Red: A Book

187. "Youth and Beauty," by Al Akhtal

2012-02-10T20:06:00.000-08:00

"Youth and Beauty," by Al Akhtal, Arab poet, circa 650 A.D., from Mesopotamia/Syrian desert:

"Youth and Beauty"

186.That Town's Whistle

2012-01-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

After the railroad company stopped sending trains through that town, the tracks got overwhelmed with red rust, gray grass, black brush, and green trees.

The townspeople eventually purchased a a big whistle--a horn, actually--that sounded like a train because almost everyone missed that sound.

Now people take turns. One person goes down there one night a year and makes the horn make that sound. The horn is housed in a little shed, with ventilation to let the sound out.

Oh, now, if the train could only hear that sound, maybe the train would return. But--no, it's been gone too long. It's too far away. In the town's imagination, the train passes through an eternal red-rock desert, hauling its steel boxes of freight to the lip of an abyss, unloading.

185. Migraine

2012-01-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

After doing carpentry or carrying hod for 8 hours in summer Sierra heat, I'd sometimes know a migraine headache, which announced itself with a red curtain behind the eyes.

I'd go home and lie on the floor of a room built of concrete blocks: cool and dark: eyes ready to scream at any hint of light, head warning, "Don't move me." Sometimes the headache subsided slowly, leaving a grudge behind, a thumping reminder. Sometimes I'd see an aura--white, tinges of yellow, faint threads of red....

...And the ache then would burst, eyes going grainy, sandy, and relaxed. By then all the evening birds were singing, and swallows--black coats, rust-colored breasts--swooped gloriously over the pond as sunset came.

184. Sir Realism

2012-01-27T21:05:00.000-08:00

Sir Realism, Knight of the Spherical Table, quested for pleasure, loved to watch orange of carrot vanish once it touched the elaborate mechanism of his horse's mouth, enjoyed kissing the red tongue of the queen. Self-knighted, he disliked juxtaposition of monarchy on the vibrant blur of masses. One night a star morphed into a golden spoon and swooped to Earth.

Sir Realism, armored in found objects, jumped aboard the spoon, applauded frogs and their croaked chorus in luxuriant dew, and embarked--became a levitated image in someone's dream of a dream.

183. Academic Dinner

2011-11-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

When he's invited to a formal academic dinner, he's asked (not in so many words) to play the role of guest and the role of performer and the role of audience for the Famous One, who is in town for one night to make what seems to some a lot of cash.

At the dinner, more than one person out of, say, 15, will fawn. More than once he's noticed the fawning and felt badly. He feels like a grubby hick and double-checks to insure his elbow is not on the table. He keeps an unobtrusive eye on the Famous One.

Out of nervousness, he will inhale the food, which always has too much sauce on it. Usually he cracks one good joke, just sophisticated enough, and he asks one question the Famous One likes answering. He earns his keep.

Outside, finally, he gulps cool air in darkness, loosens the noose of his red tie, gets the blazer off. He disappears from the group. He drives away like a burglar who got nothing but escaped arrest.

At home, more often than not he gets out of the car and stands behind a tree in the dark. There he opens his trousers and pisses. As he pisses, he breathes easy. He stares into rain or fog, or up at stars. He knows he will never master the art of being an academic.

182. The Mapes Hotel

2011-11-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

And I recall the Mapes Hotel, Reno, first hotel in which I ever stayed, 9 years old? --The weird harmless hell of casino bells, fizzing lights, jangling coin-vomit, tobacco smoke, red carpet, red everything. That smell, how I loved it: notes of whiskey, sweat, grease, old carpet, trapped air. And Elevator: first one I'd ever ridden on; it was simple, absolute magic:

step in, be in (solemnity of those moments & engine whirring), then be elsewhere suddenly. Because of the Mapes Hotel, I remain enchanted by elevators. And by Keno women.

Then there was, there is, the Idea of a Hotel Room: bad art that looked so good back then; massive lamps; beds better than what we had at home but still sad like abandoned cars. Garish drapes as heavy as lead. Stationery, envelopes, post-cards, pens!

...And the hotel detective, whom I saw just once, bulging arms in a shiny suit, hair slicked back, a red mole on his neck, a shiny forehead, and on his face what I would learn later to call a smart-ass smirk. He was rushing to the elevator--trouble somewhere in the Mapes Hotel. But he saw us and let us get in. He took the stairs. Down, down.

181. Woman In An Elevator

2011-10-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

She entered a stainless steel elevator, ghostly florescent light behind the ceiling's translucent plastic. In the elevator was an empty chair, black fabric, reddish-stained wooden arms, wee black wheels. As the elevator rose, the woman looked at the chair and thought many things. Imagine, please, selections from the variety of what she thought then in the steel elevator, a large box. Out of the elevator after it moved, she ceased thinking about the empty chair inside it. Scenes of our lives change quickly, constantly. The woman in the elevator thought this, thought we have no control, but knew then she would move through her day as if she and we did have control because that is how we must move most of the time. Up and down went the chair in the elevator.

180. Boulder Man

2011-09-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

Nothing but a boulder-man now, that's me. I've become a rock in the road I used to travel. Pry and roll me, young vagabonds--tip me over the side. I'll smash some brush or hit a tree--hell, maybe bang into the red-rusted chassis of a '54 Ford, all covered over with weeds. And you if young may think, Wow, cool--that sound!

It's just me, boulder-man, me and gravity--one dance before last call, tumble-tumble: one dance.

179. Is, Was, Lew Welch, Weldon Kees

2011-09-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

You live in Is but think in Was. To Be has become something of a joke, a narrow corridor with doors at the end opening on to a bone-yard.

Was isn't, but you may pretend it is. What is consciousness besides memory?

Details fatigue: a gray sparrow on white gravel in what was East Berlin; a sauna full of nude, genial people in Uppsala; a red bloody torn lip in Sacramento; a coiled rattlesnake beneath honey-smelling brush, Sierra Nevada.

To live in Is is to complete tasks and then wait. Boredom and fear compose ennui, a cold French stew.

Politics numbs because it's corrupt, often evil, but also deadly boring. Deadly.

You wonder where Lew Welch's remains ended up, the .30-.30 rifle next to them in some Sierra Nevada ravine, not far from the South Fork of the Yuba River. Was he wearing Levi's with red thread? Lew's move is not a move you want to imitate, but it was a move. Was. Somebody will stumble on a bone or two.Will.

Not so with Weldon Kees, the car left on the red Golden Gate Bridge, the gray current below, so terribly efficient--like life itself. Play us some going-home music, Mr. Kees. A great chord on a golden piano.

178. Red in Love

2011-08-26T13:35:00.000-07:00

There's something red in love, in making love, in sex. "Making love." (?) That sounds like manufacturing.

But back to something red in love--there is. It could be vision or toe, tongue or nipple, or down there in crucial climes, our intemperate zones.

It could be a dream of a red pillow as vast as a mansion. It could be a sulfurous match-tip struck, afire, and introduced to tabak or to Santa Maria Juana.

It could be a question lined with red velvet. "Do you want to dance?" "Do you want me to . . .?" "Do you want to go swimming?--yes, yes, of course, nude."

It could be anything red in love. It could be anything--red in love. It could. Could be. Red. Red in love.

177. People and Things

2011-08-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

People and things, child. People with things. People with people and things. A red thing: dot.

People-made things. Tools, child. Things not people-made: a cardinal in Kansas.

A red thing: tip of a lit cigarette in dark. Sigh of lungs.

Oh, child: a rug dyed red.

The People of the Things: think of all the things in just one American home. The home's brick chimney, red.

Things people know/don't know/deny/believe/don't want to know. They don't want to know, child.

Dear People,

Well, here we are.

Sincerely,

Things

P.S. Red light!

176. "Carnal Apple, Woman Incarnate," by Pablo Neruda

2011-06-14T09:03:00.001-07:00

Here
is
the
link:

LINK

175. "The First Kiss Came With Flame," by Carl Sandburg

2011-06-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

LINK

174. Red-Cedar Think

2011-05-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Think red cedar consider aroma mountain geology owned science Descartes God wheat bread ground fire husbandry gather stay goat dog domesticate darkness fear myth anything can kill hope medicine faith.

Cedar consider stare wind touch-red-bark, smell cedar-sap. Memory light/no light, life/no life. Red resin. Consider cedar. Think cedar your life memory green memory red thick bark. Yellow pollen wheat faith science knows nothing sure is ground fear darkness and cold death faith cedar rooted in ground in soil in rock. Water.

173. Federico Garcia Lorca: Casida of the Reclining Woman

2011-05-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

Link:

Casida

172. "Travel," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

2011-05-01T18:39:00.001-07:00

Link: "Travel"

171. Some Fable-Days

2011-04-27T11:26:00.001-07:00

For ten minutes one afternoon, I became
an elephant. I walked heavily away from
where I work, wagging my heavy head.
Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
sad ass. On another day, I became a cat:

Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.
But I'd lost the topic, and word-like noises
from her mouth might as well have been
red jello for all the sense they made to me.
So I stared. I was Cat--there and not there,
dozing in the pride of my mind, not hungry
and therefore supremely disinterested.

I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a lovely mess of my underground
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Some fable-days, I tell you, are often
just what a human being needs--to stay human.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

170. Dead White Weight

2011-04-24T16:27:00.000-07:00

Rebecca worked at the institution. It was built chiefly of red bricks. On some days, the institution was a bank, on others a software company, on still others a college, and so on. This variation of professional pursuits made the institution an exciting place to work, like a middle-class carousel.

When Rebecca arrived each morning, she discovered what her job was that day--loan-officer, professor of history, project-manager, and so on. Changing from one job to another was easy for her. The jobs--or rather, positions--all involved talking, projecting some mild authority, and more or less acting the part.

The more difficult aspect of the institution for Rebecca was that it was white--80% to 90% of the employees were white, and the ethos of the place was white. So was Rebecca; however, she thought more people from different ethnic backgrounds should work there, provided they wished to do so. She thought greater diversity would improve the institution, rescue it from the bubble of the past in which it seemed to exist, and make it more just.

But Rebecca had tried to change the institution in this regard for so long that she was realizing it wasn't going to change. It liked to promote itself as interested in persons not white; it hired a few a few of these and it brought visitors who were Black, Asian American, Indian, and Latino. But in all the important, self-conscious, structural, and reflexive ways, the institution remained white.

--Because it liked itself that way: Ockham's Razor. It was comfortable being white, and being white, it valued the comfort. Everybody was fluent in whiteness, especially those who weren't white, for their jobs--positions--and safety depended upon such fluency.

Rebecca's co-workers like to congratulate themselves on being white using oblique methods. But in these instances, the translation of the gesture, speech, proposal, or attitude was apparent. "Hi, Bob--you and I are white--can you dig that?" "Jenny, I like what you said yesterday in the meeting--white on!"

Occasionally Rebecca's efforts to change the situation were complimented. Otherwise they were easily finessed or opposed. Rebecca was discouraged now. She didn't think she had the right to give up trying to change the institution, but at the same time, trying meant constantly attempting to lift a dead white weight, an enormous, heavy blob.

Rebecca was experiencing fatique. The fatigue of an activist and ally. Institutions remain forever young and often forever white, and all they have to do to thwart anyone proposing real change is to smile and not change. Eventually the one wanting change will wear down.

However, Rebecca also didn't want to make the white activist's and ally's mitake of complaining to one or more of her friends and colleagues who weren't white, for, in fact, innumerable people had seen the trouble she'd seen, and much worse, obviously.

She pressed on, doggedly, making proposals, raising issues in meetings while people rolled their eyes.

Then one day she came to work, and she was astonished to find that the institution had painted all the red bricks white. The entire facility glowed in sunlight now. That wasn't the only surprise. Signs, memos, mission-statements, and websites proclaimed, "We are no longer a multi-professional institution. We are no the Institute for the Study of People (Who Are White)."

In more detailed documents, Rebecca learned that "in this post-racial society, it's important to study people (who are white)."

"But," said Rebecca to a colleague, "it's not post-racial--we're 80% to 90% per cent white here."

"That kind of talk is so yesterday," the colleague said. "We're 100% people! Black and White are old news. We have no white people here. We have people!"

"That's a remarkably white thing to say," Rebecca said quietly.

"Get on board or say goodbye," said the colleague.

On her last day of work at the institution, Rebecca stripped naked in a quadrangle between white buildings and quickly painted herself a medium brown. Getting her back grown was tough, but she'd brought a long-handled paint-brush.

People (who were white) from Security came. Three were white. They waited while the municipal police arrived. Rebecca was given a long coat to cover herself and arrested for public indecency. She said, "Medium brown is not an indecent color."

Rebecca is sad ow because she's unemployed, although she has prospects. She misses talking to her colleagues, especially the ones who used to be not-white, back in the racial era. She imagines telling these colleagues, "White people are amazing. They never stop." And she hears the knowing laughter of her colleagues.

She doesn't miss trying to lift the dead white weight of the institution. Sometimes she puts on a hat and sunglasses and visits the institution after business hours. She walks up to one of the red-brick walls now painted white, and she pushes, hard. The white wall doesn't move. She hums, "Joshua fit the battle of . . . ."
A Black person comes by, Linda, whom Rebecca knows well. Linda says, "Hi, Rebecca."

"How did you know it was me?" asked Rebecca.

"Because you're pushing on a white wall."

"Oh."

"Come," says Linda, "walk with me for a while."

169. Empty Gift-Box To Be Filled By You

2011-04-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

I know a man who ran a pickle-factory for decades. He writes poetry now, and he publishes the poems of others.

I know a woman who was invited to play bass in B.B. King's band. She became a pastor instead.

I know a man who played drums for a famous rock-band in the 1970s. He's an electrician.

There's this other woman I know--she worked as a spy. She teaches kindergarten.

And so on. You know people like this, too.

When people change what they do, do they change who they are?

This question is like an empty gift-box--let's wrap it in red paper. The gift-box is for you. Here you go! Now you'll put the answer to the question inside, and to help fill up the box, you may of course elaborate on the yes, the no, the maybe, and/or the I-don't-know.

It's terribly impolite of me to give you--virtually, at that--an empty gift-box, and for that, I apologize.

168. Ponca City, Oklahoma

2011-04-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Car broke down. It's sitting up high in the bay of a mechanic's shop. Mechanic's an inked biker. He's probably done time because he has that kiln-dried look. His wife runs the office. She's pretty and pretty smart and out of place: a woman who falls in love with men who become projects.

Of course the heat's thick. It's Oklahoma, and it's summer. The office is an asylum of invoices touched by rusty dust. You want the mechanic to know enough to be able to let you get back on I-35 and take it on in to OKC for some cold beer and glassy-eyed gazing at a baseball game on somebody's big TV--tornado-warnings cutting in at intervals.

You want her to stop talking, the mechanic's wife. But she needs to let you know she went to college, too, and you feel sorry for her. In the bay, the mechanic lights a cigarette with a blow-torch and stares at you.

167. The Czar of my Life

2011-04-08T11:35:00.000-07:00

I applied to be an emperor but never heard back.

At work, I pretend having no power is an honor. I wear having no power like an invisible red sash.

I'm so common and overlooked, beige walls want to adopt me.

In my restful moments, I'm the czar of my life. I run the show. I say what goes, usually right before sleep deposes me in an easy coup d'etat.

166. Robots and Real People

2011-04-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

/
/
/
/

Whenever a real person shows up, the robots panic.

They seek and execute ways to drive the real person away. You can tell they're robots not humans by the way they gather closely, mean and jealous motors inside purring, red fearful lights inside them coming on. The robots entertain each other by agreeing with what each other says, by flattering each other mechanically and speaking in the approved phrases.

If you are a real person who has found employment among the robots, you probably will want to get out of there fast. Apply for other jobs. Don't fight it. Inside the robots, red lights are coming on. Don't fight it. The robots in a robot work-place win.

165. Complete Works of Shakespeare

2011-04-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

I bought another Complete Works of Shakespeare. I know I should have given the money to a food-bank instead. I'm going to make a better choice next time.

The book has a hard red cloth cover. The book feels great to hold, if you like to hold books.

Bill's words hum frenetically in there like too many bees in too small a bee-box.

Old Bill, he did like to go on a bit. He liked his characters to go on and on, rolling across iambic plains, talking, talking. And all of that is in this big red-covered book, in an age when books in this form are moving toward extinction.

It is all in this book--the kings, queens, cross-dressers, murderers, coincidences, speechifying, metaphors, meditations, love, hate, bigotry, sex, profanity, and wit. And wit.

And there's a red-ribbon bookmark. This is one of those books that will go from hands to hands slowly over decades after I am gone. It will be a big red book on a leisurely journey, opening itself to anyone interested in a glance--Hamlet and Juliet read to come on stage in print as many times as anyone wants. ]

It is a heavy, friendly book, a bit of a docile beast--Caliban, Falstaff, the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

It is a book that would never contemplate suicide or fratricide or parricide. It would never pick up a sword, or murder a rival, even as it agrees to contain such things--bees in a box, the words, Bill's words, humming, humming, the big red-covered Complete Works of Shakespeare, money for which, I know, should have gone to the hungry.

164. Robins and the Cause of Justice

2011-04-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

Every year I forget how yellow the robins' beaks are until the robins reappear in March. And of course robins' breasts aren't red. They are orange.

For decades, I've been watching robins turn their heads to detect red worms under grass, and I still don't know if they are turning their heads to look or to listen or both. It's almost like I don't want to know the answer to the question.

Every year the bright yellow of the beaks is like the latest worm: actual and fresh.

How does such a detail advance the cause of justice on Earth?

163. Hey, Chief, Relax

2011-03-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

Hey, you have red eyes from over-work, not enough sleep, and who knows what else. Hey, chief, relax: we're all just along for the ride. Nobody drives. (It's okay to think you do, especially when you're young, but you're not young.) I mean, come on: the physical forces of the universe alone withdraw control from you, from all. Add in luck, the Leviathan that is humanity, and the helplessness of babies, and we're all just along for the ride.

What you may be able to decide, chief, is how low-down, mean, and nasty you're going to be (or not), and if you do go bad, how many lies you're going to tell to cover it up, and how much damage you think you really need to do just to be you.

Are you going to be a bad person or a good person, chief? (No, now don't quibble about definitions with me. Let's just agree we've both read philosophy.) Whether to be a bad person or a good one--that's a little piece of human business you can decide. It's not much, chief, but it's something.

162. Big Man At the Bus-Stop

2011-03-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

There was a big man
at the bus-stop today.
He had thick wild hair
and a broken leg,
aluminum crutches
and a wadded, wet
bus-schedule. He

wore cut-off jeans
in the rain, the temperature
below 40 Fahrenheit, and
a red-and-black NASCAR
jacket. His hands, thick
paws, were grimy, black
under the fingernails.

He had to get somewhere
in a hurry, he told me,
told anyone, everyone
in a loud voice. He
didn't say why he had
to get there soon. His
long hair was so oily
and heavy, the watery
wind couldn't push it
around.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

161. Honey-Toned Chair

2011-02-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

A honey-toned
rocking chair
next to a hearth
is composed of
red oak, which
used to be a tree,
which used to rock
in warm winds.

The tree's great-
grandparents were
acorns, which sat
together, attached
to a branch, in
presence of leaves
flushed yellow-red-orange
in late October,

when the honey's
been harvested and
the rocking chair's
seasons of seeming
a good idea begin.
Again, agaiN.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

160. Birth Story

2011-02-28T11:34:00.000-08:00

My parents, having sex, mixed the ingredients that would eventuate in me. Forgive, Lord, for they knew not what they did. I know because my mother told me so. I had not been "planned."

I don't like to (and in fact don't) picture them having sex, but one must face the fact that one began to begin when a wad of semen embraced an egg.

Dr. Padgett pulled me from my mother, who lay etherized upon a table, into the rest of the world. And it was done--or begun: accident, miracle, inevitability, propagation, something (something else), nothing in the scheme of things.

My father was two canyons away in the Sierra Nevada, having wearied of my delayed arrival. My gender allowed him to win a bet from a woman who asserted "he" couldn't have three sons in a row. He was drinking her whiskey with her husband when the winning news arrived by phone (a party-line, common in the 50s). I can see him in a red-and-black checked flannel shirt, the massive Swedish laugh--it's after midnight. The color of the scene over-cooked, as in those early Kodak color-shots, the reds and browns so deep.

I see my mother lying in bed, exhausted, wondering, wondering how she will handle it all now with a third son, and with her husband, an implacable mountain man.

The hammer-toe was there from the beginning, the blue eyes and dark hair with multiple cowlicks, and also no doubt the in-born reticent watchfulness: something told me in a sub-conscious secret baby-language to keep an eye on this whatever-it-is--this excess of things, light, motion, people, shadow, change. Way too much excitement for anybody's good. I remain suspicious of the whole arrangement.

On the advice of a Swedish great-aunt to whom I would deliver cream weekly five years later, they named me Hans, pronounced hands, Ansgar (beleaguered saint sent to Christianize the Vikings) Ostrom, which used to be Åström.

Birthed and named. I happened, as did you: Well done.

159. "The Red Wheelbarrow," by William Carlos Williams

2011-02-08T19:15:00.000-08:00

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

158. I Give You . . .

2011-02-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

Poets, even famous ones, write nonsense like "I give you the sun." I guess it's their job (our job--okay I'm a poet, too) in a way to write crap like that.

Now I can't even give you these words unless you take them like a moist red pamphlet handed out by a blood-shot-eyed youth on dirty corner of an urbane street.

Poets can't help themselves so they try to help others by means of words, which people need less than cash, food, time, medicine, and rest.

So here it is: I give you your 8th birthday-celebration, when the wild turkey ran through the yard with that flapping red thing under its chin, when your uncle tried to tackle it, cracking his collar bone, and you received a crucial gift that you still keep in a drawer no matter where you move.

Yes, yes, this didn't happen to you, but now it did, or something like it did, and so I give that to you even though you already have it. Happy Birthday.

157. Will There Be Anything Else?

2011-01-31T11:30:00.000-08:00

"May I get you anything else?" said the waiter to Hiram.

"Yes," said Hiram. "A Turkish carpet, large, woven from silk and cotton; a woman wearing nothing but red copper bracelets; a private room; and then, if you will, send my thanks to God."

"More water, sir?" replied the waiter.

156. "Barefoot for a Scorpion," by Alan Dugan

2011-01-27T08:06:00.000-08:00

please click on link to Youtube:

"Barefoot for a Scorpion"

from Collected Poems, by Alan Dugan (Yale, 1965).

155. The Sword Thing

2011-01-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

I never wanted to live by the sword. I mean, some swords are nice to look at, and up until about age 6, you can have pretty good sword-fights with sticks.

But swords are heavy, awkward, and up to good.

I certainly don't want to die by the sword, hacked to bits and splats of blood and waves of pain. Who wants to die by the sword?

I think swords now should be reserved mostly for Olympic fencing, museums, and locked display-cases. I think it's best if people live and die by other means.

If someone challenges me to a duel, I might agree to play along, but not with pistols, not at dawn, and definitely not with swords. Ketchup-bottles--at three feet, and at around, say, 4:30 p.m.

154. May

2011-01-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

May may mean you've come to
the end of a durable winter.
May encourages vines, stirs
hope in the vintner.

In May you might soon see
red buds and blossoms
but also mourn in sunlight
the heavy loss of loved ones.

On May Day if you're a laborer
you may march to a red flag,
which might be misinterpreted
as a communistic gag.

May's a good month for those
who feel they don't belong.
It's neither spring nor summer.
Alone, it listens to bird-song

and withdraws from June and April,
both too garrulous by half.
It prefers to cogitate, may-
be to share a mild, ironic laugh.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

153. "Childhood," by Margaret Walker

2011-01-02T20:22:00.001-08:00

"Childhood," by Margaret Walker

152. "Red Sails in the Sunset"

2011-01-01T20:03:00.000-08:00

"Red Sails in the Sunset," Patti Page

151. Painted Rooms

2010-12-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

In the green room, you wait to go on.
In the white room, nurses tend to you.
In the yellow room, you're meant to think bright thoughts.
In the brown room, someone's strumming on strings, reminiscing.
In the gray room, there is crime or storage or both.
In the blue room, you feel sad doom.
In the pink room, pink always makes a point.
An orange room makes for one bright joint.
In the black room, darkness is a friend.
A purple room is always gladly too much.
A red room's a fine place to get it on.
A tan and tawny room wakes up at dawn.

150. Treasure-Map

2010-12-26T15:46:00.000-08:00

Darling, yes, of course I admire the necklace, with a delicate ruby, that I gave you, but my eyes drift to that tender hollow between throat and chest-bone, then to the color of your skin--and to lines suggested by your collar-bones. Then up my gaze goes to your face, a smiling face, which now becomes a slightly suspicious visage. There's everything to admire there.

And then of course your hair, which now I kiss and sniff--your suspicions verified: I've lust not jewelry on my mind.

It's not as if the necklace is irrelevant, oh no. It's just that it's the starting point on the treasure-map, the map and treasure both being you.

149.. Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer (Boogie Woogie Style)

2010-12-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

148. Futility Falls

2010-12-17T08:43:00.000-08:00

In the town of Futility Falls, the river dried up, withdrawing the falls. The Council tried to shorten the town's name to Futility, but citizens objected. Tradition.

At the high school, sports teams are called The Philosophers. The mascot's meant to look like Descartes but bears more resemblance to a Hollywood pirate.

Over at the Nice Try Motel, you may rent any vacant room except Kate's Room, which is vacant. A nationally known embezzler, Kate stayed in Futility Falls one night while on the lam. She promised to come back and pay to have artificial falls installed. Townspeople still send her letters in prison. Her room, which features red vertical striped wallpaper--a kind of vivid prefiguring of cell-life--has become a shrine of sorts. It's hard to say what it memorializes besides a spirited woman who cared enough and took the time to promise too much while trying vainly to flee authorities.

Anyway, Kate's tale resonates in Futility Falls.

147. Season of the Horny Goat

2010-12-17T08:34:00.000-08:00

In practice, seasons get all mixed up: Sprummer, Wautumn, Fring, Sfall. For weather's a day-to-day thing, and now climate seems iffy, tipsy, and turvey.

If it should be hot, my dear, take off all your clothes and bathe in sunshine and my gaze. Thank you!

If it should be cold, dress warmly, go out, come back in, take off all your clothes, drink hot chocolate or rum (which I shall have prepared), then roll around nude with me in front of the fire, light of red coals flickering on your thighs.Splendid!

Yes, it's true--I note your sigh--there is one constant season--the season of the horny goat, such as I.

146. UB40 ft & Astro- Red Red Wine ( w/ lyrics )

2010-12-11T06:13:00.000-08:00

145. Red Seas and Biting Fleas

2010-12-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

Red seas and biting fleas. Asthma-wheeze, with four consonances clogging up the passageway from A to a.

Alaska freeze--it does please certain animals.. Red salmon eggs, smooth women's legs.

A search for meaning, a red cedar leaning.

A sizzling mist, from a grimy grill, a red-brown moth on a window sill.

Futile worries for the world, shining red hair, curled.

144. Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire

2010-12-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

143. "Susana Soca," by Jorge Luis Borges

2010-11-29T16:02:00.000-08:00

143. Tasting Women

2010-11-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I must stay away from my friend Hiram, for his mind not only runs in a sexual rut, so to speak--not unusual, that--but it also runs to the bizarre, the outlandish, the silly.
Just the other day he said, "You know, to me a woman-tasting makes much more sense than a wine-tasting."
I sighed. Against my judgment, I said, "Go on. Explain."
"Oh, let's say twelve naked women lie down on beds in a large room, and a taster briefly explores their vaginas with, in my case, his tongue and mouth. You'd rinse your mouth between tastings. You'd note your findings on a card."
"What is wrong with you?" I asked.
"What do you mean, as if I didn't know?" he replied. "What's wrong with me, according to you, is that I'm Hiram, one enthralled and obsessed by women, by the female form, as expressed by individual women-people."
"'Women-people'?"
"Women."
"Hiram, you'd have to hire them. Sex workers. Do you want to be going down on sex workers? Or were you thinking of asking for volunteers among your acquaintances?"
"The latter," he said--in a mumble. "Now I see the flaws. The logistics are impossible. Ah, but what if? What if! Each woman with her own particular taste. I am sucking, licking, and fondling the pudendum of each. Some shaved, some not--perhaps one of them pierced on the labia. I am--I'd give each one a red rose!?
"Very thoughtful of you. I suspect they might want more."
"Indeed," he said, missing my point. "And I'd want to give it to them--sucking toes, licking thighs--kisses, nibbles. Burying my head in there, but gently, giving my all. I'd feel obligated to satisfy each one."
"Hiram, try thinking normal thoughts."
"Only right before I go to sleep, my normative friend. The normative numbs me; it is of our zomboid culture."
"Women aren't bottles of wine."
"I know that, you sententious bastard!" Hiram was animated, to say close to the least. He drew attention from other patrons at the bar. "That's the point--to taste women, a woman, not wine. To taste! I feel as if I can taste them now!"
"Keep it down, fellas," the bartender said--not his first time having to admonish us.
I bought Hiram a glass of red wine, pinot noir, and left a tip whose size was appropriate for our having been admonished.
And here I am, thinking Hiram's non-normative thoughts, imagining myself as the taster. The taster.

142. The Unfortunate Episode of Hiram's Sunburned . . .

2010-11-17T14:45:00.000-08:00

My friend Hiram was in a storytelling mood again the other day. He doesn't so much reminisce as re-conjure--mostly episodes, alas, involving romance, desire, and sex. How much does he make up? Who knows? I ought to know, as I'm his friend, but I don't. I do know Hiram is mostly guileless. His recent tale . . .

They rented a house, my friend Hiram and this woman with whom he was enthralled. Rented it for a week. North of San Francisco, I gather--where the coastline is ragged and rugged: cliffs, battered trees, windblown slopes of scrub-grass, misshapen trees clinging to rock, mist and fog in the morning but hot sunlight, in summer, in the afternoon: and therein lies part of the tale.

It was a big house, and, in Hiram's direct words, "She and I set as one of our tasks to fuck in every room. For example, she got on top of me, but facing away, in the--"

"I get the picture," I said. Did I really need to know which room?

Hiram allowed as how there were acres between the houses in this odd seaside community, which was called something like Sand Ranch. Privacy abounded, at any rate. So he decided to sun-bathe nude. "Once I was out there, in the afternoon, and she just walked right out of the house naked and sat on my face. Good times!"

"Is that right?" I said.

"Well, of course it's right. Why would I make up such an episode?"

"To impress me?"

"I don't--"

"I know, I know: you don't respect me enough to try to impress me. You've used that line. As you continue to regale me with these tales."

"Anyway," he said, plowing on, "after she sat on my face--ah! I recall the sight of her gleaming stomach above me, her breasts, her face wild with delight!"

"Anyway," I said, "after . . . ?"

"I fell asleep, of course, and she went inside to do--something. Cook? I forget. So, yes, I fell asleep--and sunburned my cock something fierce. It was almost as red as a boiled lobster, and I'm not kidding. It hurt. Later it peeled. And the rest of the time there, she kept calling it, 'Red rooster, red rooster.'"

"I see." I did see. The imagery was vivid.

"But I'm telling you, that was the only flaw in the week in that large house. We did it in every room and outside. We fucked so much that--"

"I get the picture," I said.

141. Red Arts of Desire

2010-11-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

Sonnet: Red Arts of Desire

It's true. I do desire you. I want
to borrow from your library all parts
Of you; the whole of you is what I hunt.
But more than that, I also seek red arts
By which you have bewitched me. I am yours.
Cliche? Of course. Desire like this is mad.
It tries to walk through glass and see through doors.
But this condition I prefer to Sad.
What should I do? Well, all I can, I guess.
I am not clever, so I'll be direct.
This business of desire's a wretched mess
Unless, until, desires intersect.
Ah, well. You know precisely how I feel.
In prayer and surrender I do kneel.

copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

140. 26 Things That Will Never Go Out of Style

2010-11-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

argyle
baking
cunnilingus
doors
empathy
fellatio
generosity
hints
intercourse
jeans
knowledge
love
music
nonsense
oxygen
play
questions
red
soup
touch
undergarments
vegetables
wonder
xo
yams
zinc

Make your own list of 26!

139. She Was Just Out of the Bath

2010-11-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

Not long out of the bath, she wore a robe. She sat back in their favorite chair, expansive and plush, and he sat on the floor, painting her toenails deep red.

She talked, then he talked, and they laughed. Sometimes she'd hold up the glass of white wine and look through it at him, just to see what the image might be. She imagined him swimming in a golden sea.

He finished painting her toes, and while they dried, he played a bit of jazz on the piano. Then he talked, and she talked, and they laughed.

Now they both held up glasses of white wine and looked through them at each others. She pronounced the red toenails dry.

He stirred, and moved from where he was sitting to the floor in front of her. From his knees, he leaned up and kissed her. They kissed. She opened her robe.

Then he returned to the bright red toes and kissed them, and, kissing at intervals traveled slowly from toes up the legs to the thighs, then to the belly, the breasts, back to the belly, down to the thighs, inside the thighs and now to the cherished place, and she opened her legs more and lay back and day-dreamed she was floating on a golden sea, and now she slid slowly and fully into expansive pleasure; it felt wonderful; she raised her head briefly and looked at the top of his head, and then she looked past his head to her knees and caught a glimpse of her freshly painted, her red-painted toes, and after a while, a long, languid while, she came, and she came, and she came.

138. Triolet for Going Down

2010-11-14T17:25:00.000-08:00

I like it when I'm going down on you,
invited to that lovely place of yours.
I stay to do what I can pleasurably do.
I like it when I'm going down on you.
The colors there are various and true,
from reds to pinks to darks--intricate doors.
I like it when I'm going down on you,
invited to that lovely place of yours.

137. Manufacture Me, Baby

2010-11-10T13:24:00.000-08:00

Manufacture me, Baby,
according to your own designs.
Manufacture me, Baby--
make me yours along the lines
you have in mind.

Mold and fashion me
in the factory
of your lustful will.
What a thrill to get
produced by you.

Industrialize me
in your plant.
Run me through
an assembly line.
Baby, you are fine.

Paint me red
and box me up;
send me direct
to your front door.

Make me part
of your new
product line.

Manufacture me, Baby.
you know what my design is for.
I'll be your item and your tool,
a cool invention of your own.
Ah, bring me home.

Manufacture me, Baby.
I'll no, not ever,
leave you alone.

136. Hiram Muses Priapically

2010-11-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

Hiram found himself moved to muse on his phallus. He, too, thought the subject tedious, and yet there he was, musing on it.

Hiram's cock had led him on many adventures, or rather had served as one symbol for and supporting character in calamities, quests, comedies, ribaldries, carnivals, and waltzes of desire.

As it happens, Hiram's cock was thick. It's real name was penis. It was thick and, when hard, even thicker, as you might deduce, what with the diverted blood.

When it was hard, it curved--to the left. it was a thick Leftist cock. If he'd had an opportunity, Hiram explained to me one day, he'd have chosen one that didn't curve, but this cock had served well and, he believed, others well, too. Through most of his life, it had been a dutiful, over-eager cock, too ready for adventure, in Hiram's experience.

When it was hard, it often turned nearly red, at least at the head, a sign of shameless embarrassment, of almost porcelain rigidity and smoothness. In very recent days, however, his cock had seemed to shake off its lassitude and distortion. He'd been waking up at 4:00 a.m. with an erection. He liked to grab the cock, a big fistful. The cock then grew harder as if to defy Hiram.

Hiram said things to his cock at these times, he explained to me (rather in too much detail) one day. He said things to it like, "What's going on with you?"

But the cock had never liked to converse, even as some women had addressed it directly or obliquely over the years.

Hiram said to me, "I was in bed, and I thought, 'Here I am in bed with a hard cock in my hand. It's a thick cock that curves to the left. It's the same cock I've always had, and it's not retired yet. A thick cock that curves to the left is such a specific, irrefutable existential fact--not an identity, per se, but also not something to refuse to acknowledge.'"

That was the first time I'd heard Hiram say "existential."

135. Possibility on the Mountain

2010-11-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

Friend, there has to be
a possibility on that mountain.
It could be any color--gold
or red, tan or black, maybe
white or blue. We could seek
it--hike and hunt. Or let it
be and see if it comes down.
I've sought, and I've waited,
and the results from both
seem the same. So it's your
decision, friend, as we stare
at the mountain, its intricate
patterns of light and shadow
and our blending here and there
of what we see and what we wish
to be. The concept, "today,"
assures us the way a snapshot
distracts us from considering
the abyss into which past
flowed. Before we do anything,
friend, let's eat.

134. Red-Headed Stepchild

2010-11-09T09:08:00.001-08:00

A magazine:

http://redheadedmag.com/poetry/

133. Tennis Love

2010-11-07T14:27:00.000-08:00

So we’re here again in a space made
Tensely playful by a net, a droll
Boundary we agree to allow. We improvise
Taut games of give and take, parry and thrust, must
And maybe, please and thank you.

Pleasurable strokes generate
Heat and light sweat. We take turns serving,
And accepting service. Stay tied at deuce indefinitely.
Add in, add out, a soft fuzzy texture to certain
Important features. We utter oaths.
Make passes to open court. Your defeat of me
Feels better than victory, so when we meet

At the net, a French kiss during which pink
Tongues and red desire play doubles ensues.
Continues. We’re hot after the match, so
Hot, my dear lovely opponent, my partner,
My line-judge and lascivious coach.

132. The Space Between Your Legs

2010-11-07T11:27:00.001-08:00

In this space between the margins,
I put words that might be called
erotica, a quad, a wad of
syllables. The words concern
the space between your legs.

My preference
isn’t to fill the space between
the margins with words but to meet
the space between your legs, face
to space. But here I am writing, as
poets must and do. And where
are you? . . . Its many shapes, vaginal
versions let us say: forever fascinating--
well, at least to me.

The space can be anything, or seem. Then
the rooms—so several, mysterious, and
secret. The aromatics and secretions,
the softness of enfolding, the slyness of
micro-zones, buttons, and sensors.
How can something so self-
contained contain so much, so many
intricacies? Never answer that.

Your thighs and knees, which
sometimes rise like sides of an ampitheatre
and seem to coax, to cheer, me on: I see them
peripherally. I see the subtly
rolling, soft terrain—-up there, plateau above
the space between your legs. Miles further on,
it seems, lay breasts and shoulders, your head
and hair, your face, an arm that lies paralell
to your body and one whose
forearm lies briefly now across your eyes, as you respond,

enjoy; while you, my empress, receive reports from the
space between your legs, which I’ve engaged, speaking
in tongue, bad pun, lapping, lipping, dipping. Mumbling
sweet somethings. The ending’s more than happy, and
it leads to other chapters of the night, which could
of course be day. Of course, of course these

words are nothing, nothing like it is, nothing like
the space and spaces, the exact full moments. The
measure of it all. Erotica’s
outside the spaces, lustfully and gustily making things
up about the subject, off and on the subject. Aha!
You’ve returned. Immediately you sense my elaborate
but obvious plot to get you back in bed, where recently
you decided to lay a red bed-spread.

131. "Little Devils," by Pablo Neruda

2010-10-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

130. "'View From the Golden Rooms,'" by Tammy Robacker

2010-09-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

Poem read + video:

"On 'View From the Golden Rooms ' "

The painting is by Trinda Love.

129. "Cherry Ripe," by Robert Herrick

2010-09-24T11:37:00.001-07:00

Reading and video of "Cherry Ripe," a short poem by Robert Herrick:

Cherry Ripe

128. Red Flag Over the Fort

2010-09-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm flying a red flag over my fort today.

The fort's what you might call imaginary.

The trouble is, for some people a red flag is something of a red flag. So I expect some people will come up and interrogate me: What does it stand for? Are you a Communist or a devil? Aren't you a patriot? Are you a nut? Would you like a punch on your nose?

I'm preparing some answers: It stands for red and for flagishness. I'm probably not a Communist, but please define "Communist," and then we'll be sure, the both of us. I'm definitely not a devil. My red flag's not a national flag because I never got my license to be a nation unto myself. I hear the preparation-course is awful. Even my fort's pretty weak in spite of being imaginary. Because of, some might say.

I'm what you might call a sane nut. Think hickory. I would not enjoy a punch on or even near my nose, and by "near" I mean anywhere on my body. Plus, you don't punch people when you are a guest in their imaginary fort. Please use your manners and good sense. The red flag not only represents red and flagishness, but it also represents manners and good sense.

I'm going to walk along the interior perimeter of my fort now and look up at the red flag every so often.

127. Seeing Bukowski Read

2010-09-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

When I saw and heard Bukowski read, late 1970s, I recognized him as a shy, frightened man similar to red-faced drunks I'd seen in bars, High Sierra. Life kicks the shit out of people, some of whom re-emerge in bars, mostly to drink quietly but occasionally to boast and insult; to observe astutely; and even to prophesy. Thus Bukowski.

If such men and women should bark or snap sometimes, or if a mist of rage should cloud their eyes momentarily, there's nothing to fear in most cases. It's only (only?) the result of pain.

Bukowski came close to draining a six-pack of bottled beer as he read for an hour or so. He tipped both the bottles and his head back, as if blowing a horn. His face was craggy, pocked, flushed, and interesting. It was Bukowski's face. It belonged to Bukowski. We liked what he read.

126. He Ended Up There

2010-08-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

Anyhow, I ended up here, which features red bricks, noble sentiments, and the kind of people in charge you'd expect.

There are bathrooms and trees.

Each year the ones in charge unveil a new sculpture representing how much better the place is supposed to be. The piece is always named, "The New Us."

Then most of those who ended up here begin a new round of rancid betrayals, acidic hatreds, and psychotic indulgences. It's quite something to try not to see.

Me, I go to my assigned rooms and tasks but spend most of the time--where else?--in my mind because anyhow I ended up here, I'm outnumbered, and I might as well get some work done.

125. Clear and Difficult

2010-08-06T17:37:00.000-07:00

It's easy to be clear: "I want to borrow money from you." "No."

It's easy to be difficult: "Red endless Duncan salts Dante, oui, to the sea in ships: Zeitgeist, oh Babylon."

It's hard to be clear: So much depends upon "depends upon."

It's hard to be difficult: Il miglior fabro = I just wrote some Italian; what do you think about that? I could have written, "To my pal, Ezra, a damn fine writer," but too much St. Louis in that.

It's good to live and write in the groove into which you've moved and to shut out notions of clear and difficult and do neither for its own sake but instead wake to your own moods.

124. They Say Rust

2010-07-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

They say rust never sleeps. It doesn't wake up, either. It's rust--red, orange, annoying. It's a residue, like lipstick on a collar or the trail a politician leaves.

I've tried to like those metal sculptures left outside to rust, but I can't. They look like negligence or surrender, and keep thinking of lubricating-oil. I always want to report the sculptures to the Rust Authorities, but I don't. I'm no snitch. I just look away.

But I admit it: I like the smell of rust, O.K.?

123. Force of Nature

2010-07-24T19:35:00.001-07:00

"Force of Nature," performed by Joe Vaughn, Jr.:

force of nature

122. Song and Video: "Lady of the Dew"

2010-07-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

A link to a Youtube video/music featuring Tim Lulofs performing "Lady of the Dew," music by Tim Lulofs, lyrics by Hans Ostrom:

"Lady of the Dew"

121. Vivienne Is Disburbed

2010-07-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

When Vivienne walked around the city that day, everything seemed in proportion. Clouds were large but spaced; the sun shone. Automobiles fit on the streets--no military-assault vehicles, no dirigibles on wheels. She saw one comparatively short person, but this person was walking with a companion her size, they held hands, and they appeared to be in love.

True, Vivienne walked past a massive blackberry patch, ridiculously immense and yet so casual about its assertion that it assumed the unobtrusive green mass one sometimes sees in paintings, a suggestion of forest. Moreover, just to the side of the patch stood a tall foxglove stalk in bloom. Its singularity served as a counterpoint to innumerable, disheveled, thorned vines. Its pink flowers looked like satin bells too soft to produced sound. A bumblebee climbed into one of these bells and disappeared.

Only when Vivienne neared her home again were things thrown off. She saw what seemed to be a butterfly walking on the ground, hauling its wings. Or was it some insect in a winged stage? Anyway the wings were black and read. The seemed built correctly for flight, but the creature struggled under them like an unfortunate actor or a laborer asked to carry a sheet of aluminum roofing on his shoulders. The background to this clumsiness was gray asphalt. Vivienne walked on, disturbed.

120. The Turkish Flag

2010-05-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

The colors of the Turkish flag are simple--bright red, bright white--but have borne many legends of flag-origination. The Turkish flag, therefore, is clever, not the sort of flag to dismiss unthinkingly, no not at all.

The symbols of the Turkish flag are simple--a crescent, a star--but bear many meanings.

The crescent of white seems to escape Earth's red shadow as in the distance a tilted star pulsates its light. Or the crescent is a kind of open mouth ever about to taste a tumbling star, which--ah,no--never tumbles close enough.

The flag says nothing. It is a flag, and so it lets its colors and lines do the talking. The flag has something but says it tersely, "Keep it simple, people: two colors, two symbols." The flag is garrulous, saying many things at once, as the voices of a city do, as a breeze off the bright Bosphorus does.

The Turkish flag is not busy like the Union Jack or Old Glory. It tends to its business of being a flag efficiently. The flag knows what to do with light, and when the wind blows, it knows precisely how to wave.

I think I understand the Turkish a flag a little better now, having seen it flying from a standard near the Golden Horn.

119. Tomatoes #2

2010-05-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes remain uncommitted to our identifications, taxonomies, and recipes.

They're the seed, the plant and--or--the fruit: or the vegetable? You see how it goes with them.

They're neither solely of the Eastern nor solely of the Western Hemispheres, my dears.

Vines, they pass for bushes and shrubs. Green, yellow, red: the inspiration for traffic lights.

Cold, they adapt to juice, Bloody Mary, and sliced, flaccid picnic lethargy.

Vegetarian, they don't mind dating hamburgers.

Hot, they seduce sauces and salsas, dance with peppers, get down to Earth with cornmeal.

Stare at a tomato plant long enough, and you will become the one gazed at, red spots dotting your vision as you swoon in sunlight.

Some tomatoes are as fat as sultans, others as tiny as earrings.

If you think you know tomatoes, you are ripe for beguiling. Ordinary and rare, hybrid and heirloom, determinate and indeterminate, tomatoes are cosmopolitan phantoms, rural rogues, night-singers, code-bearers, food, and faith.

You say tomato, I say tomato, and the tomato keeps mum on the subject of articulation.

Welcome, my friend, to the mysterious garden. Reach, reach for the red and the round.

118. Pimientos

2010-04-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Listen, I know this sounds absurd, but it's important to think about pimientos. To think . . .

That they can be sliced so small, like pieces of a sacred red flag. That they can become the red pupils of green eyeballs called olives and look at you from a large jar like a mad doctor's collection. That they appear by themselves, sliced and pickled, in very tiny jars with red lids; these slices and these jars say much about a hyper-differentiated culture.

That pimientos were give a name less beautiful than pimiento, and not a red name: Capsicum annuum, which is a chalky white name, according to my synesthesia.

That, unsliced, they add extravagantly to foodstuffs cooked. That, sliced and pickled into miniatures, they add almost nothing to prepared food but still are summoned by powerful recipes.

That they exist at all . . . bright red chili peppers!

In no way, some will argue, are pimientos crucial. And yet they are exalted. I for one exalt them. Did someone say there are too many pimientos? I say there are too few.

117. Brick

2010-04-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

A brick never set
into wall or walkway

seems all rectangular

for nothing, red out
of embarrassment or alarm:

Brick emergency! I need

to be part of something,
mortared into solidarity!

The isolated brick gives
the impression of being aware

of its situation, although
that is impossible.

What will happen?

Weather will get to it.
Or it will break. Anyway

it’ll return to soil, finish

the trip from clay to mold
to kiln to being brick to

having been brick to dirt.

116. Red-Winged Blackbird

2010-04-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

A red-winged blackbird sat, sits, will sit briefly on the top of a cat-tail in a marsh. That dash of red, with yellow, astonished, astonishes, will astonish some observers, who never have nor do not now nor never will want the blackbird to fly off.

That the red dash, with yellow, should materialize on a black wing; that such common rarity should reveal itself in a marsh; that some observers lifted, lifted, will lift field-glasses to their eyes to magnify the dash: all of this is easily explained but never fully accounted for.

And the red-winged blackbird flew off, flies off, will fly off the flexible, tall, substantial reed.

115. Sunlight-Shapes

2010-04-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

A gray cat probed an empty red-labeled can with its nose. The can slid on a wooden floor on which exotic shapes of sunlight lay, and from a radio, voices discussed contemporary Cambodian music and Pol Pot's hell, which was not hell but on this planet.

We sipped hot liquid from cups, read news of war and folly; read about a failed attempt to clean a poisoned bay, as well as a skater's choice not to perform a certain jump.

Sunlight on the floor migrated. We spoke of our exhaustion. We spoke of laundry. Elements of the day accumulated to make another day. We knew enough not to speak of the incoherence of accumulation. Thinking thoughts and performing tasks, we continued, and by then the cat had fallen asleep inside one of the sunlight-shapes.

114. Purple

2010-03-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

One story has purple coming first from mollusks, an oceanic ink distilled by soft-centered stone-creatures. Once in the hands of humans, purple became grand, staining garments of monarchs, aristocracy, and venerated holy ones.

It came to mean sorrow and penance, too, a mix of martyrs' red-and-blue.

Purple still bleeds into skies, is the color of some eyes according to other eyes. Its etymology owes a syllable or two to a confusion of r's and l's in English, a rippling of purpose on the surface of phonemes.

Look for the nearest purple stain, from grape or dye or something else. What do you think? What do you think of it, purple? Purple. Murmur purple; murmur it in your own language.

113. Book In Your Hands

2010-03-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

The book in your hands contains only two pages. Its cover is thick, made of black-lacquered wood.

The image on the cover represents a gray key to a door of a house that no longer stands. You still own the key the cover represents.

On the back, the pattern of a quaint, worn carpet is represented.

You open the book. You look at page two, right side, first. There is a reproduced photograph of your face. Under the photograph appears the word, "You."

On page one, left side, is a color reproduction of a woman's face. It is severe, her face, but not disturbing. The hair, cut short, is a color called "red," but the hair is really a kind of orange. Some of it is brown.

The book was and remains a gift. You close it. You think, "That was not bad, not bad at all. Satisfying, even." It has given you a lot to think about.

112. The Now and the Then

2010-03-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

It's the 21st century, and much that was is gone, and much is new.

This floor's made of marble. Mornings, stone is cold, including marble, any century. Bare feet on stone get cold. A mind therefore wants to move the feet it knows best off stone.

. . .You come back into the room--it is a kitchen--wearing faded red slippers. They are simple, a bit of cloth, a bit of hide. It's the 21st century, and slippers are still made, and hides are still taken and tanned.

You fill a container with water, look reflexively through a window to check for anything not right.

Stone floor, cold feet, water, wariness: aspects of the primitive, the civilized, the now and then then.

Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

111. Charlotte's Walk

2010-03-04T18:41:00.000-08:00

Charlotte walked on a mood-weird beach, taking it all in: sea-suds on her toes, salt-air in her nose, sounds of surf and engines--echoes, yes, and splash.

Charlotte held her sandals in one hand, touched her hair with the other, felt thin red fabric on her skin; and the breeze.

Charlotte wasn't happy, nor was she not-happy. She was. She felt herself to be. She sensed she was and had a self--and was walking by the sea.

And the breeze.

Charlotte felt almost at ease.

110. Planting Radishes

2010-02-28T12:41:00.000-08:00

The first time I planted radish seeds, I was seven years old. Soon I learned phrases like "you have to keep them watered," "the radishes are up," and "you have to thin them." I learned that when you plant seeds you also plant a probability that you will receive advice and instruction.

I disliked thinning radishes--killing several plants so another could fulfill ambitions; yanking out a plant that a seed had toiled to become, seeing it wilt instantly. No good at all.

After they'd grown a while, I pulled some, and what a great red globular surprise! I pulled, and there was a fat red things with a white tail and a green extravagance.

I washed a radish, rinsed off soil. The radish then gleamed. Light from a star we called the sun landed on it.

I bit into the radish, and its hot sweetness wasn't too much for me. My seven-year-old-taste-buds liked it fine, that taste, although I still don't know what a taste-bud is.

The meat of the radish was white, almost translucent like ice or a spiritual notion which the red cover of the radish had hidden. How do I know spiritual notions can be translucent like ice? Because I've planted radishes and eaten them. That is why.

109. Keep on Keeping On

2010-02-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

A cat probed an empty red-labeled can of food with its nose, the can sliding on a wooden floor, on which exotic shapes of sunlight lay, and from the radio, voices discussed contemporary Cambodian music and Pol Pot's hell, which was not hell but real.

We sipped warm liquid from cups, read news of war and folly--a failed attempt to clean a poisoned bay, a skater's choice not to perform a certain jump.

We spoke of our exhaustion. We get up and work. We get up and work.

Sunlight on the floor migrated. We spoke of laundry. Elements of the day accumulated to make another day. We knew enough not to speak of the incoherence of accumulation. Thinking thoughts and performing tasks, we continued. We kept on.

108. Alpine Ride

2010-02-21T19:04:00.000-08:00

Gus was my horse that day--"a known eater," said the wrangler, a cowgirl from Portola.

Horses and us--we picked our way through heavy timber, sunlight shafting through to illumine ferns nourished by springs.

From a clearing, we saw mountains higher than the mountain we here on. Horse-tails swished. Sweet odor of horse manure sometimes wafted. Then there: the painfully blue lake, exquisite and real.

Gus liked to sop and nip red heads of Indian paintbrush wildflowers; chew; snort. I let him eat, wasn't supposed to.

It was summer, we were riding a loop, and Gus had a sense of how pointless it all was. Alpine breezes pushed off the lake. I nudged Gus forward, past wildflowers down the the rocky, dusty, dry trail.

107. Red Cabins In Sweden

2010-02-15T16:17:00.000-08:00

Summer cabins in Sweden are painted a singular red influenced by a mineral, copper.

When summer arrives, and the sun returns from its exile to Tierra del Fuego, one may be inclined to think one has earned this light, which collaborates with receptors in eyes and brain to send a signal: red cabin.

Red cabin beside a blue lake in Sweden. Yellow flowers beside a path. Shadows shifting in birch woods. Silver fish in the blue lake. Yellow birds on white/black birch branches. Custom and respite reside, implied, in the red-painted wood of a cabin.

The yellow clean hair of a woman, her children laughing, her husband sleeping in a chair outside.

The rest of the world isn't here, the woman thinks, nor is my job, nor are the bulk of my worries, nor the foul fatigue of Winter. Just far enough away, the sun isn't here, but its light and warmth are. This is the red cabin, she thinks. This is where it is and when it is, summer. This is Sweden, which isn't somewhere else, and I am resting.

106. Diesel

2010-02-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

I've always liked the smell of diesel oil, even though I shouldn't--because it stinks, and because I don't know what "diesel" means.

The other day I was standing on a sidewalk in Tacoma, Washington, United States, when a large bus waddled by, giving of its diesel odor. There must have been something else significant in the air because the smell made me think of standing in Stockholm, and normally I don't associate diesel with Stockholm. Anyway I experienced nostalgia for snow, a certain quality of light, and a certain configuration of cold in Sweden. Indeed I named the experience "nostalgia" almost immediately even though I knew nostalgia has such a bad reputation that it's almost a sin.

Then a talker accosted me. He was the type of person who talks constantly to no one in a city, pretends to direct traffic, and otherwise carries on. He carried on to me.

"If you don't stop following me," he said, "you're going to get killed." I knew he was begging the question, but I also knew pointing out the fallacy would not be effective.

Unrhetorically terrified, I said, "Understood," and noticed the red woolen scarf around his neck. My heart-rate had accelerated, I noticed. I walked away. He came after me. "I know you're every move!" he yelled. He'd turned me into a coward. Apparent insanity, combined by such apparent aggression, has that effect on me and others. I went into a shop.

I told the proprietor, "That person is following me."

"Oh?" she said, and her face looked worried, as if I were the type of person who thinks people are following him.

"I don't know what to do," I said. She looked through the window carefully at him, his red scarf, his talking mouth, and sized up the situation.

"Go on down to the bus-stop and get on a bus," she said. "He won't have any money for the bus. Or he'll be afraid of the bus."

"Good idea," I said. Feeling obligated to her, I decided to buy something, so I purchased a small round tin container of a waxy, aromatic substance. I didn't know what one was supposed to do with the substance. Apply it to lips or automobiles? Apply it to a coiffure? It smelled like coconut. I wished she carried a kind that smells like diesel.

Followed closely by the man, I walked to the bus stop and waited while he upbraided me further. He appeared to be unarmed and chiefly a rhetorical assailant, so gradually I grew tolerant of him. Eventually a bus waddled up and stopped. I got on, paid my money, and sat down. The man's eyes followed me to my seat, and the last image I saw of him featured his yelling at the bus and me. I rode around for a while, thinking of Stockholm, and then I got off, leaving the tin of of wax on the seat.

105. Loading Words

2010-01-26T17:52:00.000-08:00

Along the rust-brown flammable river stand warehouses filled with words. Most are sold to journalists and governments. I run the fork-lift.

It's a job. I'm not interested in warehoused words, crate upon crate, except as something to move for pay. I live with chronic grief for loss of words I used to love. They loved me. Apple, chevalier, pelican, chrome, banister, quince, brushings, and black--a few.

I don't know what happened. This is a way of saying I know what happened--and happens. We get worn known. The magic of words gets stolen--by whom or what who really knows? We agree to do too much for too little. We ask almost nothing of language, which becomes a plain gray tool. We stagger home in dark and wonder if the river will catch fire.

104. Red Machine

2010-01-25T15:38:00.001-08:00

*
*
*
(photo by Sheri Weinsheimer, used by permission)
*
*
*
*
Hey, may I borrow your red machine? I heard it works, and I know it's clean. I got a job for that red machine.

When I show up at the venue in question, the site of toil, the job of work, I'll say, "Here I am--I'm ready to go," and your red machine will positively glow; it will let them know that business is what I'm intending to mean.

Thank you kindly for the loan and the use of your red machine, perhaps the best job-enhancer I have so far seen.

103. Beside Yourself

2010-01-19T17:41:00.001-08:00

By firelight get yourself right. Leave ambitious illusions on a ledge out there in darkness. Stare.

The perfectly explicable insanity of flame--red, yellow, white, blue--cures you of your rational disease and passionate preferences, leaves you next to nothing and beside yourself where you belong.

By firelight, warm your face and hands. Face and hands. Think of the faces and hands belonging to those coming before you, arriving after.

Forget what you know about stars. Ignore the moon. Crouch. Watch fire.

102. Experimental Aircraft

2010-01-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

Once there was a woman who wished she didn't know so many things for sure. She'd learned not to try to convince people of what she knew, for they believed they knew things for sure, too. Arguing fatigued her. Besides, eventualities would demonstrate what was true better than she could: this she knew, too.

For instance, her husband took up the hobby of flying small experimental aircraft. When he'd told her of this new pursuit, she'd said, "I love you, and consider the word 'experimental,' please. When a cook experiments with a spice and fails, the result is merely an unappealing dish. When an experiment in aviation fails, gravity wrecks." Her husband had scoffed. He was jolly.

Later, when he showed her a red aircraft of startling design, she knew the plane would fail--before takeoff, she hoped. The experimental aircraft simply looked too much like art and not enough like engineering to be competent in the sky.

News of the fatal crash shocked her though she wasn't surprised. She grieved deeply. There's knowing, and then there's experiencing. Several weeks later, an attorney informed her that although her husband had intended to purchase more life insurance, he hadn't gotten around to doing so. There was some insurance, some money, but not a lot, the lawyer said. He husband hadn't secured her economic future.

"I know," the woman said. "It's the way he was, and it's the way things are." She didn't mention how she knew that, as the plane approached the water, her husband had said "I'm sorry" to her, as if she were in the cockpit.

The little red plane didn't have a little black box, so there was no recording of her husband's last words. This absence pleased the woman, for she'd always preferred the knowing over the proof, wisdom over argument, information over events, which could be brutal.

101. Blueberries

2010-01-05T21:42:00.001-08:00

She stored that peculiar summer in a closet. Breezes and creeks and crickets: she fit it all in that pantry.

Something smoky lingered lowly in flavor. She liked it and held back sugar.

She reminded her winter guests that red accounted for purple in dusk's sky.

The tongues of that December's dinner-party were darkened by blueberry preserves, as were the skies of that peculiar summer as they settled in the closet, which held her canning.

100. He Likes His Kitchens Dry

2010-01-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

An avalanche roared down importantly the other day, all boulders, snow, and noise--a terrible noise. "Stop right there," I said, and it did. I told it all about the woman I love. The avalanche cried pebbles of joy.

The other night I threaded darkness through a needle and stitched the moon onto the sky. A gratuitous gesture, perhaps; anyway, to assembled onlookers, I mentioned I was among those counted as being in love, hence the fancy needle-work.

The river considered ignoring its red-clay channel to flood this fine town. No, no, no you don't, wet friend, I said. I'm cooking for the woman I love, and I like my kitchens dry, so stay within your banks, and thanks.

99. She's Been Thinking

2010-01-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

"I've been thinking," said the woman.

"That statement begs for a witty retort," said her friend, also a woman. "But I can't think of one."

"How would you describe me?" the woman said. "--I mean, if you were writing a story in which an illusion of me appeared?"

"Black hair, shoulder length--straight but not morose. The hair, I mean."

"Can hair be morose?"

"Yes, but don't interrupt. Pale but healthy complexion--white, if you will. Figure--not willowy, but not oak or sequoia sempervirens, either. Taller than the average woman but only just. Blue eyes. A tendency to brood, unlike her hair, which is not morose, as noted. Clothed."

""'Clothed'?"

"Would you like to be naked in the story?"

"It depends on who else is there. You know me. I am shy. I'll say no. That's a good description. People can fill in the rest?

"You mean, like red lipstick and ears?"

"I'm not wearing red lipstick. Any lipstick."

Walking, they had reached a cafe, which smelled of course of coffee, and of cardamom, people, and snow. Outside, there was no mistaking Winter.

"People will fill in as they wish. Maybe lipstick, maybe not. Definitely ears. I've been thinking, too."

"About what?"

"About thinking. About all the past and current thinking humans and hominids, all of them, have done, are doing. The volume of thoughts--it seems unimaginable."

"Then don't try to imagine it, the volume."

"But it inspires wonder, the imagining."

"And?"

"And so, my dearest friend, I think I will imagine. If I can."

98. Welder

2009-12-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

You pull down the metal mask, peer through its window, lift a thin metal rod with pincers connected to lines. You're a knight who got turned into a laboring wizard-- in a union if you're lucky. The rod sizzles, crackles, flares, smokes--wants to become the metal it touches. You're unfazed by rain of fire. Tiny meteors of sizzling metal fizz and cascade.

It's all to create connections, fuse fragments, to lay a molten bead between two solids. Such a strange ceremony. The cloth around your neck, red, is soaked with sweat--layers below the other covering.

Such a strange ceremony.

Someone passing sees light flare against the window of your primitive mask, sees you crouched in midst of fire and noise, treats you like an executioner, scurries. After a while, you stop, peel back the visor, breathe and blink, having risen from the altar of Hephaestus. It's payday.

97. Red In Brueghel's ICARUS

2009-12-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

Auden instructed me
long ago how to view
Bruegel’s Icarus and
note the white legs
between shore and ship:
such a small and pitiful
percentage of pigment
on the scape. Now
I’ve looked again,
rediscovered wonders
in the view: the sun’s
genial, obese collision
with horizon; fat,
billowed sails; a
diamond-shaped
apparition above
one ship; the supple
curves of furrows
at the farmer’s feet;
the sacred, mellow
light into which
the plow-horse stares.
And the only red
of the painting flares
in the farmer’s blouse:
how anomalous
and right. About red,
Brueghel was not
profligate but wise.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

96. Marx And Home Repairs

2009-11-30T13:13:00.000-08:00

*
*
*
(image: Karl Marx, reaching for his copy of the Manifesto)
*
*
*
I imagine a window in Karl Marx's apartment going all wrong--dry rot in the sill, a crack in the pane, the framing so loose that Winter rides in on a howl and a whistle.

Marx has his wife hire workmen--two. One's a beet-faced beer-drinker with sausage-fingers and a bull's neck. Marx thinks this one's the carpenter, but he's the glazier. The carpenter's a thin, bearded, sallow fellow who takes measurements as seriously as scripture or theory and wears red suspenders.

The men bring an odor of sweat and onions to Marx's life. They tighten the window, which silences Marx's toughest critic, the wind. When it comes time to pay, Marx thinks the men charge too much. He quibbles. This is never recorded in dialectical history.

The men aren't surprised. Professors are tight with money--well known. Outside, putting their tools away in a cart, the men marvel at how many books Herr Marx owns. "You'd think one or two would be enough," says the massive glazier. "I'm told he writes about workers," says the slender carpenter. "What about them?" asks the other. "I don't know. Probably something fanciful."

"That window should last a while," says the glazier. They look up. Marx's wife is looking down at them.

95. Cherry Moles

2009-11-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

The dermatologist calls them cherry moles and says they're harmless even if they look alarmist.

They are moles tired of living in a how-now-brown-cow-town, where everything from boots to diner-toast seems kind of, you know, ordinary, and the red sound of a siren is such a welcome change, and the mayor, Mr. Angioma, is deranged.

The cherry moles are ruby red and seem to mark special places on the skin's map; however, the skin's map points to nothing but itself, and you cannot use it to find treasure. It is no map in truth. It does not represent Duluth.

With a magnifying glass, the dermatologist travels across the country of the skin, sometimes stopping at a bright cherry mole and muttering, "Harmless."

94. Late Red Flowering

2009-10-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

A few blue flowers cling to long stalks in October. The latest blooming thing, though, is an herb, a type of sage. Scarlet petals adorn its conical pods, which will release seeds on to cold November ground. I stare at the late disarray, a disheveled tableau of flowers and herbs gone seeding. My eyes water: an allergy to something, maybe, or a reaction to brusque breezes. Out comes the red handkerchief. I dab around my eyes so I can look again clearly at bright surprising scarlet petals, so vivid they're an irony as November's gray attitude approaches.

93. Sienna on Greens

2009-10-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

In Danila Rumold's painting, Sienna on Greens (2006), we're invited to wander in color, where several bright leaves seem to hover over clay. We may stay at first impressions or go, not deeper, per se, just elsewhere or otherwise. Our eyes might focus on bluish ground-mist in an illusory distance, for instance. What we think when color occurs to us matters. It's no less futile than the rest, that is. When you see sienna, you may see clay in Sierra or nothing of the sort. A painting's like, and a painting is, and a painting goes as it stays.

92. Someone Hid Red

2009-10-12T18:13:00.001-07:00

Someone hid red from the landscape, which remained ashen, blue, and brown all winter.

Red fallen leaves were composted instantly. Goodbye to color. Cardinals had migrated, and every rose was dead and blanched into an insufficient beige.

Finally, someone lit a cigarette. Its tip glowed red. The smoker puffed and smiled. He was an advance-man for Spring. He carried a sample-case full of possible red things. In his experience, Winter was a good customer, eager if not desperate for red.

91. Drought

2009-10-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Forgive us when we trespass into thinking drought's a curse. Fire makes it worse, feasting on dry grass, making us spend more water, turning sunsets to the color of blood.

A flash-flood now would slaughter each parched canyon and inundate our boulevards. We live between Too Much, you see, and Not Enough. Us: precarious. Forgive us if we speak to sky and ask to be forgiven, if we stare at baked clay and try to taste the air.

90. Writing With Students

2009-10-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'm writing with students in a glass gazebo-cafe.

Four stainless steel fans overhead turn slowly like denatured propellers.

Pens sprout from the students' hands, which bunch into loose fists to spar with cursive.

An aimless cafe-song leaks from a speaker. The students get serious, leaning into writing, silently reading lines they've laid out so far, shaping this thing on a page called a poem.

One of the students sips from a green straw that descends into iced red tea.

89. Before The 6:12 Departure

2009-10-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

A young woman wearing a brown coat and a red beret and carrying a briefcase scowled at an approaching rainstorm, entered a metro station.

A moving, shifting group of others hurrying toward transport to jobs absorbed her. Her body was among their bodies. She walked into the rest of her life.