All Right, Now

Having successfully eluded
fame, he took
a long nap
and awoke refreshed.



hans ostrom 2013

The U.S. Congress, Observed

Have you been watching
these little legislative haters,
these law-mockers and logic-blockers
sent to the Hill (our Golgotha)
with cash stuffed up their pipes?

They've done no reading in history,
economics, philosophy, or science.
Their self-interest is artless, their
corruption as bald as a brass door knob.

It's a little like watching a person
with lousy reflexes drive a stock car
at Darlington or Daytona,
or some drunk college lad
pick a fight with a seasoned
body-guard. It can't end
well. Yes, of course,

after the wreckage, it will be we
who'll have to clean up
as best we can. Politics
now seems to have an endless
supply of punks, and
not the musical kind.


hans ostrom 2013

Fall's Always Good for a Laugh

A large, allegedly evolved primate,

he passed through an exterior door

of his abode, intending to gather

a newspaper on the stoop (this

was in the last days of print-culture),

and he was caught in a spider’s web.

Webbing on his face, he looked

at the fat brown spider as it danced

like a portly Vaudevillian on its

filament, and he laughed.


hans ostrom 2013

Positionality

I've misplaced my subject-position. It happens.
According to the post-modernist rulebook, which
is only virtual, my default positionality is therefore
one of befuddlement, which could be a ruse, except
a ruse seems so pre-modern, even atavistic. One
thing's certain: I'm not a mystic. Positionality
is such a tricky business. If you write or speak

the word, "positionality," then you've pretty much
positioned yourself into a pretentious corner, and
the commonly insensitive Anglo-Saxon ax will fall
on your multi-syllabic Deluxe Latinate Impressor,
which comes with its two-speed abstractionator.

Cut to: a meadow. My subject-position transport-
system, a hot-air balloon, lies sideways and un-
inflated, mere fabric amidst flax-stubble. This
is Not A Problem. This is Laugh Out Loud.


[re-posted from 2008]

hans ostrom 2013

Quit While You're Ahead

Many times in his life he had heard
the advice, "Know when to quit while
you're ahead." Well, hell, he thought
at last, I never get ahead. Sometimes
I catch up, but that's about it. Otherwise
I'm always behind. So I think I need
to learn to know when to quit
while I'm behind.



hans ostrom

Of Them and Of Hiram

While the others
majored in pre-law,
Hiram majored in post-law.

While they practiced
their interviewing skills,
he fell in love with women--

in particular and as a
concept. While the others
began good careers,

Hiram drove on dirt roads,
found some employment,
and wrote odd poetry.

While they took over a
political Party and insisted
on hating Black people,

Hiram read Black authors,
listened to blues, soul,
and funk, and was politically

powerless. They sold their
souls. He rented his out, but
never for very long.

They dined on the entrails
of the poor. He grew
his own vegetables.




hans ostrom 2013

Justice

justice
just ice
just is
in just
in jest
ingest
indigest
indigestion
indigest onion
in dig est
in dig o
o blue o blue o

injustice
in jester
no justice
no jest is
no just is

no peace
know peace
know piece
no peace
no peas
no pleas

no, pleas
no place
no justice no place
just please
just pleas
just peace
just us
justice



hans ostrom 2013

Race/Ism

Race is mmmm.
Racism is.
Racist.
Racyst.
Resist.
Re: racism:

White, White, White
Why it, Why it, Why it
Wyatt burp

Wee, Wee, Wee
Wit, Wit, Wit
Nit, Nit, Nit
Not, Not, Not
Knot, Knot, Knot
Know, Know, Know

No, no, no, no, no
no racism no
more.


hans ostrom 2013

The GOP

What used to be Eisenhower's Party
is now a toxic,
radioactive brew
of John Birch, Joseph McCarthy,
Orville Faubus, Jessie Helms,
the enfeebled Ronald Reagan,
Birth of a Nation,
the Bush Crime family,
Ayn Rand (speed freak),
and the KKK. Lord?
Help us.


hans ostrom 2013

Sexuality

sexuality
sex you all, mais oui?
sex, oo, ah, & tea
sex, you, quality
sexual equality

sex you wall it. ee!
sex you wallet tee
sex, you all
sex you all at ease

sex, sex, sex
you, you, you
all, all, all,
it, it, it,
y, y, y

sex ual it y
fits you to a T
oh yes yes laugh at me
i like to laugh you see
i like to laugh, Lucy
you laugh, too, you/me
without humor, we

have no sexuality
we must be loose
loose/loosey, oh
sexuality



hans ostrom 2013

Into

Into.
In two.
In, too.
Intuitive.

Inn, too.
Inn. Two.
Into Inn.

I, too, in.
I to in.
Into me.
Into mate.
Intimate.



hans ostrom 2013

"Moonlight Night: Carmel," by Langston Hughes

Minor Intimidations

A tag on a blanket
tells me in writing
not to remove the tag.
Removal, it notes,
is a criminal act.
Another entry, I think,
for The Encyclopedia
of Minor Intimidations.


hans ostrom 2013

The Plot of the Universe

Plot, a human invention, a narrowing
we need, is something
the universe doesn't require.

For the universe
is thermodynamic
and never exactly
itself any time.

It
is infinitely, multi-
dimensionally episodic,
in all and no directions.

This is a little
story about the universe.
You tell one. It's
what we do.


hans ostrom 2013

"Fall Wind," by William Stafford

"Full Moon," by Henry Dumas

People Are Disappointed

When I say "October" I feel
compelled to say "again."
People are disappointed.

A military aircraft flies overhead
and makes great noise as I try to teach.
People are disappointed.

Today somebody said, "I saw a scorpion in
my house,": and her friend said, "That's impossible."
People are disappointed.

In Syria alone there are two million
refugees. And elsewhere refugees. Refugees.
People are disappointed.

Over the years, several times, I've said,
"I can't influence anything political."
People are disappointed.

Into the o's of October, I stuff
my acrid outrages, what a joke.
People are disappointed.

I tried to tell someone about jazz,and the
person said, "You mean like Light Jazz on FM?"
People are disappointed.

I think I've died a hundred times, and yet
I still look forward to death.
People are disappointed.


hans ostrom 2013

"Morning at the Window," by T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot's birthday today.

The Organoids

I enjoy how science hunts down philosophy
like a big cat on a plain:

the clever bastards now make
organoids--
yes, that's right, brains
in vats, the old
thought-experiment.

Yes, of course, maybe
it's a case of brains in vats
imagining
they're making brains in vats;
and of

other brains in vats imagining
they're reading and writing
about same. Alas, not likely.
Occam's Razor slices a leak
in vats of that sort.

I do hope there is a neo-funk-
rock-digital-punk-post-sexual
band out there now named
"The Organoids." That,

by the way, is something my
brain thought, some meager
morsel a big cat might snack on.


hans ostrom 2013

In the Chambers of the Sounds

Hearing the off-off-beat rhythms,
sonic schisms. Hear-
ing the syncopations out of
diasporic nations: ah, the
daughters sweat when they dance
and they laugh into lances of light. Ah,

the world, too much, in its trembling
under the weight and the hate
of its machineries: beat-
en down. One mind's

a mental gleanery, a picking up
of bits from a mowed-down
psychic scenery. Hear-

ing sounds made of sounds recorded
sounds effected now, an overlooping
digi-lapping mix-re-mixification,
queen and princess and
good king syntheslaus
at the feast of even beatsintune.

Hearing
the on beat, off-again
ch- ch- ch-echoing
in the chambered
arterials,
air-displaced materials,
endless musi-chilled imp-
rovisations,
hearing.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Name of It is 'Autumn,'" by Emily Dickinson

"Blue Monday," by Langston Hughes

Animal Authors

Ernest Hummingbird
Emily Cricketson
J.D. Salamander
Charles Chickens
Jane Mothsten
Leo Toadstoy
Herman Moleville
William Bobcat Williams
Otter Conan Doyle
Flea S. Eliot
Percy Fish Shelley
William Rattler Yeats
William Snakespeare
Margaret Catwood
Allen Ginsbug
Albert Camoose
Franz Calfka
Charles Bucrowski

hans ostrom 2013

The Sheriff Has Absconded

You touch the moon on water,
a century collapses into a train
& the engine's light shines
on tracks, which ladder up
from night into a blue dawn
buttered. And now unfixed

factories march across
a plain to kidnap fugitive
workers. You're at red
rim-rock's edge, watching
all of this--you,
the emperor of images,
brewer of creosote beer,
melter of topaz, escaped
sheriff.



hans ostrom 2013

All Are All Alone

All are all alone
in the cave of the cranium.

Data and, via language, guests
may enter. Only the one

lives there though, bent over
a fire, cool-napping or

listening to underground streams
and echoes of screams.




hans ostrom 2013

"The Fall," by Russell Edson

Self-Contradiction Blues

Self-Contradiction Blues

"I am an atheist who says his prayers"

--Karl Shapiro, The Bourgeois Poet

He's a hick who got
cosmopolized, a fierce
coward and a timid stalwart.
He's a shrewd fool, a
half-assed genius, and
a morbidly morose optimist.

He adores libraries
and hates the intelligentsia.
He considers himself
a feminist but would stare
at women's naked breasts
until the end of Time,
transfixed, forever adolescent.

He's a lost soul but a found
failure, lazy and obsessive,
driven and languorous.

An over-achiever who
never measured up. A
glad-handing recluse,
quick and dull, exuberant
and plodding, fanciful,
serious, frivolous. He's
nothing but exists.



hans ostrom 2013

Education

She says,
I took the post because
I wanted to teach students
English. Well, all right,
I also needed to earn
a living. In the classroom,
there was boredom. And noise,
endless noise. Most of the students
were distracted by their poverty,
hunger, hormones, phones, talk,
music, and self-loathing.

Outside the classroom,
the corridor was always
crowded, with parents,
administrators, politicians,
consultants, pastors, priests,
rabbis, police, coaches,
pimps, pundits, and God.
The crowd pressed
against the door every day.

In other words, I never
had a chance; worse,
they never had a chance--
the students: you remember
them. She says,

Now I'm a clerk at a
building-supply company.
It's easier, and it pays
the bills, I admit. It
doesn't feel crucial to me,
though, like education
used to feel.


hans ostrom 2013

America's Bible Challenge

I shit you not, Brethren,
a cable-network in the U.S.A.
has added a game-show
called "America's Bible Challenge"
to
its
lineup.

The "host" (hear me, people)
is a smart man who became a
stand-up (hear me, people)
comedian with a hick-schtick.

Just before the break,
he says, "Our two teams
are backstage studying
for the Revelation Challenge!
There is twenty thousand dollars
on
the
line!"

You cannot make this shit up,
sisters and brothers. What
the fuck did Jesus Christ
and Moses, for example and
e.g., do to America that
America would make such
an unholy motherfucking
carnival (and I do apologize
for my language) out of
the
Bible?



hans ostrom 2013

Jesus Reminder

And the Man said,
the name is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.

Not Jesus Price
or Jesus Pri$e,
not Jesus Whites
or Jesus Right or
Jesus Lite.

Certainly not
Jesus Might or Jesus
Might-is-Right, and
no not Jesus Kike.

Nor Jesus Flight,
as in your wealth-gospel's
corporate jet. Nor
Jesus Blights. Okay?

Not Jesus Sites,
as in a real estate de-
velopment, or Jesus Sights,
as in the things you
aim your guns with.

And the people, they
got a little quiet.
And then they started
talking, too much, again.



hans ostrom

The Topic of Your Thighs

Your thighs are and are not
like warm, supple glass. They
make me think of seven golden
horses galloping across a field
of black grass; thus, I must

disrupt the senator's speech--
and instantly find myself
stopped, frisked, tazed,
Mirandized, Godoted, Kafkaed,
NSAed, SWATted, and entered

into the system. Why, why
did I stray
from
the topic of your thighs?




hans ostrom 2013

Are Reviews Necessary?

I don't know: are reviews necessary?
I mean, of books and movies, and so on? I've written some.
Quite a few. I don't the genre. I was almost
always kind, beyond fair. But the
question is more general (who
cares about me?) Many

reviewers seem like little brave,
yapping dogs. They bark
at the stone-mason walking by
as they imagine they're guarding
the huge stone mansion behind
them (Art). They imagine the mansion.

Others are like dogs
that indiscriminately sniff
the boots of anybody
walking by. Everything
excites them. That's not so bad.

A lot of reviews and reviewers
are pleasant to read. Some
reviews save time--you get
the idea of a history book,
or one on science. That's
a service. Otherwise, I'm

just not sure: are
reviews necessary?



hans ostrom 2013

Those Weren't The Days

I found your aluminum parachute.
You weren't nearby, thank goodness.

I still have your wood carving
of a chainsaw. Cute.

(Using a tractor),I ran across
 a photo of you and me.

I don't miss you but I still talk
about you to people, mentioning

your hammer-toe and other
minor flaws. Ah, you and I,

back then. In fact, those
weren't the days, my friend.



hans ostrom 2013

What Should I Watch?

Wow, I can order, like a general,
movies on my TV! On Demand, with a
price. So: On Pay. That's
kind of cute. I see what
you did there. What should I watch?

How about the tenth sequel based
on a fucking comic book, with a short
actor dressed in latex
and a plot
as predictable
as a
bowel
movement
and credits
as long as
the Bataan
Death March?

How about the 15th gangster movie
from the noted director who makes
gangster movies with short actors
who have New York accents and
play at being tough, with make-up
and all? Bada-Boom, Bada-Wadda-
Dada could you please just
stop talking, stop
talking
in
that
accent?

How about a film in which Black
women actors play maids or whores?

Or another film with the wrinkled,
70-year-old actor whose eyes look
like charcoal piss-holes in the snow?
He will be paired with a woman
who has had her faced carved
by switch-blade Frankenstein
cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills.

Or another political thriller
in which a short man with a broad
female ass plays a rogue agent
who is American
who is American
who is American
who blows up shit
who glows up shit
and flows up shit and
who never grows up? Shit!

How about a goddamned puppet-movie?
Or a virtual puppet-movie, with
that digital puppet-crap they
invented? Yeah, a talking fucking
car, a virtual teddy bear, all of it
"voiced" by members of this
bizarre celebrity oligarchy
that invites world leaders
to parties in Malibu, pays
people to carry dogs no bigger
than postage stamp, and gets
high-colonic enemas in Costa Rica?

Oh, I know. A romantic comedy,
in which the actress, who is 45,
plays a flirty nerd who is,
I shit you not, supposed to be
less than 30. You know, one
of those romantic comedies
that isn't romantic or funny
but basically a set of still photos
paired with frozen jokes
and inept physical stunts?

Jesus Moses Sebastian Mohammed
Buddha Bogart, what ever
happened to timing?

Oh, wait. There's another movie
by that guy who is 108 years old
and jacks off to kiddy-porn
and lives in New York
and is important
and gets the financing
and gets the financing
and has a broker
and is afraid of anybody
not White
and is
a
genius
and is
a genius
and is
and is
and is
and is
a genius? Have
you seen his
latest movie?
Oh, it's wonderful.
It's set in a famous city
that middle-class
Americans
visit
by
the
millions. He
is a
genius. Have
you seen it? Oh,
he is wonderful. Oh,
I love
his
movies.

Yes, please, a movie
by the hick-genius
who made one good movie
and who is short
and talks tough
and now says "we"
when he means "I"
and is no doubt
and is no doubt
thought to be smart
in Hollywood.

Better yet, a movie
with one of the three
older Black male actors
who get work in Hollywood.
One has a voice but doesn't act.
One acts but doesn't have a voice.
The third acts and has a voice
but is just a bit too
talented to be safe.
"A Black man in Hollywood ..."
say those in the know. Inside
joke.

Imagine if people, seriously,
Occupied Hollywood. Imagine
progressive, suave poseurs
having to call the police
to have the police
beat up the people. Imagine,
that is, Hollywood
without the makeup,
no longer the last
institution that is
beyond
scrutiny,
beyond
contempt.

Imagine Hollywood
on
the
run,
shitting
its
pants,
stuck
in its BMW,
stuck
in a mob. Cut!

Wow. I think I'll
watch
that.




hans ostrom 2013

I Like Missing

I like missing California. Do
you? I like California twilights,
blue. And perfume of the women,
swoosh, going by. And the going by,
the gone. I miss the gone,
the streetlights popping on,
Chevy Impalas as low-to-asphalt
as lizards. And I like

missing bitter smoke of burnt
alfalfa fields & also
valley oaks never seeming
to move, great clouds
of black-green. And I like
missing everything that's
wrong-careening and wrong,
excessive and wrong, about it,
about it all, the bursting
all of California, God
help us.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Name of It is 'Autumn,'" by Emily Dickinson

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"

"Not They Who Soar," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"The Sky Is Low, The Clouds Are Mean," by Emily Dickinson

"Blue Monday," by Langston Hughes

We Are In the Waiting Room

The waiting room waits for us
to move through it. Magazines
collect like silt. We try to collect
each other's thoughts; fail;
return to our own. The waiting room

is quieter than most places
of worship. A door opens rudely.
The caller of names holds
a file, speaks two words brusquely.
One of us gets up. No one
says goodbye or good luck.

Those remaining settle too quickly
back into waiting. We've become
like birds on a roost at dusk.

The world cannot end as long as
there are waiting rooms
because that would be too dramatic.



Hans Ostrom 2013

"Choking It Back"

Today I happened to be
watching a cat choke back
the urge to vomit
a hair-ball just
as I was thinking of
the sheer number of Americans
who, first, consider themselves
White and, second, simply
cannot abide even the thought
of a Black man as President.
I want to say to them,
Vomit up that hatred, first,
and, second, read a
goddamned history book.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Man He Killed," by Thomas Hardy

"Leonardo's 'Mona Lisa,'" by Ernest Dowden

"The Last Invocation," by Walt Whitman

"The Village Atheist," by Edgar Lee Masters

"A Superscription," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"To Any Reader," by Robert Louis Stevenson

Gary Snyder's Birthday Today

It is Gary Snyder's birthday today. My favorite books of poems by him is The Back Country. He was born in San Francisco in 1930.

Here is a brief selection from his nonfiction book, The Practice of the Wild:

They Don't Want to Hear From You

Lou, they don’t want
to hear from you. They
don’t want to see
anything you do.

You don’t belong, Lou.
So how long you going
to keep asking to be
considered? Lou,

you were born behind
and never caught up.
Stubborn’s not a talent
they’re looking for.

If they had wanted you,
they would have sent
for you by now, Lou. They
would have sent for you.


Hans Ostrom

"Consumocracy Blues" recorded

"No Worst, There Is None," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Consumocracy Blues

They're spending what they don't have
on stuff that they don't need.
Yeah, they're spending what they don't have
on things they do not need.
Maybe they need to slide into
life with a simpler creed.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Poets," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Planet Is Hooked

The fish are getting high
on our pharmaceuticals. Perch
take anti-anxiety meds
prescribed by our sewage
and runoff & they swim
like hell. We like to share.
Gulls smoke our clouds of
junk, bears chew through plastic,
and clams can't find the calcium
anymore because of our acid trips.
The planet's on our street now.
We'll sell it anything.



hans ostrom 2013

Old Man, I'm Talking to You

Old man, I'm talking to you. I am you.
I didn't used to be. I used to fly past
on a train. You'd be sitting on a bench
at the station--gray eyes, gray sweater,
a blur of inert age. And I? Well, I

was all tendon-taught, unfraught, lithe,
and smug with youth. Uncouth. I was
on my way to . . . to here, as
it happened. And it's happened.

I'm situated at the station now, too,
talking to you, old man. Here
comes a train.


hans ostrom, 2013

Official American Poetry

Official American Poetry is a corporation like
any other. It has executive officers, middle-
managers, salespeople, controllers, and share-
holders. It operates major retail outlets

such as anthologies, presses, workshops,
and MFA programs. There are Academies
and Institutes, with canons on the parapets
and reviewers pouring hot grease on the mob.

Official American Poetry (OAP) frequently
says, "We are unamused by most american
poetry." When OAP notes an Interesting
Development, then OAP buys it up to

maintain market control. It bought up
Dickinson and Whitman, Plath and Sexton,
the Beats and LANGUAGE. There is insider-
trading, lobbying, and influence-peddling.

There's the awkward American imitation
of royalty (Pound crowning Eliot). OAP
is a tower of glass and steel. If you want
to try to try to trade independence for

recognition, go for it. Good luck.
Otherwise, just keep walking. And
writing. That's what Walt and Emily would do.
Bukowski and Bob Kaufman, too,

and this is not to mention,
and this is not to mention
all the poets alive, above and
under ground both at once.


hans ostrom 2013

It's the Birthday of Shakespeare, and He Wants to Know, "Who Is Sylvia?"

Earth Day--and Hopkins' "Pied Beauty"

"The Hour Glass," by Ben Jonson

What She Realized

She realized one day
that what she had produced
in her field was as good
and often better than
what the famous in her field
had produced. She knew
she'd never be famous.
She understood the machinery
that established hierarchy.
She knew that proclaiming
her work was as good and often
better was a losing ploy,
and she knew that complaining
was the sucker's payoff.
So she chose satisfaction.
According to hard criteria,
what she had done was good
and even excellent. Let it
be that, she thought,
and let the rest go.



hans ostrom, 2013

Bond of Union

(after M.C. Escher's Lithograph, "Bond of Union," 1956)


We first met in a vat of soup,
you and I. The bubbles entranced.
Then they turned into spongy spheres,
and the soup evaporated entirely.

More adventure: our insides--
brains and guts, bones and such--
departed. We became mere ribbons
of being, me with my sad goatee,

you with your lovely mouth
and luxuriant hair. We discovered
but one ribbon became us. So we
move cautiously now and try

not to attribute blame.


hans ostrom, 2013

From Inside a Renoir Painting

I am speaking to you from one
of Renoir's paintings. My voice
shatters softly like light.
I'm perspiring terribly
beneath these tight clothes,
these goddamned buttons and bows.

I'm drunk in that annoying way--
you know: wine gone sour
in the belly, head heavy, ambition
for a sexy evening vanished.
Only a nap says to me, "Hey."
I'm glad you like the painting.



hans ostrom, 2013

"Tour of a Painting"

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

The Great Age of Fingernail Polish

Citizens, we've entered
the great age of fingernail polish.
I should be writing about things
less trivial. Apologies.
But I've been out among women
whose digital surfaces have been
enameled with all the colors
that have escaped the spectra.
And I could look at women's
hands forever. And women's hands
are not trivial.



hans ostrom, 2013

The Brain's Oven

The old woman
who slid a pan of cookies
into my brain's oven
never returned.
The cookies have turned
into black dots that float
across my vision.
I reek of burnt dough.

I lie on my side like a
buffalo who's been reading
Hegel on the parched
plain of Kansas for
example. Invisible merchants

empty microscopic vats
of hot slime on my neck,
my forehead. A thin woman
with cold fingers practices
scales on my spine,
and a chorus of angelic rats
prevents me from nodding off.

I raise one hand
as if to conduct
their concert. And I
pass out. I am a loser,
I am a loser, hallelujah
and amen.


2013 hans ostrom

"Lyric for an Oval Window"

Poem by the Side of the Road

Financial Advice

"Mr. Debit, we advise you to put part
of yourself in stocks and part in bonds.
These punishments should occur in the
Town Square, as penance for your miserable
money-managing skills, and as an example
to all. Unfortunately, your folio seems
never to have left port. It's taking on water
and barnacles. Our projections indicate

you'll be able to retire uncomfortably
when all the mountains run into the sea.
By then, the National Economy
shall have melted, leaving a residue
of prosperity. In those far-off days,

travel by burro, but don't go near
the fortresses of the mega-rich
and super-celebrated. From bastions,
their minions will train designer-weapons
on you. You must understand that from
the wealthy's point of view, few
things drive down property-values
more than semi-retired, Quixotic
geezers sitting atop humble beasts.

Currently, your liquid assets fit
into a shot-glass and may be
downed in one gulp. Among
your liabilities is you. Please
try harder to be a credit to
yourself. Crawl low. Pray high,
and, incidentally, fuck you."

copyright 2013 hans ostrom

Homage to Jorge Luis Borges

In a long neglected room on an upper floor of Carolina Rediviva Library in Uppsala, Sweden, on the third of March,1967, Roberto de la Costa, in search of documents describing the medical treatment of wounded Swedish soldiers at the Battle of Poltava, discovered his own last will and testament. Accompanying material alleged the will to have been dictated by him, on his deathbed, to one Maria Vibrato.

Although the sound of this name
brought Roberto De la Costa pleasure, he had not known the name
before encountering it that day in the musty room full of documents. He learned from the will that he was to accumulate a not inconsiderable
estate but to dispose of it in ways with which, in March 1967, he
did not entirely agree. Reading to the end of the will, de la Costa learned that it had been witnessed by his now deceased mother, Gloria
Martinez Sierra de la Costa.


hans ostrom 2013

Paul Robeson's birthday

Today is the birthday of Paul Robeson, anstonishingly talented athlete (4 sports at Rutgers, professional football), actor (Broadway and Hollywood), singer (operatic voice), attorney, and civil-rights leader. A poem about him by Gwendolyn Brooks:

"Location," a poem

The WSJ Is Unamused by Bowdoin College

The Wall Street Journal (April 6, 2013) has offered yet another critique of “liberal” colleges and their interest in diversity, among other things. Believe it or not, the complicated tale hinges on a golf-outing that the president of Bowdoin College experienced with “philanthropist and investor Thomas Klingenstein.”

During the outing, Klingenstein apparently told Mills, “I would never support Bowdoin—you are a ridiculous liberal school that brings all the wrong students to campus for all the wrong reasons” [and you have] “misplaced and misguided diversity efforts.” This is Mills’ version. Klingenstein later weighed in: “I explained my disapproval of ‘diversity’ as it generally has been implemented on college campuses: too much celebration of racial and ethnic difference,” coupled with “not enough celebration of our common American identity.” What that common American identity might be, he apparently did not say.

Klingenstein had also funded a study of Bowdoin by the National Association of Scholars. He apparently got what he paid for as the study discovered, at least according to the WSJ, that “[t]he school’s ideological pillars would likely be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to American higher education lately. There’s the obsession with race, class, gender and sexuality as the essential forces of history and markers of political identity. There’s the dedication to ‘sustainability,’ or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to ‘global citizenship, or loving all countries except one’s own.”

What a lovely rhetorical moment has unfurled here. First, note the scene and the actors: A white male president of an exclusive college has his back-swing interrupted by a wealthy man who doesn’t like newfangled ideas. Hilarious. Nobody knows the trouble these two have seen. What next–a double-bogey on the 18th? One hopes the round of golf occurred at an exclusive country club because Klingenstein apparently complained that the school brings in “all the wrong students for all the wrong reasons.” Note that neither the WSJ nor the aggrieved wealthy golfer explain what makes “the wrong students” the wrong students. By the way, the online source Peterson’s [guide to colleges] says the student body at Bowdoin is 65% White or “Caucasian.”

Then, the WSJ plays the equivocation-game. The small liberal arts college has “ideological pillars.” It has courses that concern race, class, gender and sexuality; therefore, it is “obsessed” with these. Not that evidence matters, but if you look at the areas of study Bowdoin offers, you will find such subjects as math, physics, neuroscience, chemistry, biochemistry, music, philosophy, Classics, economics, art history, and a variety of “foreign” languages. Wow, what a radical bunch these Bowdoin folks must be!

The WSJ also claims that “[i]n the History Department, no course is devoted to American political, military, diplomatic or intellectual history—the only ones available are organized around some aspect of race, class, gender or sexuality.” But in the Spring term alone, you will find courses on “Colonial America and the Atlantic World, 1607–1763,” which surely includes military, diplomatic, and intellectual concerns, and a course on “Place in American History,” which “Investigates place as a set of physical and biological characteristics, as a product of the interaction between humans and the environment, and as a social and cultural construct. Also attends to the challenge of writing history with place as a central character” (Bowdoin online catalogue).

But the WSJ doesn’t like even a whiff of environmental issues: “There’s the dedication to ‘sustainability,’ or saving the planet from its imminent destruction by the forces of capitalism. And there are the paeans to ‘global citizenship,’ or loving all countries except one’s own.” Again with the equivocation. If you perceive the world to be highly connected—here we are, by the way, on the Internet—you don’t love your country. If you reasonably deduce that “we” are running out of water, facing the consequences of global warming, and encountering all sorts of problems with pollution, then of course you must be anti-capitalism—as opposed to being, you know, realistic and practical. And how dare Bowdoin offer opportunities for students to think about how to reverse the harm done to the planet.

The WSJ and the poor (read: wealthy), victimized Klingnstein have fielded an entire team of straw men in their arguments. Therefore, one must agree with them. Bowdoin should offer an old-fashioned course on rhetoric and invite them to take the course—online, in person, or on the golf course.

"Teacher," by Langston Hughes

"Angry Samson," by Robert Graves

The Soccer Goal

The soccer goal looks like a land net.
It is open to amphibious creatures
that may crawl, hop, or slither in.

This net won't keep its catch. It's
left that life behind, opposes
closure and captivity, embraces
emptiness. Heavy humans

routinely occupy this turf
to dramatize futility and make
a small ball mean too much.
They tire easily and depart.

Then comes the frog's time,
and moonlight, and dew.


hans ostrom 2013

She Spoke of Golf

The woman and the man
were watching some kind of screen
that projected images of men
playing golf. The woman said,
"You know, they always try to make
golf look interesting or exciting,
and it's just not." The man
thought this over. Then he said,
"You're right. It's really stupid.
It's a lot of grass, a lot of waiting,
and a little ball, and a lot of
mis-spent money, and, you know,
who really gives a shit?"
"Well," said the woman, "I know
I don't. Give a shit."



hans ostrom, 2013

"Are We Just April Fools?"

Steve McQueen Square

In Hollywood, Steve Mc-
Queen Square seems to be filled with
a petrol station.


hans ostrom

"An April Day," by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.