Monday, January 28, 2013

Nude Up and Get in a Pile

It may have been a line
from North Dallas Forty.
Anyway, we’d quote it
at the bar and laugh.
The thing is, pre-AIDS,
you might think you
were headed home
in a silver Camaro after
the bars closed
in California’s inimitable
Central Valley.  Then you might
stop at a red light, two lanes,
and two women you knew
barely might laugh, roll
down the window, and
suggest, “Follow us.”
And, wow, there you’d be,
nuded up and in, no,
not a pile, but an expansive
naked arrangement of
three or four or five.
It was a gas, a blast, a trip:
listen to the lingo change
down the ages. Olive oil
on large breasts, the
several positions, good
clean fun. Of course, in
an apartment of your brain,
you knew the party had
to end—that night; and for you;
and for a generation.  Microbes,
maturity, and so on. None-
the-less: at the stop-light,
in a Camaro, a little loaded
on whiskey and weed and
maybe a line: the light,
the spark, of mischief.
Good clean fun in
an era everybody and
his mother, as we said,
would not just forget but
not know existed.

*
*
hans ostrom 2013

"Everything Is Looted," by Anna Akhmatova

Friday, January 25, 2013

Hiram Displays a Bad Attitude Toward Popular Cinema

Hiram, in his cups, which had been full
of vodka, says, "Let the miserable blob
lay. Lay the miserable fucking blob. Lay
miserly blob. Hey, Miz, lay Miz, Fizz Miz."

I can fill in the rest.  It isn't so much
the genre of musical, or the tears
being squeezed out of melodrama
like hot fat from cooked bacon,
or the celebrity-actors shoved out
in front of the cameras like mannequins
with entourages, or that the Public
eats this shit up, it's the combination
of all five; and more--that gnaws
at Hiram's sense of what is all right.

 "The whole fucking thing . . .," Hiram mumbles.
The combination. The combinations.
That's what gets a body down. In an age
of Packaging, Hiram opposes the Package.


hans ostrom 2013

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Sudden Infinity

not sure.
do know history's owned.
driver's ed.

the allies. you remember them.
cut the heads off.
indescribable scene.
sources say myth.
sources say fear.
sources. say.
sources. "the thing is,
he had to have known."

percentages on the back end, said
my friend in Hollywood, which
does not give
does not give
does not give
a
shit.
in other news, we, collectively,
have raised the average
temperature.
what to do?
 did you say, "what to do?"
well then to that i say,
yes, let us ask and let us try
to
answer


hans ostrom 2013

"Dawn" by Angelina Weld Grimke

Friday, January 18, 2013

"Man in a Hole," by Hans Ostrom

Man, Bicycle, Shirts, and Crows

With his right hand, a man
pushed a bicycle. With his left
hand he carried five white shirts
on hangers, covered in transparent
plastic.  Three crows yelled.
They said, Get on that bike
and ride, brother! Wear black,
wear black, wear black!


Hans Ostrom, c. 2013

"Orchard in January," by Richard Wilbur

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Gothic Fog

He stepped outside
and rubbed the fog,
its pliant hide. What's
inside you? he asked.

No answer. Just muffled
rumblings. Suddenly
a woman's hand emerged,
caressed his cheek and neck.

"Come in," a female voice
said clearly. He entered
the fog. In there, faces floated
like unlit paper lanterns.

A chorus of moans arose.
He turned to escape, but
elsewhere had vanished.
He was inside the fog now.

He moaned.


hans ostrom, 2013

Gardener's Soft Porn

After the first seed-catalogue
arrives in Winter,  I paw through
it as eagerly as I gawked
at my older brother's
Playboy when I was 15.


hans ostrom, 2013

Monday, January 7, 2013

"Waltzing," by Hans Ostrom

Poet's Musings: Torture

 Re-posting one from 4 years ago.

Link below:


Poet's Musings: Torture: In a discussion-group recently, we read Poems From Guantanamo, edited by Marc Falkoff. As you might guess from the title, the poems were wr...

Waltzing

Oh, let us hold
each other turning
slowly ‘round
the floor. A waltz
is humorous
and kind, old-
fashioned intimate.
We’re a little high.

Oh, the perfume
of your hair, the
architecture of
your back, the
present of the
presence of
your hand in mine.



Hans Ostrom, 2013

Friday, January 4, 2013

Over, and Not Over

the big election is over
the most recent atrocity is over
the most recent Winter holidays are over
also the latest predicted apocalypse, over
the morning news, over
cup of coffee, over
cats fed, over
work, work--over
not over is
my lifelong
need to do
things for
people &
worry about
keeping
them pleased so
that i may get
some
sense of my
worth. this search
for worth, not over.


Hans Ostrom 2013

Zen Treasure-Map

On a Zen treasure-map,
there’s an X but no lines
or place-names. The four
directions are all marked E.
What you do is, you carry
the map with you at all times
and assume wherever you are,
is X—where treasure lies!


Hans Ostrom, 2013

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

"Retired Oracle," by Hans Ostrom

Sex in a Graveyard

We were all sinew and youth,
impulse, tendon, and sex.
When we fucked in the graveyard,
we probably didn’t think
of ourselves as fucking
We didn’t think of desecration.
Or of ghosts. We lay on cool
concrete that topped a tomb.
We heard creatures stir: I
suspected a doe in the sweet-pea
vines that covered the wire fences.
Moonlight made it through
the canopy of old oak branches
and shone on your body as it
arced above mine: rib-cage,
nipples, breasts, neck, hair,
face, abdomen.. . . Afterwards,
you clutched me close, on top of
me who lay on top of corpses.
Young, anyone might fuck
in a graveyard. Later, they’ll
think of the holding-close, the clutching,
the chill on flesh, everything that happens
before, and after.


Hans Ostrom 2013

"Bric-รก-brac," by Dorothy Parker