Motorcycles, 2:10 a.m.

Motorcycles, 2:10 a.m.

At 2:10 a.m., it is too hot to sleep. An open
window reports the sound of motorcycles as they
rage away from saloons' parking lots at closing-
time and down a long dark hill out there. The
thought of a drunk riding an unmuffled engine

home and startling people all along the route
salts an insomniac's grim sense of humor. A
soused, solitary biker riding is a raucous
creature, a sad Nietzsche in bluejeans, the
gas-tank shaped like a stylized tear-drop,

the woozy rebel's jacket hand-sewn by a
tolerant, bemused aunt whose husband, an
insurance salesman and the step-father
of the lad, drives one of those silent
hybrid cars and must arise at 6:30 a.m.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Horse-Trail, High Sierra

Horse-Trail, High Sierra


Riding horses in the High Sierra, we take
trails threaded through hulking conifers,
bypass a Maidu/Washo ceremonial hill
covered with black gravel. Breezes off
Gold Lake wrangle scents of wildflowers,
thick aroma of skunk-cabbage, corn-lily,
and mountain misery. The horses snort
thin air. There's sign of bear.

Lightning felled a tree not long ago.
Now new thunder-clouds amass explosive,
creamy ambition over blue distant peaks,
east. Alpine meadows seem closer to
Paradise than most places, at least
in this easy summer's ride. The

sun-scalded cowgirl from Portola
leading the way shifts on the saddle
and hollers unsentimentally, "This
tree you're passing's over 300 years old."


Copyright 2009

Thoreau on August

Here's a quotation from Henry David "Hank" Thoreau (I think only a few of his Transcendentalist friends called him Hank) about the month of August:


"In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees,gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs."
- Henry David Thoreau

I found the quotation, which amounts to a nice little prose-poem, at . . .

http://www.egreenway.com/months/monaug.htm

Uncle Victor's Senility

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Uncle Victor's Senility


Uncle Victor's senility seemed comic then.
He was in fact a great-uncle, and we weren't
yet adolescents. He wore his hat when he took
a bath. He proposed marriage multiple times
to multiple nurses in the Old Folks' Home.

His skin was parchment-thin, the veins like
big blue roots. He trembled. We learned a new
word, "palsy." Now Alzheimer's and Dementia
name what we didn't know. Old Folks' Homes
are called Nursing Facilities. Victor woke

to memories scattered and broken in a meadow
of the mind. He picked one up, put it on his
head, took a bath, knew marriage was the logical
next step. To the vandals of Uncle Victor's
memory, we now say, "Shame on you."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

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

Bear Nearby

Bear Nearby

Tonight a bear's at the perimeter,
beyond where cabin-lights dissolve.
The animal breaks brush and gulps air,
snorts, working hard, and we hear this.
We glance up at Ursa Major above
the Sierra Buttes, a risen massif.

We figure the bear's breaking down
an apple tree now and gorging--wild
and deliberate, focused and irascible.
We don't walk closer. The bear doesn't
advance. There's a distance to be kept.

There's a fascination in the dark,
which entertains a big invisible mammal
whose family's lived here since before
any human named constellations or
eavesdropped on night's business.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Top Chef

Before I post a poem, here's some this-and-that:

The Lewin Group, which the GOPers and unctuous Charles Gibson (ABC) cite when discussing health-care "reform," is owned by United Health Care, a large insurance corporation, which also controls a database other health-insurance companies use to judge how much you get reimbursed and how much doctors get paid. . . . God willing and if the creek don't rise, as the saying goes, I might be in the High Sierra this time tomorrow, in a pesky canyon that used to resist radio- and TV-transmission and that still resists cell-phone transmission. . . . 'Tis the season when most Northwesterners give up on the pretense of maintaining a lawn and let the grass go blond and brown. Actually, the grass doesn't die; it just looks that way. I saw some poor sod (so to speak) spraying his brown lawn with water tonight, but his heart wasn't in it. Holding the hose was more of a gesture. . . . Meanwhile, I'm hatching Xeriscape plans that feature lots of gravel, boulders, hardy herbs, and drought-resistant plants. --But mostly boulders. One may water boulders, but one doesn't need to do so.


Top Chef

The celebrity tasters sample dishes cooked
competitively by erstwhile celebrity chefs
on a TV food-show. The tasters are
disappointed and get ready to reprimand
the chefs. They're about to opine when the
corpse of a starved person falls from
the ceiling of the TV studio onto their TV
table. Flies swarm out of the corpse's mouth
and seize the tasters' faces. The Food Judges'
hands turn to stone. The competing chefs use
this moment to flee from the show's decadent
premise. In this episode, there is no winner.


http://www.worldhunger.org/

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy's Cords of Wood

Buddy was engaged to marry a woman who
lived in a white house on the hill. He
cut and stacked cords of wood for her.
Before Winter came, she broke off
the engagement and married another man,
who moved in with her. They burned
the wood Buddy had cut. Buddy lived
with his sister from then on. This

was in a town of 225 where few
can afford the luxury of embarrassment.
When Buddy cheated too obviously
at pinochle, the men banned him
from the games for a while. For
decades, an adage flourished in town:
"Don't cut wood for your beloved
until after you marry because some
bastard might end up burning it."


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sometimes A Cat

This summer, our household features not one but two cats, a cerebral Russian blue, female, who is 10 years old, and a tabby who may have some Norwegian Forest Cat in his background; he is one year old. Her name is Lisa Marie, after Elvis Presley's daughter, and his name is Jerry Garcia. Jerry is a native of California, very laid back but also impulsive. We sense that Lisa Marie desires him to be more thoughtful. Unless they are supervised, the cats must be kept separate. When I watch television, the tabby gets up in a nearby chair and watches it with me. --Just a couple guys watching the tube.


Sometimes A Cat

Sometimes a cat relaxes so much,
it forgets where it is. That is,
sometimes a cat, relaxed, remembers
nothing is any place and anywhere
is nowhere in particular. A cat's
among the most in-particular creatures,
a purely present artist of equilibrium,
a monarch of the moment, eyes like
twin comprehending moons.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Scott Bateman on Lou Dobbs

I'm so old I remember when CNN had some credibility as a journalistic enterprise. No, really, I'm not kidding! Then it decided to "jump the shark" for ratings, so it tolerates the increasingly bizarre, micro-minded, sour-spirited rants of Lou Dobbs, for example. In all fairness, I have to say (well, I don't have to) that observing Lou's hair over the years has been a source of fascination. I am not on firm ground here, as my own "hair style" is an oxymoron. But at one point, Lou's hair looked almost tangerine in color. I'm lucky my job doesn't involve sitting under blazing lights, wearing makeup, and reading from a tele-prompter. To this extent, I sympathize with Lou and other on-camera crooners.

In any event, one of the most talented animators in the land, Scott Bateman, has produced a nice piece on Lou. One great thing about Bateman's work is that it simply but creatively uses the exact words of its subjects. Lou speaks, Bateman animates, and Bateman inserts comments:

http://trueslant.com/scottbateman/2009/07/24/lou-dobbs-nutjob/

On the Road to the Contagious Health-Care Bill

I have to agree with Fran-from-Canada's comment on the previous post: namely, that America's competitive streak prevents the U.S. from simply looking at nations who have successfully implemented health-care (and if it's not "universal," it's not health-care, as "health" refers to "whole") and imitating them, even if we acknowledge that some aspects of our situation may be different.


We mustn't overlook the cynicism of politicians and corporations either. The GOPers have made it plain that their only strategy is to stall and that the strategy is in service of the 2010 election. I think it's refreshing that they admit as much. They rank doing well in a mid-term election higher than providing reliable health-care coverage to (at least) 45 million persons who now go without it and who, if they're "lucky," get some help at an emergency-room. Meanwhile, the DEMsters will wrestle themselves into submission, easy pickings for lobbyists.

But let us turn to a physician who wrote poetry, W.C. Williams, and his "Spring and All," with its genius first line:

Spring and All

by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken


Let us hope that those in charge of delivering the health-care goods will "grip down and begin to awaken."

For more information about this poem and W.C.W., please visit . . .

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5953

Corruption Even a Poet Can Understand

To the extent other industrialized nations pay attention to the U.S., they must wonder why establishing something as basic as adequate health-care for everyone is so hard for Americans to achieve. Availability to solid health-care for all citizens in a nation is about as basic as a good fire department is for a city. In this instance, "American exceptionalism" is not a compliment. Most reliable ratings of health-care systems worldwide put that of the U.S. around 35th (or so).

As you no doubt already know, one reason for our inability to get to this basic goal is that Congresspersons in effect answer to large health-"management" companies and insurance companies, who contribute a lot of money to campaigns and who employ people who previously worked in Congress as staffers. Thanks to a fellow blogger in Tacoma, I was able to look at a simple map of such corruption involving an important participant in the health-care legislation, Max Baucus, a U.S. Senator from Montana (and once you get to the chart, you may click on it to enlarge it):

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/projects/2009/healthcare_lobbyist_complex/#baucus

Even a poet can grasp the corruption reflected in this chart!

Ancillary problems are that the alleged two-party system is, in effect, a one-party system wherein the two large parties suck up money from the same troughs, and that corporations may legally function as persons, so that trying to limit a corporation's monetary control of elections is depicted legally as an encroachment on "free speech," as if a corporation had vocal cords.

One piece of the current legislation delays the public option (which, among other things, would put pressure on insurance companies and also spread out the risk--you remember that simple insurance-concept) until 2013--after a) another presidential election, and b) a lot of people will have died, some of whom will die because of inadequate health-care. Demographically, it's in the insurance-companies' interest to have a lot of Baby-Boomers die; what a lovely bunch of coconuts. Meanwhile, when a citizen (or a visiting American, for that matter) in Canada or Sweden becomes ill, he or she (now, follow this complexity) goes to a doctor or a hospital to get treated without fear of being turned away for insurance-reasons or of going broke after being treated. Wow. It's almost like when a brush-fire occurs in a city and a crew from the fire department puts it out with water, quickly and professionally. If Baucus were in charge, the truck would show up late, charge the land-owner, and throw gasoline on the fire. Thanks for looking out for us, Max.

And yes, I know nothing is perfect in Canada or Sweden or elsewhere, but the American system suffers from more than imperfection. It just isn't functioning.

Moon Visits Altered History

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A headline in the Tacoma News Tribune two days ago read, "Moon Visits Altered History," and for an instant I misread "Visits" as being a verb and "Altered" as an adjective, so that the headline seemed to be about a journey the moon had taken.


Moon Visits Altered History


Orbit became a wearisome groove, a tedious
channel. Sun played the same old carom-shots
with rays, and just below, sad plants and creatures
marked the days. A bored moon unclipped itself
from gravity to visit an altered history.

It visited moon-museums in the gallaxy,
drank with disappointed asterioids who'd
aspired to be moons, interviewed multi-mooned
planets to ask how they kept their lunar
calendars straight. The moon was gone for a

month, exactly. No one but a few astronomers
and surfers noticed. The moon came back
to trudge its orbit like a mule, plowing
time, spinning space into legend.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Summer-Squash Soup

Hey, who recorded "(There Ain't No Cure For) The Summertime Blues," the Who? I imagine dozens of artists have recorded it in an attempt to cure the bank-account blues.

Anyway, it turns out there's a simple cure for the summertime blues, and as you might expect, it's soup. When in doubt, make soup!

Thanks to blogger, chef, and poet Minerva, we have ourselves a link to a recipe for Summer-Squash Soup (below). (Minverva reports that she added some previously cooked chicken to give the soup a little autumnal muscle, so if you're not rolling down the Vegan Highway at present, you may give that a try.)

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1809036

And Minerva is over at . . .

http://minervadamama.blogspot.com/