Showing posts with label zen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zen. Show all posts

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Like a Turnip

It might start with the shriek
of a hawk or the ruining racket
of a jackhammer. Or with the low,
low flute note from a great horned
owl, or with the wail of a baby nearby. 

Anyway, a sound that seizes you,
uproots you from your moment,
like a turnip from damp soil,
and tosses you into the basket
of a different reality. Pulled

or pushed into one space
of the "real after" another,
only falsely sure we know
what's coming in the mirage's flow--
oh, such is life, life such as it is.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Aspects of Living in the Moment

I tried to "live in the moment,"
as recommended
& found that moments stuck
together like hard candies
in hot sun. Other moments
seem to pour in and out
of life like red ants out of
a sizzling nest. Some

moments just evaporate--
gone before I could 
even knock on their doors,
let alone live in them. Which
can be okay, as for instance
that moment in the dark
when I stubbed three toes
on an old oak chair. 


hans ostrom 2023

Monday, August 28, 2023

It May Be Called Here-And-Now

I'm always here--
in this body,
mortgaged to
this place called
Earth. My mind

pretends to
travel on its own
(what a dreamer),
riding off into
its lands of past,
its realms of fantasy,
its rages of ambition
and gripped greed.

It must of course
always return
(until the End, when
it will just go to Stop).

When it's wise,
Mind settles, it
and body in a still
embrace, a loose
duet
amidst the mystery
and flow of Now.

hans ostrom 2023

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Move

Move through dew
on grass like an eel
muscling itself between
canals. Move

into light and shadow,
the dappled landscape
of your life. Ride
like a child

the silly contraptions
of commerce--escalator,
elevator, metro, & sad,
sagging bus. Keep

going, knowing
you're probably not
going to get anywhere
special fast, except Here.

hans ostrom 2023

Monday, November 21, 2022

My Soul's Been Working Out

My soul's been working out,
Lifting nightmares with its snout,
Swimming laps in honeyed air.
Tickling felines on a dare,
Weeping hard at news of war,
Grieving deeply to its core.

It lifts the weights of darkest doom
Jabs and punches with gray gloom.
Hikes great peaks of women's beauty,
Hauls me, tugs me to good duty.

Zen-poses til it aches,
Bellows at my fakes.
Sprints through beatitudes,
Ju-Jitzus my bad attitudes.
Wrestles with me to discern,
Spins and skates to make me learn.

Exhausted, it plops down,
Shoots me a soulful frown.

hans ostrom 2022



The News from Inside

Inside me, still,
lurks the baby who could walk
but chose not to
(wanting instead to stand up,
hands grasping the rail
of what they called a play-pen)--
and to watch. It seems

I was born wary
and passively resistant.
And that's who I stayed.
In the 17th month, I walked
because, having watched them,
I noted that they
seemed to want me to walk.

Inside me, I don't
contain multitudes,
and Walt Whitman can
go fuck himself. Inside me
there's the DNA of a woman
living in Africa
160, 000 years ago:
it's inside you, too.

And then inside there there's
a few people who worked like dogs
but not as hard as slaves. Maybe
a failed preacher, certainly
a Skid Row drunk, and possibly
the funniest patient in what
they called a mental ward:
no proof of this.

Inside me, I think it's
population: 12. Or so.
But no apostles. In there,

an old non-descript tree
finally gives up, accepts
a lightning-smash, explodes,
and falls. Deer, squirrels,
owls, a cougar, a bear,
and maybe some hiker with
a bandana tied around
dirty hair mark
the arboreal collapse,
but, god damn it,
there's never a Zen monk
around when you need one.
And Walt Whitman
can go fuck himself.

Inside me, there's
a startling, chronic
mild terror--maybe because
at month 15 or so,
I learned from informed
intuition that very little
in this life-thing makes sense,
although we must pretend
that much of it does.

And Walt Whitman...
was one great self-publicist:
American, that is.

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Stillness

Stillness: a mountain lake’s
Sudden surface sheen: no wind—
A minnow  apparent.
The whole lake seems to pause.

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

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

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

Sunday, January 14, 2018

So It Goes

The scene's a blue barge
on a green river. Twilight.
Many lights on land: a
society, a world. The illusion

of a fixed place moves
away from me like a barge.
I am a point of view, a wry
observer on a river dock.

Then I am of the darkness
falling. Then I'm the
darkness itself, then
nothing, & I am not.


hans ostrom 2018

Thursday, December 14, 2017

So Many Surfaces

He went there for the job.
Stayed there for the duration.
Now his ambition has gone,
migrating one way.

He takes great interest
in what is there, in which
here is embedded:
the surfaces of the world

beyond the body, but also
his mind's interior terrain.
The meaning of what's there,
here, is beyond naming,

The surfaces, the terrain--
they mean what
they are, and from
a certain angle, no more.


hans ostrom 2017

Friday, February 3, 2017

Like a Bank Camera

She advised him: "Think
of yourself as a bank camera
and just observe." He said,
"So I'm looking for potential
robbers?" She said, "Don't
be silly--you are just looking,
observing in a detached way.
A bank camera has no emotion."
"God damn it," he said,
"I know a camera has no emotion!"
She looked at him,
but not as a bank camera would.



hans ostrom 2017

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

"The News from Inside"

Inside me, still,
lurks the baby who could walk
but chose not to
(wanting instead to stand up,
hands grasping the rail
of what they called a play-pen)
and to watch. It seems

I was born wary
and passively resistant.
And that's who I stayed.
In the 17th month, I walked
because, having watched them,
I noted that they
seemed to want me to walk.

Inside me, I don't
contain multitudes,
and Walt Whitman can
go fuck himself. Inside me
there's the DNA of a woman
living in Africa
160,000 years ago:
it's inside you, too.

And then inside there there's
a few people who worked like dogs
but not as hard as slaves. Maybe
a failed preacher, certainly
a Skid Row drunk, and possibly
the funniest patient in what
they called a mental ward.

Inside me, I think it's
population: 12. Or so.
But no apostles. In there,

an old non-descript tree
finally gives up, accepts
a lightning-smash, explodes,
and falls. Deer, squirrels,
owls, a cougar, a bear,
and maybe some hiker with
a bandana tied around
dirty hair mark
the arboreal collapse,
but, god damn it,
there's never a Zen monk
around when you need one.
And Walt Whitman
can go fuck himself.

Inside me, there's
a startling, a chronic
mild terror--maybe because
at month 15 or so,
I learned from informed
intuition that very little
in this life-thing makes sense.


hans ostrom 2015


Friday, January 4, 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, October 17, 2007

If a Tree Falls On a Poem

Richard Brautigan wrote a humorous little poem called "Haiku Ambulance," which pokes genial fun at haiku-conventions--and himself. I won't spoil it for you.

From his poem, I borrowed the title of the following poem, "Zen Ambulance," which plays with the venerable philosophical question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" David Romm, on a site called www.spectacle.com, adds an interesting variable: What if you leave a tape recorder (on) in the forest and the tree falls? No one is there, but the sound is recorded. But then I guess you'd have to prove the sound on the recorder represents the sound of the tree falling, so then you'd have to call witnesses with expertise in sound-recording, air-displacement, and so on.

In any event, the zen-tree fell on the following poem:

Zen Ambulance

If a tree fell in the forest,
and you were in the way,
you might be killed. If you
fell in the forest, and
the tree were in the way,
the tree would probably be
fine. If no one is in the forest
to see a tree fall, termites,
fungi, and bacteria
still devour the fallen
wood. If no one
is in the forest to see you fall,
let’s hope you can get up.
If a Zen monk stops you
in the forest, say hello,
and if you have some trail-mix
and water, offer to share them
with him. If he falls, don’t just
stand there, and under no
circumstances clap. Help him up.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom