"Ghosts," by Elizabeth Jennings

"Haunted Houses," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Amazing version of All Along the Watchtower (Dave Matthews Band featuring Celisse..

"Fresh Cheese and Cream," by Robert Herrick

Bell's Inequality: The weirdest theorem in the world | Nobel Prize 2022

"if there are any heavens," by e.e. cummings

Old Funk Band

 The Ohio Players, Jazz Alley, Seattle, 10/2022

The first beat hits
like a boulder dropped on a roof.
Drums and bass hammer hard &
velvet vines of joy entwine from there.

Everything sizzles, black and bubbling--
horns, guitar, keyboards. This

is music for community, to get bodies
up & dancing and minds up to float
above their troubles. Webs of
call-and-response spread. At

least three of these Black men
have been brewing this elixir for 50 years.
The small wizened man
at one keyboard, baseball cap
set back, is the chieftain
of arrangement. Funk, hot

and cool, climbed the highest
mountain of rhythm-and-blues.
Apotheosis, mof-fo. From there,
pop music settled in soft digital foothills,
calibrating robot beats, dismissing
musicians, hiring impresarios
of turntables and knobs. Played

live, funk draws blood from all
the way back to Africa, across
oceans painted by blood-red
moons, up through islands
and land-masses into New Orleans,
then up the rivers to industrial
Black cities. Funk stomps

on evil as it dances. It turns-
on lovers. Funk screams
sweetly, jokes, smiles, winks, punches
in syncopation like Muhammad Ali,
lays out opponents--boredom,
worry, snobbery. Funk

will find a way to turn you into
a dancing fool--the best kind--
even if you just sit there and on the floor
inside your head, roll your
hips, shake your head, raise
your hands, laugh and smile,
hold that other body with you there,
and praise the big-little lord called Life.

hans ostrom 2022

Rhiannon Giddens, American Tune (with altered “Mayflower” verse by P. Si...

"Have Me," by Carl Sandburg

"The Owls," by Charles Baudelaire

Pacific Flyway

Last night, 165, 000 birds

flew over this city. Their highway
of air's called The Pacific Flyway.

Ceaseless wings working,
black eyes shining, uncanny
navigation sending signals....

These birds from various species
have no clue how brave they are,
do not have our concept, courage.

They just do what they must do
while we count and measure
in homes and leisure down here.

A few of these birds stopped by
in our garden this Spring & Summer.
Sampled water, suet, seeds, bugs; rested,

sang--maybe picked up grass and twigs
for the summer home. This thought
brings warmth, like holding briefly

in a cupped hand a bird before it flies.

hans ostrom

For 6

The "bachelor's" degree in college
springs from the Medieval baccalarius,
I'm told--someone low on the feudal
food-chain. After I earned it, I thought
I might go to law school, but my score
on the law-school admission exam was...
666. I took this as a revelation that law
might make me evil. So I entered
the hell of getting a doctorate in English.

I always thought of 6 as a friendly number--
not so edgy as 5, less slick than 7, more droll
than 4 or 8. I developed intuitive
relationships with numbers and days
of the week, nothing to do with math
or work. I hate gambling on any day.
To me it denotes "losing," and
casinos are beastly.

Whoever wrote the Book of Revelations:
a little manic, maybe? Too many numbers
for me, and horsemen and The Beast,
seals, and the anti-Christ: exhausting. Led
to too many bad horror movies (but to be
fair, also Bergman's The Seventh Seal,
which I view primarily as a comedy).

As to the Anti-Christ: too many suspects,
past and present.

6, I love you, Baby, more than three times.

hans ostrom 2022

In Broad Daylight

 Ancient sun, new day: mid-morning,

I'm about to get in my car with a cup
of coffee, big bright parking lot, when a man
walks up--his clothes and twitchy affect
suggesting meth. Asks if I can help his friend
"jump" his battery. "Where?" "Just over there--
he's beating on his car." As I myself

have struck a stubborn car a time or two,
I put aside fear of getting mugged,
drive over. The friend's got is drumsticks out,
playing them on metal under the raised hood.
Out of many front teeth, he's got just one hanging:
meth. Starvation-lean, some jail tats. The two

are living in the small car with a black dog.
We fiddle and fuss and finally get his car
started. The dog barks. Rolling up
the jumper-cables, he says, "Thanks &
god-bless. Nobody would help, nobody.
I mean, I get why they're leery of us,
but broad daylight, & all these people
around? C'mon. It makes you wonder
about the human race."

hans ostrom 2022