217. Orpheus on a Road in Colorado

Listen to the summer road,

heat still in the dust and stones

at dusk. In a meadow

below the road, the carnies

have pitched their tents.

The heat has withered their canvas.

The women lift their hair

off of their necks in the heat

down in the blond meadow

tinged with pink now from the red

clouds in the West. Owls

tuck themselves back in the woods

where darkness is already

deeper than the dusk. Cicadas sing.

Trout waggle sluggishly

in the slow, warm current.

Gnats boil. You stare down

at your feet in the powdery dust.

The carnies will say they heard you sing,

but as the sound comes out of your mouth,

it seems only necessary, like breath exhaled,

not song. The deer back in the stand of oaks

stop; their legs become brown sticks.

To them the sound is necessary, too.

They cannot question it,

no more than fish can question river.

Only the carnies will wonder;

only they will testify.

It's almost dark now as the sheriff's car

comes rumbling toward you, white dust

pouring out of the chassis like factory smoke.

You tell him you were only talking

to the woods at dusk, and to the inhabitants

of the woods, talking of the underground river,

cool and actual in the bedrock below the road,

below all this heat and dust and weary brush.

He accuses you of singing, though.

You glance down at the lanterns

in the carnival's camp and allow that,

yes, it could be singing, what you do.

He says you can go, inasmuch as there's no law

against singing on a country road in Colorado.

He walks down to the meadow

to mumble with the strangers.

Darkness now. The animals

have retreated further. Farther on,

you find a place to sleep.

It's not a song, but in your dreams,

you know you hear the river underground.

Hans Ostrom 2013

216. The Season of Mercy

It is the month of desire.

I wake up and find you

and hold one of those unoriginal thoughts

lovers are bound to hold:

we could be any two living here at any time.

Look at the red morning clouds

and the blue coastal hills that absorb

the salt of those acquisitive waves.

We yearn for the whole love;

we wait for it to spring to life

like the blessed perfect leaf of a beautiful plant.

Do we seek our souls through love,

the perfect shape of us that lives

in these rough shapes?

And thereby do we implicitly prove the Soul

through dissatisfaction

and love's displacements?

Proof of the world fills the morning glass:

window, mirror, bowl, and spectacle.

Proof of our dying, well, it comes and goes:

each breath, each push

of blood from heart to palm.

This holding at dawn

wants more than versions of the world

            in the morning glass.

It seems to want a twenty-fifth hour,

an eighth day, one further season:

the season of mercy

            when orange groves fill our every window

and love for the first time

holds us as we have held each other.

Hans Ostrom 2013

215. Details of the Break-Up

O my generalissima, your voice
sounded like a lactating chainsaw
as you commanded me out of your life.

I retaliated by not renewing my
subscription to Piquant Living
magazine. Also, I swallowed

the key to your place and put on
red slippers.  On the street,
I looked up to see my things

falling. They piled up in drifts
of shame. The pleather underwear
had been a gift from you.

People gathered and laughed.
I taught them a folk-dance.
And now it is later,

and I work at a drive-thru
mortuary and am studying
to become a fish-whisperer.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

214. Certain Assemblages

Certain assemblages of words are deemed, in certain assemblages of words, "genius" or "enduring" by critics.  And so assemblages of people think they should read these "enduring" assemblages of words so as to read what is read or red or blue or acceptable or green or what-one-is-supposed-to-know, after all.

The coagulation of assemblages is so petty, corrupt, and formidable that you just have to ignore and write or read or both or neither, and whoever heard of a reading list saving the world?  After all.

213. Trees and Not-Trees

There are trees, and there are not-trees.

A painting or a photograph of trees
is not-trees.  So are salt-flats not-trees.

The distinction is crucial.

Ask the jay or the cardinal
that climbs a tree. Ask
the squirrel.  Not literally,
but ask. Advise the ground,
which is mottled,
not cast in full sunlight.

At a saloon, someone struck
a philosopher in the face.
Not-hard. But nonetheless.

The philosopher had said
there are no trees, only
ideas of trees, and he
happened to have stopped
in timber country. Also,
he hadn't bought a round
of drinks, which are not-trees
but which nonetheless
matter to people.

212. Cocktail Bar Monologue

No, he was my ex-husband, not my father-in-law. I called him, it was my birthday, and he didn't sound right. So I went over there. He strangled me in the bed. He didn't choke me out. I woke up, and he said, "What are you doing?"  I said, "I'm going to the bathroom."

So I got up, and I went to his daughter's room, she wasn't there, and I covered myself with her red bed-spread and her stuffed animals and stuff, and I heard him out there, saying, "Where am I?!" And he was like destroying shit and he put a fist through a wall.

And a neighbor came over, and I stayed there the whole night.  I was in shock, so I couldn't call the police until the next day.  He got like third degree assault, and he spent time in jail, but he makes a hundred and fifty grand a year so he got out on bail.

Anyway, he gets to see our son, he's four, every other week. I have full custody.

I wouldn't be able to get health-care for my son except that I'm going to school, and Obamacare you know pays for that. I want to open a doggie-daycare center. My son's name is Lucas. He's four. Here, look at this happy face he drew, it's on my iPhone.

I live with my mother now. My dad died, so I moved in with her. I sold all his stuff in a garage sale. I made three thousand bucks. He was an electrician for thirty years, and if he didn't have a tool, he'd buy two of them.

You see Roger down at the end of the bar? He wanted to sell his Ford 500, so I put it on Craig's List. .  Then some guy called him and said Hey, I can advertise that, special.  So the guy took Roger for $500. And the thing sold on Craig's List the next day.  I think Roger was just drunk.

I'm impressed. Most people don't  know how to spell "Erin."  They spell it like the Bible, "Aaron," but I tell them, Hey, I have different parts.

My friend is in a Rolling Stones tribute band, and he's playing tonight, but I don't know where. He's supposed to text me.

211. Erik the Red and Poetry

You know what
Erik the Red said
about poetry, don't you?


Nor do I. Maybe
it was something like
"Just get the fucking poem
written, okay?"


Leave the theory
to physicists and detectives 
in crime novels. A poem
is a made thing--spoken,
written, or both. Poet,


make it easy on yourself:
make that poem. Poet,
make that poem.

--Hans Ostrom 2012

210. Let Them Have It

Sometimes the shuffling of playing cards sounds like the tearing of lettuce, my friend.

And sometimes the tearing of lettuce sounds like the crunch of snow underfoot, as you walk, fuzzy from drinking all night, on a ghostly white winter road.

And sometimes the weird smoke and light of a forest fire reddens the moon, making it look like a single blood-shot eye, the eye of a sad jeweler examining a ruined emerald.

And often people ask "Why?" when they know the answer, or when they know the one asked can't possibly know the answer.

And sometimes you just want to lie down, don't you?, in a room and have done with it, have done with it all, the infinite mess of the here and the now.

"Let them have it, let them have the mess," you may say to yourself, my friend. "I am going to rest here alone."

209. A Simple Man

"I'm a simple man," proclaimed Hiram, not just to no one in particular, but to no one. He was alone in an alley. Urinating, as it happens. And it happens. Finishing, he said, "Thanks for the warm night, and for the laughs"--again to no one.

Then he affirmed his simplicity. "I like," he said, "to eat, sleep, bathe, piss, shit, laugh, read, fuck, write, cook, and dance.  Mine is largely a monosyllabic life."  He added, "I like to feel safe, even if it's an illusion. I like to work but mostly because of the money. And I like to surprise people with kindness."

No one responded.  It was an alley-thing. "That's about it," Hiram said. At the far end of the alley, a red neon light blinked on, blinked off, on, off.

208. Financial Planning

I sought counsel from a financial adviser for a time, but then his business went in the red and failed.

Meanwhile, I just keep going to work. My first paying job was as a weed-cutter. That was 43 years ago: holy shit.

Sometimes I tell people that I chose not to be rich.  Sometimes they laugh.

Meanwhile, I just keep going to work. I see now that's the financial plan I've always had.

When it comes to accounting, I like the fact that red is bad and black is good.  Black has to be bad so often in our culture.  It must be a relief to black to be good in this case.  Thinking thoughts like this, I assume, has helped me maintain my goal of not becoming rich.

207. Bluesy: Baby, Open Your Legs

Baby, open up your legs and let me lick your pussy. Baby, open  your legs, please--let me eat your pussy. I'll go all the way down and up and around. Baby, open your legs and let me lick your pussy.

Well, you have a red rose tattooed on your hip. Yeah, you got a red and blue rose right there on your hip. I have a tongue that's hiding behind my lips, so let me lick your pussy, please open up.

Baby, scream and holler if you've a mind to. Scream and holler when the feeling's right. Baby, holler and scream if the feeling's right. Moan and giggle when I get it right.  Smile and laugh in the night.  Baby, open your legs and let me lick your pussy.

206. Bee Balm and Women

Women smell just enough differently and think just enough differently and walk, look, dress, eat, respond, laugh just enough differently from men to fascinate me permanently and as the red bee-balm blossom attracts honey-and-bumble bees, my generalized interest is drawn to women, although I require no commerce, per se; let us say I am not after nectar; let us say the permanent instinctual intrigue is a reward unto itself. Let us say that.

205. No, I Don't

No, I don't want to register for the rewards program or the summer contest.

I don't want to hurry down for the red-label sale, or to come down there at all.

I don't want to sign up for a card that is alleged to give me cash back on my purchases, and I don't want to be a valued customer because I don't think that phrase means what you want me to believe it means.

I just want to work and to get enough food and rest and otherwise be left alone.  I don't want to be harried by the places where I get things when I need to get the things.

204. Ruby

Ruby was the wife. She'd grown up in Alabama, and her body had conveyed her through life until she had married Dan, a wealthy, large, fidgety man who had made a fortune and a half selling steel-framed windows in the era between wood and aluminum.

Ruby was what was known then as a party gal. She wore red lipstick and dresses that displayed a significant cleavage, which in turn alluded to large breasts and expansive aureoles. She liked men as much as men liked her.

There was nothing coy abut Ruby. At an outdoor party once, in California, she held and scratched the scrotum of a hound. Her husband Dan tried to laugh off the scene, the action taken by Ruby.  The women were repulsed and astonished, the men merely astonished.

Ruby and Dan used to travel to what they called "the Orient." They journeyed by freighter. No one knew exactly why. Because Dan was a rich miser? Because they were eccentric? Or because, on a freighter, there were fewer men for Ruby to astonish?

They led a boozy, stormy life, Ruby and Dan. Their various houses were decorated heavily, like the sets of the Perry Mason TV show. Wood, leather, slabs of slate, big paintings of horses, and of dogs.  Steel-framed windows.

As a child I visited one of their homes. It smelled of leather and wood, whiskey and roast beef.  Dan always wore some kind of tweed jacket.  And he made a monkey-face at children, like me, who didn't recognize it as a monkey face but as a repulsive grimace an adult male was making.

Ruby called all children "Doll." She didn't make monkey faces.  Her breasts were large. Her lips were red. She smoked cigarettes, she drank vodka, she laughed, and she gave off warmth.

Eventually Ruby left Dan. She died on Skid Row in San Francisco. By then Dan had remarried a woman who was manageable and who pretended to have a large vocabulary.

There aren't too many peopole left who remember the story about Ruby's scratching a dog's balls at a party. The vivid, the vulgar, the vibrant--yes, they go to dust like all of us, as does all memories every memory of them.

203. Sad Erotica

In the genre of sad erotica, people are tired and smell bad. They feel too fat or too thin, too old or too young or too middling.  They touch their bodies like they handle a heap of laundry.

They're hungry but too tired from work to cook, and no one's there to cook for them.  Oh, a bath would feel great but only after a drink or some weed and some food.  Hot food.

They fall asleep in front of a screen and wake up bewildered and vacant. They drag themselves to the shower, and as the hot water turns some body parts red, they think about sex, the relief it sometimes brings, the oblivion of lust, the good feeling of being something or someone someone wants to touch. 

In the genre of sad erotica, people get out of the shower and dry themselves off and put on cotton, linen, or wool. They walk slowly to bed and fall in the bed, exhaling like a beast.  They go to sleep, where dreams of romance, erotic mystery, and sex will, they vaguely hope, await them.

hans ostrom 2018

202. Sun and Sex In Mainz

I remember the sun rising over buildings at the university in Mainz.

I remember a desperate needing of sex in Winter in Mainz. After walking against icy wind, after drinking wine or beer or brandy, after music and debate and delusion, god how we craved the deep bodily drama of sex on cheap sheets next to a table loaded with books from the library.

Sunshine made the broad cobblestone-walkway blaze. I let the rock-reflected light cook my eyeballs and sear my thoughts, which craved the recall of going down on brown women in California seasons earlier.

The German Winter had been especially cold and heavy. I'd read Goethe, Mailer, Vidal, Baldwin, Colette--truly devouring books from the library we had to re-organize when we weren't teaching students who rightly loathed college.

German punks with black-dyed Mohawks as dense as zebra manes gathered on street-corners.  I remember the women didn't look happy: another male jeremiad.

I remember a voluptuous woman sucking my cock, riding my face, and wanting it hard and steady, and why wouldn't she?

I remember the sun rising over buildings at the university in Mainz. The German Winter had been especially cold and hard. The steps across the smoldering cobblestones were my first strides away from it.

201. Sex at the St. Francis That Time

He wonders if she remembers the time they were in San Francisco and they got a room they couldn't afford at the St. Francis Hotel and he went down on her and she came as she looked through the window at the Bay Bridge, sunlight turning a rust color as it hit the cables and under-girding.

He wonders if he should ask her if she remembers, for he sees himself going down on her, his back to the Bay Bridge, her legs open, eyes closed, eyes open.

He wonders if St. Francis would see the sunlight as sin-light, would have approved or not of intimacy and sex in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.  St. Francis would have approved he decides, deciding to decide in a self-serving way.  He wonders still, however, if she remembers the time they . . .

200. Mister Lincoln Rose

A wee fist comes out
of a Mister Lincoln rose,
taps your nose.

You hear a voice, which purrs,
slurs like a kind, formidable,
boozy perfumed aunt: "This,
kiddo, is what a rose
is supposed to smell like. Not
like the nothing-blooms in
the goddamned florist's deep-freeze."


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

199. We Use Deep Blue . . .

We use deep blue to tell a desert canyon's depth at twilight. --Use warm red to remark upon a last sliver of dusk visible through haze, clouds, or diluted fog. --Use green to see where refugee groups of trees have survived that onslaught of our colorless phenomenon: development. --Use yellow so often for caution that now we see daffodils as warning: Here comes another Spring, which we'll fill with our history.

198. Of Buzzwad Carsatchel

Buzzwad Carsatchel, CEO of Schmoozel Embroglios, LLC, is golfing with enormous marketers and marketeers who sweat scotch whiskey.

He hates them.

He hates golf.

He pulls out an enormous pistol and shoots it at turtles in a water-trap, also known as a pond.  He misses.  The turtles slip into the water.

The marketers and marketeers laugh.  "It's not funny!" he cries.

He throws the gun into the water. His wealth and all he traded for it have tracked him all the way to this humid, hissing golf course.  The world goes red, tilts.  Buzzwad 'Buzz' Carsatchel is experience a "heart event."

He lies down on the hot green grass.  It sweats. He sweats.  The marketers and marketeers madly phone.  They drip scotch-whiskey sweat on Buzzwad Carsatchel's ashen face.

Buzz remembers something about a lecture on the topic of absurdity, a lecture by a philosophy professor in his second year of college.

Buzzwad Carsatchel believes he hears the sirens he believes will save him.

197. Fate's Like That

I was walking down a country road. Dry yellow grass hissed on both sides of that road.  Heat gave the scene of trees and farms a vibrating cinnamon hue.

--Came upon a fellow playing blues harmonica on his porch, a glass of lemonade at his feet, red threads apparent in his overalls.

"Sir, have you seen my fate?" I asked.

He paused his playing, wiped his mouth with a flannel sleeve.  Men who wear flannel in the heat are to be respected, I have learned.

"It's right behind you," he said. I turned and look. Nothing.

"Oh! It moved," he said. "It's up ahead."

I looked up ahead. Nothing.

"Fate's like that," the man said. "Always slipping past you.  His brown eyes were red-rimmed.  "You thirsty?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Well, then, it seems your fate, which is here, is to drink lemonade on this porch with me. Come up."

"Thank you, sir," I said. Fate's like that.

196. Those Bluejean Shorts

Those bluejean shorts, cut to the crotch, you wore that summer: I've sent the memory of them to my Hall of Recall Fame. There's going to be an induction ceremony, where I will speak about your brown legs, the red thread in the bluejean shorts, the shadow in your belly's button, what lay north of that, what lay south, what happened to those back pockets when your buttocks filled them, how we lay in all directions as the swamp-cooler rumbled and as little black waves of spinning vinyl delivered tunes we thought might cool our heat eventually.

It'll be a short speech at the induction ceremony.  But O my darling, the memory of you, of us, of heat, of those bluejean shorts you cut to the crotch, how "crotch" was never a crude word between us, how I--this is not too strong--worshiped your brown legs and your crotch when you took off the shorts and the bright, white panties.  O my darling, O.

195. R&B (Sex Is Clumsy)

Sex is clumsy. Everybody knows that,
especially the ones who portray it
otherwise: Hollywood, Harlequin,
Playboy . . . It's an awkward comedy,
part of its charm. We can overcome

the clumsiness--part of its grace.
Hey, look, it's a list of kisses, strokes,
talk, tastings, fittings of bodies, of
minds, of pleasures. Such elements
assemble. They're the improv troupe
of sex. And it's all right, it's good,
even very good. Great?


Well, sex is probably better
when it's good, not great.
Anyway, for now, let's talk
of something else (or not talk)
and sip red wine, maybe smoke
some weed, and listen to R&B.

Copyright 2012

194. Old Kisser of Women's Toes

There is an old, lascivious man in our village who sits on sidewalks and beside park-paths in the sunshine. Some of the young (and not so young) women know all about him, and they come up to him and stand.  He rouses himself from lethargy, gets on his knees, and kisses their toes protruding from sandals.  Some women take their shoes off for this service.

Often the women visit him in pairs or trios, and after he kisses their toes, they giggle and scamper away.  If they try to give him money, he refuses.  More than once he has said, "I'm neither a prostitute nor a destitute man. This is a hobby, and my gift to you. And to me."  He's oddly formal, this old man. But this doesn't keep him from savoring details, such as the color of paint on toes, a tender hammer-toe, a wee tattoo, the angle of the big toe, and so on.

At twilight the man often lies on a bench and sleeps deeply like a beast. I know because I am he.  No doubt this hobby of mine disgusts you. Technically, it's not a fetish, as I don't get aroused.  Difficult as it may be to believe this, I see this activity as a community service and a whimsy of my twilit years.

Last night as I was still dozing, one of the women left a red rose on my chest as I slept.

Later her husband--who had been spying on her--came and threatened to beat me up. He was at least 30 years my junior and in excellent shape.

I told him to go home and kiss his wife's body, starting with her brown toes, which, I said, had that lovely ruby paint on them today.  Hers are sweet toes, yes, coated with the finest summer dust, like pollen. By the way, for those of you obsessed with hygiene, I do rinse my mouth between toe-kissings. I hope this fact eases your concern.

Anyway, the husband's concern was not eased. That is, he knocked me down.  A few decades ago, I might have written, "He hit me in the kisser."  He left.  I lay and looked at the starts for a while, smelled the dew, listened to the complaints of a frog. I shivered, got up, found the red rose, and went home.

In the bath-water, I thought, not so much of the toes and kissing them, or even of the feet, but of the smiles of the women and their laughter.  Yes, I'm a lascivious old man, living in a village, looked at warily by police, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and partners.  I am a toe-kisser with a bruised face.

193. "I Never See the Red Rose Crown the Year," by John Masefield

A recording of the poem--and here is the . . .

LINK

192. Incredible Deals for a Limited Time Only

The advertisers proclaim that their offers are for a limited time only.

I want offers to last forever.

I want a red sofa to be sale even after the sun is spent and has become a red dwarf.

I want that weary red dwarf to have the chance to get a free large cola to sip as it eats a specially priced astral sandwich.

No one, brothers and sisters, should feel compelled to hurry down to take advantage of deals that are incredible. 

If a deal is not to be believed, then I say let it be a falsehood for all time.

191. Used Experiences

He needed cash, and he'd collected a lot of experiences in his life, so he took some of them to a Used Experience Store and tried to sell them.

The proprietor went through the experiences with the chill haste of the unsentimental expert. Then she said, "I'm afraid these aren't worth much. They're very common."

He didn't believe she was afraid.

He was tempted to protest but he knew doing so would only enhance humiliation.

She said, "I can't give you any cash, but I could give you a bit of credit to use as trade for other experiences in our store."

He said No Thanks and packed up his experiences in the brown cardboard box (with faded red lettering) of his memory and went home and felt bad about his life, parts of which had seemed vivid and rare to him before today. 

His place felt cold and drab.  He experienced that. He had no idea what experience he should have next.  He didn't really give a shit one way or the other now.

190. In the Dream About Partying With Women

In the dream about partying with women, Hiram is high on hashish.  He dances on a terrace with different women, various women, who are deftly desirous unlike men.

Just off the terrace are apartments with red rugs and many bedrooms. In the dream, the hash has occasionally but subtly disoriented Hiram.  He experiences slight hallucinations that alter flow of time. It is of no concern to him. Now different women take him to different rooms, where nudity and sex realize ambitions that involve Hiram, who is amenable.

In the dream's last scene, Hiram dreams he is sleeping. A woman he vaguely knows wakes him by lying atop him, naked, in the 69 position. He responds.  He laps the lovely wetness of her secret place.

189. Politics

Visible only for a while longer: a white, blue, red political candidate's sign, the candidate's name now inscrutable, lodged under a green, brown, yellow mass of blackberry vines, black brush, and ferns.

188. Meatloaf Writers Conference

At the Meatloaf Writers Conference, famous authors call each other by nicknames and speak in complacent ironies.

A homeless man sneaks into the conference to get some food. He has blood stains on his soggy garments.

Security escorts him out. He says, "There must be some mistake. I write! And where's the meat loaf?"

A famous editor floats by in khakis and top-siders.  He knows exactly how to behave.  He knows exactly what to say.  He says nothing about the small disturbance--Security with homeless man.  How very strange!

The famous editor encounters some very old dear friends indeed.  Longtime shadows groan because they know he is about to tell a story.  A practiced story--well balanced, appropriate, and well capitalized. Everything is as it has always been.

187. "Youth and Beauty," by Al Akhtal

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


"Youth and Beauty"

186.That Town's Whistle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here
is
the
link:

LINK

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

LINK

174. Red-Cedar Think

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

 Link:

Casida

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

Link:  "Travel"

171. Some Fable-Days

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

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

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

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

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

/
/
/
/

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

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 thin 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 into walking 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

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?