Harlem Renaissance writer Gwendolyn Bennett wrote this poem about the great adventure-novelist Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, etc.), whose father was French and whose mother was African--and a former slave:
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Goat Island
On that island wild goats
climb cliffs. Women
govern the place, living
mostly in the mountains.
It is a matriarchy,
which, based on reason
and evidence, advises
the citizenry, including men,
what to do. I've sent for a
brochure. I'm not sure
if I want to apply to live
there. But I'm a man,
and I don't mind being
directed by experts,
especially if they're women.
Apparently the fishing
is good, there's a solid
poetic tradition, and live
music thrives. I'll let you
know what happens with
me and Goat Island.
hans ostrom 2020
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
From a Diary of the Plague Year (19)
We're double-bound to home
today. There is the viral reason,
and now smoke
from the Great Western American
Fire of 2020 creams air.
Airborne ash makes
the sun look like the moon.
Birds do their best to eat
out there, but there are
no bugs in that air.
I'm calm. I stare.
I'd like to go into exile.
But where? Nobody
wants to see Americans now,
not even Americans.
hans ostrom 2020
Humid
Do me a favor,
says weather,
and carry this anvil
made of steam
around with you today:
okay?
Creeks flow
off my skin,
turning shirts
into wetlands.
After work, napping
in feverish circumstances,
I dream of alligators
belching thunder.
Humidity and feet,
I think, make for a fine
Stilton stink. With
sour thoughts,
I wait for cloud-towers
to collapse into rain:
one wet defeats another.
hans ostrom 2020
Olfactory: A Poem of Odors
(in other words, it stinks)
asphalt, freshly wet
chocolate
vanilla
musty villa
sawdust
red rust
perfume
sea spume
diesel oil
black soil
cardamom
dark rum
sweat, also
known as perspiration
irrigation
tomato, just picked--
sauce, garlic-ed
wet dog
thick fog
cinnamon
saffron bun
laundry hung in sun
roasted turkey, done
pickling brine
iodine
shampooed hair
alpine air
hills of garbage
boiled cabbage
rosemary
raspberry
red rose
painted toes
horse stall
snow fall
cedar chest
lemon
zest.
hans ostrom 2010/2020
Monday, September 14, 2020
"Rain," by Charles Bukowski
Reading/video of a poem by Charles Bukowski, one of his classical music ones:
Saturday, September 12, 2020
"The Sloth," by Theodore Roethke
Poem by the legendary University of Washington poetry teacher--and the highly successful poet--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963). It's about the animal, not the sin or lifestyle choice. Reading/video:
Friday, September 11, 2020
Coffee
Of course the coffee nodule
is neither cherry nor berry,
just as you are neither you nor
you before "you" hold the ceramic
cup in that sacred way and weigh
it gratefully, and wait for your hands
to say when the temperature
of the darkness
will love your tongue and mouth
best. You sip and smell
simultaneously. You are soothed.
You are less dim. The sun
rises just above the blue rim
of your stupor. Shapes of
thought become visible,
work becomes viable,
wants become focused.
O thank you Arabia,
thank you Ethiopia,
thank you Sudan and South
America, Indonesia . . .
Such chants continue
silently in your mind,
which small sips of shade
have clarified. Your heart
stumbles into a pace
that brings awareness
to your brain in soft
brown sacks. You begin to flirt
with thought, consider
sociability, tolerate noise,
nearly nod Yes to life.
You want to tell coffee again
that you love it, but you’re not
quite ready to speak,
and anyway coffee knows.
coffee knows, knows what you need.
hans ostrom 2020
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Please Feel Sorry for Yourself
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Such
a tedious rebuke. Often followed
by words about gratitude or
comparative well being.
I encourage you to feel sorry
for yourself. Feel sorry for other
people, too, but save some for yourself.
Properly calibrated, self-sympathy
dulls disappointment's edge. It can
soothe depression when you're lying
there staring into your mind like it was
a dark, fishless aquarium.
The pleasure of self-pity
is under-rated. Indeed I think
some people try to shame you
out of it because they think
you might be enjoying it.
I feel sorry for them.
hans ostrom
Thanks for Coming
Thanks for coming.
I was delighted to play
a role in your arrival,
at which point you
uttered words with no
definition but much
meaning. I'm reminded
how pleasant it is to witness
someone's pleasure,
to be brought into it, to
hold it in your hands,
as it were, like a shivering
bird about to be released.
Thanks for coming.
hans ostrom 2020
Grateful for Grasshoppers
Just realized I'd yet to compliment
Life on providing grasshoppers
in the field buttressed by
Sierra Nevada peaks. They
launched themselves, those
bugs, with catapult back legs,
and tried to stay aloft with weighty
art deco wings. The theater
of tall grass and weeds featured
jazz parabolas, careening leaps,
and caroms off my legs and chest
and cheeks. A festival, a rite!
Bug ballet, nothing like it.
Butterflies applauded. Thank you.
hans ostrom 2020
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