Poem By The Side of the Road

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Poem By the Side of the Road

Here is a poem that lives
by the side of a road
in the form of a shack
with a tin chimney stack
and a recluse stirring inside.

Walk on the road past
the shack if you will; see fine
dust rise from your foot-fall,
and if you're brave, shout a call
to the recluse stirring inside.

A poem is a shack, and a
shack is a poem, or
so the tautology flows. What's true
of poems and shacks? Who knows?
The recluse stirring inside.

Mowers, Toes, and Phones

Mowers, Toes, and Phones

On a July day one barefoot American
teenager shouts into his phone outside
as another barefoot American teenager
is cutting grass close by with a snarling
power-mower. One of them needs to go
inside, and the other needs to put on
shoes, but only a fool would try to
tell them, so this fool, me, strolls by
and tries to enjoy the comedy and not
wince at the thought of those toes,
or of those ears owned by whoever's on
the other side of that shout, and I wonder
what marketeers created the category
"teenager," and I know one has to
have faith that young ones will grow
up and older ones will stay that way.
Yes, belief in maturation's based more
on faith than evidence, but by now
I'm a block away, and I don't have
to look at the toes inches away from
whirling steel blades or watch the
shouter compete with the voice of a mower.
A fool, I need to believe the two lads
will turn out all right, whatever than means.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

ABC of Under-the-Influence, Part Two

A correspondent from the foothills of California, where the creeks have known to run with whiskey a time or two, has offered a supplemental ABC of inebriation (below). Also, I remembered that my parents' generation occasionally described a drunken person as being "three sheets to the wind," which (being a literalist) I used to associate with bed-sheets hanging on a clothesline but which I now assume refers to sails on a ship. I also remember the same generation speaking of someone's "going on a bender," meaning the person had gone on drinking for, let's say, a week, or for a lost weekend, like Ray Milland's character in the movie.


A: Annihilated, aced, addled, ambushed

B: Blitzed, bent, bombed, blasted, bagged [in the bag], backed up, blind {blind drunk], blotto, brain dead

C: Confused, clogged, comatose

D: Detoured, damaged, dunked, (plus all of the hundreds of “drunk as…”)

E: Electrified, eighty-sixed, embalmed,

F: Feeling no pain, faced, fried, flattened, flaked

G: Gonzo, glocked, grossed out, gassed up, gone

H: Hijacked, high as a kite, half in the bag, haywire

I: In the weeds, in deep shit, in a puddle, invisible

J: Juiced, jammed up, jolted

K: Killed, knockered, kay-oed

L: Liberated, limber, lit to the gills, listing to port, lubed

M: Misty eyed, mellowed out, moronic, marinated, mummified

N: Nasty, nuked, nailed, numb

O: Over the edge, oiled, ossified,

P: Plastered, ploughed, pixilated, paralyzed, pickled

Q: Don’t know any “Q” words for drunk,
drugged, etc.

R: Roasted, ripped, rotten, ruined, rooted

S: Silly, stupid, skunked, slobbered, stinkin’ drunk, sauced, snockered (or schnockered), schwacked, sloshed

T: Toasted, tanked, throttled, totaled, thrashed

U: Undone, used up, unbalanced

V: Violated, varnished, vegetated

W: Wasted, wobbled, weirded out, woozy

X: Don’t know any “X” words for drunk, drugged, etc.

Y: Yanked, yellowed, yippy

Z: Zagged, zapped, zonked, zeroed out

An ABC of Inebriation

One interesting characteristic of most inebriated persons (and in this case, I'm using "inebriated" to refer to an altered condition created by a variety of substances, not just alcohol) is that they behave as if they are among the first persons in history to be inebriated. This is true of many college freshmen (to select but one of many groups). My generation of college freshmen--let's see, I think we began college around 1854--believed itself to be the discoverers of getting drunk, and I'm sure many freshmen in the Fall of 2009 across the globe will see themselves as discoverers of something new when they drink, smoke, etc.

Another oddity about inebriation is that, at least in the U.S., the language used to describe it is not complimentary. For example, people speak of getting "stupid," "smashed," "hammered," "destroyed," and so on. "Hey, dude, last night we got totally destroyed." I'm so happy for you! Dude.

At any rate, while I and my ancient auto were stuck in traffic (I was not inebriated), I got to thinking about an ABC of terms for getting drunk or stoned or high or whatever: inebriation in its broadest sense. So here's a list. When I have (at least as far as I know) invented a term, I have placed an asterisk beside it.

A: altered, avalanched* ("Oh, man, we got totally avalanched last night.")
B: bombed, blasted, baked
C: clobbered, crazy
D: drunk, damaged, destroyed
E: eroded* ("Jeez, we drank tequila all night and got very eroded.") I tested this descriptor on an audience, and the audience thought it was "dumb." I think it's a droll term, but drollery often fails.
F: the obvious one is "effed up," which is pretty funny when you think about it; what are those new to English to think of this? "We drank innumerable beers last night and got effed up." Really? How exactly does that work? "Fried" is one I've heard, too. Also "footless," as in "footlessly drunk."
G: giddy--hmmm, not very good; glad? No. Obviously, I'm having trouble with G.
H: Hammered; high.
I: Well, "inebriated." Also (under the) "influence". I've always thought this term was too soft. When someone gets drunk, drives the wrong way on a highway, and kills people, "influence" doesn't quite measure up. By the way, what is the condition of "ebriation"? "Honest, officer, I'm ebriated, not inebriated."
J: jacked? jolly? jacked up? joyous* ("Dude, we smoked some weed and got joyous.")
K: Kebobbed*? Knackered?
L: loaded, loopy, looped
M: mashed?
N: neutralized*?
O: obliterated; oppressed* ("Dave and I got a bottle of rum and got extremely oppressed, man.")
P: Pissed (a Britishism, I believe).
Q: Quarked*. I rather like this one. Quenched? I like this one.
R: Roaring drunk. This was a term I heard from my parents' generation. Rummy. Ravaged.
S: Ah, so many. Stoned, stupid, smashed, soused, silly, etc.
T: Trashed.
U: Unhinged*? Unbelievably drunk? That's cheating, using an adverb.
V: This is a tough one. Verved*? Vegetative? Vectored? "Hey, man, you want to go get vectored?"
W: wrecked, wiped out, whacked, etc.
X: Oy, this is tough. Xylophoned*?
Y: Young*. You know, like when old people get high, they feel young, so the next day, they say, "Hey, we got really young last night."
Z: zapped, zonked.

Highest Form Of Art

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(Image: Mount Everest)
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Highest Form of Art

"I regard," said the famous novelist,
"tragedy to be the highest form of art."
We were meant gravely to absorb this
highest form of her opinion. One among
us, however, sneezed. Another, a
notorious literalist, believed
a makeshift sculpture on Mount Everest
to be the highest form of art. A
third believed tragedy to be the lowest
form of the raw deal offered by Life.

None of us spoke, though, until later.
We knew enough not to disagree publicly
with a famous, highly paid literary
guest, who seemed to be running a mild
royal fever; who appeared to be slightly
flushed with her current stature,
the highest form of her reputation.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Fleeting Real

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Fleeting Real

There will always be time to talk
of politics, money, and law. Speak
of one, and you speak of all three.
See the gray cat sitting on a blue
chair? That's where we might begin.

We might also speak of hand-carved
spoons, fossils in a dream, or languid
lovers' restless fingers. The rest
is history, a kind of tidied up
lie or a molten sack of evil,
depending upon your point of skew.

A millenium's sadness sways
when a horse smells lightning.
Let's imbibe words on matters
such as these. The fleeting is
the real, as is a fantasy of
reeling in a moment that glanced
at memory's bait, declined to bite,
and dove to settle in the murk
far below an angler's flaccid geometry.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Snapshot

The OED online tells me that "snapshot" (as a noun) goes back to the early 1800s in print and referred then to a more-or-less un-aimed shot using a gun. However, the word took on its photographic meaning not long thereafter, whereas I'd expected this connotation (now a denotation) to come from the early 20th century:

[1860 HERSCHEL in Photogr. News 11 May 13 The possibility of taking a photograph, as it were by a snap-shot{em}of securing a picture in a tenth of a second of time.]

(Quoted from the OED online)


Snapshot

By any means, capture an image,
mark an instant's interplay between
light and facial shape. Shuffle the image
off into memorabilia, through which
someone may sort or rummage some day
not soon. Whoever it is will wonder
whose image was captured back then,
back here, where at the gathering
we think we know who's here, what
they're wearing, what they show. So
yes, of course, take an image from
the flow, stabilize it in one of
the ways we know. Store it, for it
may be of interest one day, could be.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom