents. But invented
differences reign,
brainlessly, with terror,
as if each heart were
not of similar design.
It's always a good
time to change, none
better than now. How?
Keep asking. Think of
8 billion hearts, their
syncopated beats.
hans ostrom 2022