Birch Trees, White Folks

I've come to expect
white folks who used to
behave like "liberals"
to bend Right at the slightest
urging of confusion,
the tiniest testing
of their privilege.

Like white birch trees,
they grow crooked
and drip sap. The scars
on their white bark
are black. These

become hieroglyphs
that tell of interminable
injustice, of an unrelenting
white illness.


hans ostrom (after the Trayvon Martin verdict) 2013

A Pigeon in Rome

A pigeon strutted
into a bar on the
Via Veneto. This was
not the first course

of a joke, although
when the pigeon spoke,
it said, "Yes, I know
my head goes forth
and back. I have feathers
not funds. Allow
me some crumbs."


Hans Ostrom 2013

Taking A Break

I'm taking a break from the blog for a while.

I'll see you in the Funny Papers.

CM, you can take me off your route.

If You Judge Me

I saw her thinking and thought
she was thinking of them this:
If you judge me, do it silently.
Don't sentence me
to listening to the noise
of your opinions.



hans ostrom 2013

Two Important Activities

(based on found language, facebook)





In my retirement,
I do two important activities. First,
I always keep a close eye on my
stocks. Secondly,
we like to travel to new places.




hans ostrom, 2013

Father's Day: "Bear Nearby"

My father (1920-1997) spent a good portion of his life hunting bears, observing them, cursing them (not really) for breaking down his apple trees and devouring the fruit, and so on.

"Animals," by Walt Whitman

The Lost Poems

Sometimes I think
of all the great poems
lost to us through
one happenstance
or another. They
gleam like rare
stones lying on the
face of another
galaxy's moon.



hans ostrom 2013

Gwendolyn Brooks's birthday, June 7--poem: "Old Mary"

"The Harlot's House," by Oscar Wilde

"The Old Stoic," by Emily Brontë

Istanbul

In that city, small shops
formed hives of work and talk
and tradition. Birds whirled,
wheeled in flight, dove above
dusty trees at dusk. Voices
called, young and old. There
was the voice of the boy in
the alley calling for his friend,
"Ahhhhh-maaaad!" There were
the voices of the calls
to prayer. That city was a place

of tough vitality. Ferocity
and beauty shone in dark eyes.
Oh, yes, we recalled that
James Baldwin loved it here.
There was a seduction of breezes
after the sun went down. In that
city, acres of red-tiled
roof-tops accepted light and heat,
and people there accepted
their lives, their condition--
for the time being.



Hans Ostrom 2013

The Back-And-Forth

They forced him
to go shopping
but he got back
at them by having
all their memos
drained from
his consciousness.




hans ostrom 2013

Poetry Isn't War

Plath advised, "Write with blood." That's not
necessary unless you're imprisoned. Poetry's
not war. Writers like to give melodramatic
advice and even take it sometimes. That's
their problem. Write the best way you know
how. Ink--real and virtual--works just fine.
Don't kill yourself--because then you can't
write anything. Unless you're really oppressed,
don't force yourself to act as if you are.

They like to keep Plath's morbid celebrity
alive. They have their reasons, I guess.
I recoil from those. Read Plath's poems.
Many of them are very good. That is enough.
More of them would have been even better.
Life, life, life: poetry is life.


hans ostrom 2013

Qualifications

I have a Ph.D. in Foolish,
with specializations in
Impulsive and Awkward.

I earned a certificate in
Befuddled--and pursued
additional training in Perplexed.

"You're kind of a fuck-up,
aren't you?" I asked myself.
"Yes, yes I am," I replied,

"but you're no goddamned bargain."



hans ostrom 2013

In Pursuit of Happiness

Headquarters, be advised,
we are in pursuit of happiness.
Officer is down
on his knees, praying
for redemption. Alleged
miscreant has been advised
of his lights,
and is rising in a red sky.
Moses and Christ,
also Buddha and Allah,
we ask:
what has happened
to our species,
which achieves, achieves,
but that is all?
Headquarters, please
copy our call.
We are over. We are out.



hans ostrom 2013

Walt Whitman's Birthday: "A Hub for the Universe"

"Sonnet--Silence," by Edgar Allan Poe

Re-Posting One for Memorial Day: "For Charles Epps"

For Charles Epps

(1953-1971)

What's left these 38 years after Charlie
died? The same as what was left a minute
after he died: an avalanche of absence.
I've visited the grave. I always go alone. I
let morbidity, a pettiness, arise, think
of what's under ground, including
the baseball uniform in which they put
his body. It's easy to move past small,
awful thoughts. What's left to resolve?

Everything. He ought to be alive. God
knows that as well as I. My knowledge
stops there. I don't know why he died,
only how, when, where, and with whom--
Sonny Ellis. Their death numbed,
scandalized, and scarred me, but so what?
I got to live at least 38 years more
than they. When I die, so will my grief,

and so it goes. Like an instinctive,
migratory mourner, I think of Charlie
at least four times a year and every May
and try to think of something more to say.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

"Oklahoma Is"