Homage to Film Noir

The arthritic ceiling fan turns slowly.

Its dull blades cut air, which drips humidity.

The second hand of an old clock
behind the bar grinds minutes
into neon-lit sand, which piles up
in hourly dunes. The jukebox

in a shadowed corner coughs out
brassy swing from brittle records
spinning 78rpm. At the bar, I tip

my hat's brim up, then sip
a shot glass full of rye. As
I swallow the burn,

she walks in from the night.
Black dress, red lipstick,
luxuriant blond hair--tucked back
with a glinting diamond barrette.

She said to meet her here,
so I meet her here and let her
hire me to find her husband
whom the cops won't seek to find
in a city full of persons
missing and presumed....

Of course I know already
she had a hand in killing him
and will try to seduce me
into killing the man who
killed him--who now blackmails her.

She kisses me and leaves her
lipstick brand on my stubbled cheek.
She touches my holstered gun.

The plot will unspool over
a grubby week of shadows
in which I'll get beat up
and legally kill. She'll
coo, then shriek, before the cops
haul her off in rusted cuffs.

I'll keep the cash, which keeps me
going--and coming back here
to sip my rye, and wipe my brow,
and talk to salty dames and broken
strangers about nothing

in this flat sizzling city
built on nothing but a dead dream.
And the ceiling fan keeps turning.

hans ostrom 2022

Artistic Woman

She did and was art--might make and wear

a nurturing kerchief, let's say, or transform
with shears and thread one old dress into one new
shawl. Often she carried a purse full of verse.

Ears and fingers teased light with rings. Food:
not baked or boiled into submission, no:
She concocted it like magic, revealed it with
a flourish, delighted in delicious noises guests

might make while eating. She listened artistically,
seizing well said words. Even with pain,
propped with a cane, she turned a walk into a
subtle scene. Envious dull ones liked to accuse

her of showing off. They were right and wrong.
Off? Not so much. Showing? Sure. For her notion
was that life, a surprise, came from darkness,
showed itself, revised itself: a pageant,

a play, a making, a day to dramatize night,
a quip to set off laughter before darkness fell again.

Alas, the Smokers

I grew up when thick blue

atmospheres hung in diners,
bars, and living-rooms. My
Old Man smoked cigars
and pipes in the house.
The mad uncle I worked
for at a rock-crushing plant
chain-smoked cigarettes
and chewed tobacco
at the same time.

To be ladies, women held
cigarettes a certain way,
blew the smoke straight up
to a ceiling, left red lipstick
on the crushed butts.

Men stubbed out butts
in ashtrays or stepped on
smoking remnants
in the dirt to punctuate
an arguing point: smoking
as rhetorical trope.

Professors smoked cigarettes
in class. My teacher Karl
Shapiro tried to quit
the cigs, took up
a pipe but couldn't keep it
lit. The cardboard matches
piled up as we chewed on
poem-drafts and he looked
on, sometimes waving the pipe
in a flourish like a failed wand.

Smokers look furtive now,
as if they were on parole.
Even in rain, they herd-up
against walls, a regulation
distance from a work-site plinth.
Although I'm not a smoker
of tobacco, I feel sorry for them.

Collaborators of Sex

Whether shameless or shameful,

sex, like a spy agency,

employs collaborators:
such as patience:

you crave to nibble
the flushed apples
of September but must
wait for the sugared
ripeness of October.
Yes, you must get know
and gain the trust of
the one after whom you lust.

Later, urgent desire
arrives and contrives
emergency, thus sirens
of blood
rush to alarmed
sectors of
the body, where engorgements ensue.

Lust and sex: wily composer,
practiced dancer: their coupled
arts tease bodies to arrive
at the frenzied rendezvous
(the show must come-on).

And so, there is crescendo,
a supine peaking, wreaking
the loveliest havoc, coaxing
moans and gasps and extra-lingual
expressions springing from
primeval lessons.

And, of course, those immortal
partners: love and sex:
who concoct and cook,
ladling tenderness,
sprinkling wit--so that
lusty but listless giggles
sometimes spice the act,
as a matter of tact.

Belief

The first time I heard my father pronounce,

"When we die, we're meat for the worms,"

I was about ten. He repeated the wisdom

occasionally. He thought "preachers"

were hustlers. Ma ran away from her 

evangelical minister father when she 

was 18. He was a bigot and a creep. 

She never worshipped publicly again,

thought of Heaven, I think, 

as an earned vacation. She gave me

her leather-bound Bible, Oxford U.

Press, all of Jesus's words in red. 

I joined the Catholic Church

at age 45, but my "worship" consists

of giving food to the parish's

food bank and trying to be kind. My

wife's the real Catholic and prays for me,

in both senses of "for." As to God,

who knows? Believing isn't knowing.

Nor is atheism. I'm too busy fearing

humans--of every belief, including

atheism, to fear God.  It never surprises

me to see that another American 

Christian has turned out to be evil.

Sometimes evil and popular.

After my college

History of Philosophy class, taken

at age 17, I never stopped thinking

Spinoza had it right: God equals

everything there is, but probably

no more. A cold view, true. 

Of course, the Jews expelled him,

the Christians condemned him,

and Leibniz envied him. 

Spinoza made a living grinding lenses. 

It's a true fact, as we say

in the American West, 

that the body disintegrates.

Aging gives it a head start. 

The universe is too big, 

dynamic, and complicated

for us to understand

all the way, but I say to science:

keep trying.

We should concentrate on peace, 

equity, and care of Earth. Make these

our primary worship. Keep it

simple-like, you know?

hans ostrom 2022

Rondeau of the Sowing

Old adage says, Reap what you sow.
What have I sown? That's hard to know.
I have been selfish, that's for sure
But not, I think, cruel by nature.
Effects of how one lives are so

Untraceable. Search high, search low:
My net effect must be zero
On those, on them, on him, on her.
And who am I to say, you know?

One certain fact--I'm no hero.
Fall short. Fell short those years ago.
What's up with this accounting--why?
Self-centered guilt, I cannot lie.
Applause or boos before I go?
A useless review of the show?

hans ostrom 2022

"Ode to Hope," by Pablo Neruda

 Reading and video for Youtube of Neruda's poem:

"Ode to Hope"

The Poems Will Keep Arriving

 

. . . and arriving. Poetry is something some

people must write or speak.

Some people, including poets,

must make distinctions about poems

and poets, for society’s a place

of endless distinctions,

which make for a lot of noise

and lists, walls and squabbles. 

Imagine someone standing on a beach,

making distinctions about waves,

saying which are good, which are bad,

which are great, which must be dismissed

and scorned.

Note that the waves keep coming.

The poems keep coming because

They must. The moon drives the waves.

What drives the poems? A trillion

Different moons, that’s what.

And one of them is language itself—

that great mystery in the brain,

in the air, in the squares, in the ears

and eyes, in the everywhere we live.

The poems will keeping arriving.

Some of them belong to you.

hans ostrom 2022

 

Splooting

 (I had observed this squirrel-behavior over the years--when they lie on their bellies to cool off--but the term "splooting" was new to me.)

Yes, squirrel, your body's
covered in thick gray-brown fur.
You don’t have a word for summer
but your body does. All day,

you run up and down trees,
driving upward with thick thighs,
clinging downward with sharp
fore-claws. One tree

holds your nest, where you
go to check on the kids. Otherwise,
you search madly for nuts,
hold them in your mouth

(oh, jaw-ache), bury
them for later, forget where
you buried them, search, smell
them out, dig them up, move them,

on and on, dawn til dusk.
Sometimes you stop for a snack,
and chew through a hard nut-shield
(oh, more jaw-ache) and eat,

all the while glancing
anxiously around for killers
including the beastly Tall Ones
whose fur could be any color,

who drive great hideous clouds
which have murdered and
flattened friends you mourn.
When the heat wears you down

and your jaws and legs ache,
you find cool grass, lie down,
spread your arms and legs,
and, ah, let the lovely chill

pass through your belly-fur into
your body. Squirrel, you have
earned this a hundred times over--
this rest, your time of splooting.

hans ostrom 2022

Sonnet XXVII: "Naked, you are simple as one of your hands," by Pablo Neruda

 Reading of the shorter poem plus a video, text from allpoetry.com:

"Naked, you are simple as . . ."

Allpoetry.com

 About a year ago, I started putting some poems up on a site called allpoetry.com. It hosts poets who may just be starting to write poetry, those who've been at it for a while, and experienced ones. That's one "half" of the site. The rest is dedicated to well known poets worldwide, with most of their poems in translations. How fantastic that must be for those just getting interested in poetry. I would have loved such a ready compendium when I was, say, 17. At any rate, here's a link to my "page," where one may then spring to the whole site and check out a favorite famous poet or start to put up poems of one's own--and received supportive criticism:

allpoetry.com

Overnight at Haypress Creek

We hiked into the deep ravine

of a quick, cold creek, High Sierra.
Found a place to camp and caught
a couple trout to eat. Evening:

lit a small fire to cook the fish
and heat some beans. Ate, then
doused the fire and slipped
into sleeping bags. Night:

wilderness became immense,
swallowed any sense of self-importance.
A world of creatures came alive,
bears and bobcats and bats,
deer, raccoon, rodents, and night-bugs.

Stirring in the brush, snapped sticks,
owl-hoots and the haunting yips
of coyotes coming through the canyon.
Walls of tall conifers turned black,
their furred edges outlined against
a star-choked sky, where meteors
scratched glow-trails close and far away.

Fatigue smothered awe. We slept....
Woke to a rotated sky and a risen moon
bearing down on us like one mad headlight
from a nightmare. Cricket choruses,
unceasing. Freshest air filling lungs.
And the creek: talking, talking, telling
tales of time we could never comprehend.

hans ostrom 2022

Stillness

Stillness: a mountain lake’s

Sudden surface sheen: no wind—

A minnow  apparent.
The whole lake seems to pause.

Stillness in a city street, early
Morning. No traffic, tram, or shout.
You’re out and about, street surface
Wet and cool from rain. Now a man
Rolls up the metal barrier to his shop,
Gutting the poise with jagged noise.

Unsought stillness in your mind:
How rare. You sit amidst office
Busy-ness or stand away
A moment from manual labor. You
Stare, aware of nothing in particular
Beyond the stillness,
And the whole ongoing shock of
Voices, machines, and stress
Of survival-urge and toil evaporates
From your attention—until...

Until a brute gust
Cross-cuts the top of the lake
With surface tension,
And everything begins again.