Showing posts with label existential. Show all posts
Showing posts with label existential. Show all posts

Saturday, November 11, 2023

Alone

I wasn't alone
when I woke from five hours
of brain surgery. A nurse was there.
My wife, who'd waited all that time,
visited. And monitoring machines
blinked and sighed. I was lucky.

In the cold fog
of painkillers and an assaulted
brain, though, I felt
an aloneness all of us will feel
some time--a rude fact
of our existence. Right now

there are people buried 
under bombed rubble 
who feel absolutely alone.

I vomited regularly
for a whole day, casting
not much but bile into
plastic green bags.
My body thinks anesthesia
poison. (A lucky guess.)
That kept me distracted.

Still: that chill, that
psychic dungeon, that sense
of {you}, a cold infinity
of matter, and nothing else. 

Monday, December 9, 2013

Extra-Canonical

Some Harvard professor left a parking citation
on my bicycle. It said, "You are extra-canonical,
so get out of here." I saw a shard of
greisen (a rock of quartz and white mica)
on the ground and felt better. Just then

Donnie came buy, so I bought him a cup
of coffee and me one, too, and as we
sipped I said, "Donnie, a screen memory
is a memory a person can handle so the
person uses that to block a memory
that's too painful when called up."
Donnie said, "Hard to prove that
kind of thing, but that don't
mean it ain't real." People at

the next table were talking about
a new kind of crampon, and Donnie
said, "Where do you think they got
the name 'Tampon'?" I said I didn't
know, and then I imagined all of
reality spreading out from that
place, our conversation, and
the exact texture of the scene,
from murmur to odor to costumes
and movement, endless I say
endless physical, social, chemical,
economic, biological, and
extra-canonical transactions."It

really is all quite fascinating
in spite of its problems, isn't it?"
said Donnie. "Yes, it is," I replied.


hans ostrom 2013

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Hello, Everything

Hey, Hello, Everything, I said,
trying to be polite.
Hi, Everything said, I'm busy.

Hey, Everything, I said,
I've worked in a pickle factory,
I've worked in a gravel plant,

I've pounded nails and washed pots
and taught rich kids and
dug trenches and written articles--

--Who cares? said Everything.
Everybody does something and there's not
much difference between

any of it. Oh, I said. Well,
how are things with you,
Everything? I'm always

changing, and I have to go,
and you're a loser and small,
said Everything. Bye.



hans ostrom 2013

Monday, April 15, 2013

Thanks: A Poem

Life happened to me,
fortunately. It could
not have happened
to me, quite possibly,
although there would
have been no I to have
missed the opportunity,
no sensor of vacuity.

Occasionally, one asks
why, or what have I done,
or what was I supposed
to do. No clue. I'm
nothing more than just
another you perceived or
not by other I's and yous,
we's and theys. Thanks are
a kind of praise.



hans ostrom, 2013