Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Poem for Strings and Saxophone

Yes, saw those attached stretched tendons. Make 'em yowl,
make 'em bleat, make them sweet. For you know
the playing is work: how many muscles in the hands,
wrists, back, and neck? How much instant discernment
in memory, eyesight, and ear-hearing? Now

your neurotransmitters need a break, so let
a saxophone stride in wearing a gold suit,
black shirt, and Falun red tie. Yes, please,
let the horn raise the subject of a steak-thick
fold of cash caught in a worn money-clip.

Bring them together now, brass
and class, robust and refined, all
intertwined.  The music ought
to be serious, funny, subtle, and crude
like something from that Satie dude.



hans ostrom 2016

Monday, October 10, 2016

Transformation: Tourist

He arrived by phone
at his destination
and immediately began
slamming into local
culture.  He attached
guide books to his torso
to create armor. Soon

he settled into doing
the things he did back
home, except he was
doing them in wherever
he was which was
"a land of contrasts."

Otherwise, he bought
things, threw things
away, kept the drapes
closed, sweated a lot,
and sank into depression.
Fascinating trip.


hans ostrom 2016

Transformation: Accountant

At the accountant's, I enter
a small room stacked with numbers.
It's a math cupboard. An assistant

deducts me from this box
to escort me to an office
where the desk is as sleek

as a panther. Someone
behind it plays a sonata
on an abacus. She wears

a tailored gray suit
with a fringe of bumble bee
fur. When the music 

of calculation ends, she says,
"Repeat after me: I owe,
and I don't owe."  "I

oh, and I don't oh,"
I say, adding, "may I pay
you in dreams?"  She says no.


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Transformation: Sea Creature

When I become a sea creature,
I become larger than I already am.
I am alone and wet. I breathe water
and don't drown. I talk into it,
the water, and listen to myself.

I can't see well far but can see
clearly on both sides of me.

Eat, swim, eliminate. Catch
a show of iridescent fish.

Sometimes I lie down,
moving with, against,
and inside sleep, which
is like the sea except
inside of me.



hans ostrom 2016

See also "Sea Monster"

Monday, October 3, 2016

Particular Thief

"With more data, suspected new particle vanishes." Science News, 3 September 2016, p. 13


If scientists had long suspected
the particle, why didn't they take
more precautions? They left more
data in plain sight. The particle
vanished, taking data with it.

This wasn't a case of quantum
hiding, a small physics joke,
or a Schrödinger shuffle. No.
This was theft. Obviously,

the particle thought more data
would reveal too much about
its identity. What exactly
was it trying to keep secret?
Perhaps crimes against
other particles. Maybe a particularly
unsavory past. Hard to say.



hans ostrom 2016


Friday, September 30, 2016

Transformation: Boss

When I become a boss, I suffer
loss of identity.  Blood pressure up,
humility suppressed. When I delegate
and said delegatees don't follow through,
what do I do?  I do the work myself,
I will not fire, I will not plead. I
tempt myself to put up a sign that reads
"Dear Everyone: Do your fucking job.
Thanks! --The Boss." I hate
that they hate me as they must
when I'm just a boss. So I stage

a coup-de-mois, step down, get out,
and return to my back-bench, edge-
of-circle, agitating ways. My news
is old: anti-authoritarians ought not
to boss. Shame on them for making
me one, shame on me for grabbing
that seductive baton.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Grendel's Agent

My client's one of the
earliest antagonists
to show up in Western
Lit., and you're offering
scraps? How dare you
low-ball a bankable,
A-List monster! Plus,
I can get you the Mother
and B-Wulf!


hans ostrom 2016





Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Transformation: Professor

When I'm a professor, I pass by colleagues
who have plotted my death a time or two.
I like to keep my feelings hard and polished.

Other people  follow me so they can ask me questions
aimed either at tripping me up (call it
the eternal dissertation-defense) or finding
out if I accept late work. I lose my keys.

Feeling around for them in a pocket
of a tweed coat, my hand touches
dead butterflies, paper clips, and
sawdust. I sit myself in the sun
like a house plant, for I just want
to know things, I am so very weary
of being responsible for knowing things.

But then. (O, Transition!) Then
I see students walking, talking
in the sun next to brick buildings
near green trees.  Regardless
of who they are and where they
come from, I see in their affect

one thing I know for sure: a
knowledge-quest is the very best
of all human adventures, and to be
young amidst that quest is to feel
(oh, yes, I remember) as if your
mind can grasp all things.


hans ostrom 2016

Engulfed

A shadow hands you a book
and walks away. You open
the book to a middle page,
where you read, "The good idea
of 'America' died from complications
related to the disease of White
Supremacy. You're living in the
funeral." You close the book,
turn, and see a million shadows
and more rushing toward you.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, September 16, 2016

Beware the Troubled Aged

People worry about "troubled youth."  Okay, fine.
They should save their alarm for the troubled
aged.  Who travel in gangs demanding help
with digital technology. Who form squads

of know-it-alls wearing funny hats. Who
tell you when their nation was great
but never specify how.  And they protest--
clogging cities worldwide, carrying signs

like "Kill Time," "We Still Like Sex" (the horror),
and "What Do We Want?--We Can't Remember!"
It's real, it's dangerous, and it's coming
to your town. I say the aged should

love it or leave it, cut their remaining hair,
get a job (again), work within the system,
and turn down their goddamned music.
Let's make this country young again.


hans ostrom 2016

Transformation: Lawyer

When I visit a lawyer, stacks of paper
turn into thunderheads that rain ink
on my fear of litigation. All the clocks
read a quarter past dollar signs.

The attorney is a wizard, albeit
gowned in a tailored suit. She
owns a map to the labyrinth
I am about to enter. She hypnotizes

me with legal mantras, and I
wake up moored to the prisoner's dock.


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Transformation: Doctor

When I visit a physician, I become a martyr,
forced to wear a backless tunic. Large white
spiders crawl all over my body, touching,
probing, tapping. Then flies swarm
around my head, each with a number painted
on its back. Then the needles. At last
I'm sent down into a dungeon of potions
and sacrificed to constant worry.


hans ostrom 2016

Transformation: Dentist

When I visit a dentist, I become a coyote.
My yips turn into howls. The moon sits
just above me, shining into a cave called
Mouth, and here comes the huntress,
my nemesis, with her quills and knives.
Her masked face blocks the moonlight.



hans ostrom 2016

Chew Your Words

Risible syllables, oracular spectacles,
and vivid vineyard spectra: the mouth
is mouthing words like lozenges today.

The tongue's a dancing master that
undulates the floor, making phonemes
and morphemes stagger in chaography,

salubriously salivaed. Enjoy your words
today, my friends who are strangers,
inveterate re-arrangers.  Roll them

around, chew 'em up, wad them in a cheek,
let them drool out then suck them back.
Open your mouth and take a peek:

nothing there but air, ivory, red-pink
cave-walls, and that writhing slug
of a mischievous tongue:

connoisseur, conductor, meaning-
                                           making muscle.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, September 12, 2016

Fantastic New App Lets People Talk to Each Other

There's this new app, fantastic,
that allows your phone to converse
with another person's phone.
Or several phones may chat
in a mingling group. Of course,
the phones have a lot to talk about--
a bad night's sleep-mode, soreness
from data-storage, the stress
of being shifted to another plan.

Anyway, while the phones talk,
you and another person or you
and several people may do whatever
you want together, including talk.  It'll be
great because your phones won't
be there. So for instance you
can focus your eyes on the other
person, and your fingers
and thumbs won't have to dance
frenetically like a weaving spider's legs.
I'm telling you it's an amazing app.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, September 9, 2016

The Scourge of Poem-Abandonment



Last night, the City’s Literature Squad picked up
hundreds of poems that had been abandoned on the streets.
The poems are being held in a detention center
pending a hearing about necessary revisions
and poem ownership.  When they are identified,

creators who cruelly dumped their poems
face controversial new fines imposed by the City.
Speaking on condition of anonymity (as well as
obscurity), one creator said, “What am supposed
to do–let some loser poem of mine hang
around the place forever?”

hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Vampire Blues

Don't want to be a vampire anymore.
Don't want to be a vampire no more.
I'm sick to death of vampirin'--
That's for sure. 

My teeth are dull,
My skin is pale.
I sleep all day
Like I'm in jail.

The coffin stinks,
And blood tastes bad.
The vampire films
Just make me sad.

Don't want to be a vampire anymore.
Don't want to be a vampire no more.
I'd like to be just human--
That's for sure. 

I wear black capes
And fear sunlight.
I want to surf
And dress in white.

When you're a beast,
It's hard to date.
Yes, I can change.
It's not too late.

Don't want to be no vampire anymore.
No, don't want to vampire anymore.
I want to have some fun
And lose the gore. 


copyright 2016 hans ostrom 




Concerning Fools

It's hard work being a fool. Ask
Shakespeare.  Oops, he's dead.
It's a calling, being a fool.
At the wrong times, you

have to be sincere, insincere,
right, wrong, inept, graceful,
knowing, naive, too young,
too old , , , Just too, okay?

You have to be willing
to spend a lifetime mismatched
to places, events, people,
clothes, customs, and situations.

That said, the world depends
upon fools: progress, false pride,
comedy, serendipity, art, and science
all rely on fools.  Oh,

what bullshit.  What a dumbass
thing to say. What kind of
fool do I take you for?  See
what I mean? Too too.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, September 2, 2016

The Risings

Daniel's rising
up above the street.
The hot, crowded street,
hard and lethal.
Daniel's rising.

Rosario's rising
up above the huts
made of iron sheets,
cardboard, wood.
Rosario's rising.

Is it spirit?
Is it matter?
Is it a horrible,
factual hell?

Is it love,
is it greed,
is it power?
Who can tell?

Tula's rising,
up above the traps
they've set for her,
these men, these men.
Lord, Tula's rising.

It is love,
it is greed,
it is power,
though each
in a different
proportion
unfortunately,
not enough,
too much.

As you rise,
think of the risen,
think of the rose.
Think of freedom,
all dues, all
invoices paid.


hans ostrom 2016

Honeybees and Glass

Poems are composed on glass
that only seems to be translucent
beyond which airborne honeybees
meander in a No-Time without
language. Some poems pretend
to see the honeybees.



hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Collecting Time

I keep weeks in closets,
months in a rented garage.

I've misplaced a crucial week
from June 1979.  I can't count
the number of other weeks
I've never gotten my hands on.

Somehow I ended up
with someone's else's
January 1826.  It may well
be my favorite piece.

I had a chance to bid
on a fortnight from 1902,
but three days were missing.

People ask me, they say
why do you collect different
units of time? I wish I had
a good answer. Some day

I'll do something with all
these weeks and months.
In the meantime,
I need to find more space
for all this time.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, August 26, 2016

Always One More

There's always one more, you know. One
more problem, pain, opportunity, pleasure.
Another nail, bolt, squirt of toothpaste, surprise.
And another acceptance required.

One more blackberry or tomato to pick,
one more spud in the dirt. Another task,
chore, duty. Oh, yes, one more good
idea, atavistic evil notion, phase

of healthy cultural growth. Another
star, pickle, song. One more
word, glance of understanding, heart break.
Until there isn't. But then there is.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, August 22, 2016

Better and Best

Better to be lucky than good. Better
to be good than middling, middling
than bad. Better to be pragmatic than
pure, sensible than righteous. Better
to have good shoes than bad, bad shoes
than none. Better to be housed than
homeless. Better to consider people
without than people with and than
only you and your own if you have.
Better to do it than to write of it,
best to do both.


hans ostrom 2016

The Question and Answer Portion of the Evening

I could go for you in a really big way,
he said to her. It wasn't subtle, and
it was not hip. Thank you for sharing
your perspective, she said to him.
It wasn't rude, and it was droll.

Shall I leave you alone, then? he
said to her. It was polite. It was not
clever. Yes, you shall, but not right
now, unless of course you want to go.
It was permission. It was restrained.

What shall we do, then, what shall
we say? he said to her. Excellent
questions, she said to him.
He was confused.  She
was bemused.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, August 19, 2016

A Little Molecular Traveling Music

A handful of molecules moved around
the universe this one time. Long story
shrunk, they became "me."  (In
photographs the quotation marks
are invisible.) Lots of them get

replaced in the usual organismic
way, plus haircuts, etc. Soon and
very soon, all molecules that account
for "me" will be released back to
the universe at large, and what

a large it is. They'll keep on
moving, as if they'd merely
paused at a roadside diner.
A little molecular traveling
music, if you please, maestro.



hans ostrom 2016

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Are you thinking what I'm
thinking? I hope not. It makes
more sense to divide the thinking
labor. I'll think about clean water
while you think about recordings
by Gil Scott Heron. You'll
think about the struggle against
racism in your community,
and I'll think about a feather.
You: rotten fruit. Me: nuclear
holocaust.  (These are just
examples, not directives.)
Of course, we're both free
(we hope) to attend think-the-
same-thoughts-party later,
although it seems those can
get a little cultish. Whatever
you do, don't think about
a red onion. Oops, oh no!


hans ostrom 2016

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

In a Lobby of a Cinema Complex

This complex isn't simple. Figures
strolling across a neon-glossy floor
toward theater-caves, bathrooms, or
sugar and salt: they and I
are already dead--like people
photographed by cinema in 1939.
And we've been replaced by others
who move about here just as we do,
we did. Maybe one of them

is morbid, or at least fatalistic,
and feels for a moment as if time
has already departed, leaving
behind only light on a screen
flickering imperceptibly
and kernels of corn exploded
into tiny thunderheads. Before
going into the movie, I think
this scene may be the better movie.


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Elegy for Richard Hugo

Elegy for Richard Hugo

(1923-1982)

You said to wait ten years before
trying to write an elegy about someone
who just died. I waited more than three times
that. No doubt it's not enough.

So, something here about a lake's face
changing--ripple, riffle, wrinkle; you
said never use semicolons. (I’m kidding
a kidder.) "Be glad to fish
with you sometime," you wrote in

in the one letter to me, "but I warn you,
I'm strictly a bait fisherman.” If that
were on Twitter now, I'd favorite (a verb, sir)
it and tweet back, No worries. You
haven't missed much. Let's say

a man sits on a rock. He's connected
to a lake, call it Saw Lake, by a fishing
line. He's not really waiting for anything.
He’s drinking beer. A hit, a strike, would be fine,
a rousing thing. Just over the ridge
doesn't lie a town. That's why

nobody's heard of it. I will say
women and men who work at the factory
there return from a women's softball
game, someone won, who cares. Now
everybody will wash their hair, their bodies,
put on clean jeans, heave on the nice
boots, and go out and dance and drink
and kiss and hug and fight. The

man on the rock has seen the rusted
iron roofs of just that town. He
wonders if he should call them rooves.
The lake tugs him away from words

but not for long. "There you go," he says.


Hans Ostrom copyright 2016

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Commercials

Commercials: adjectives packaged
as nouns, petty crimes committed
against ears and eyes, sometimes
full-on felony assaults paid for
by deepest vaults.

The White Supremacist cable
not-news shows raise volume
high, highest for commercials,
concussing brains to soften them up
for propaganda. Don't buy. Don't buy.


hans ostrom 2016

You Haven't Earned a Prize

When you're White, and you learn
things and as they say get your
consciousness raised enough
by the jack called the-way-things-are-
and-have-always-been, you end up
losing friends and not really wanting
to hang around many White folks
much because disgust and rage
are exhausting.

If your view gets raised a little more,
you won't feel sorry for yourself,
you'll understand, why Black folks
really don't want to hang around you,
whether it's personal or not.

It's not like you're awareness
is anything more than the minimal
thing to achieve, and it's not like
you've somehow earned the prize
of their company.  Solitude

and isolation, boo-hoo, tough shit.
Your modest discomfort doesn't
even register on the scale of pain
to which the colonies and the United States
dedicated and still dedicate themselves.
You've probably heard the saying:
Many White people fear a race war;
most Black people, like their forebears,
continue to try to survive in one.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Adam's Song

I'm eating dried figs,
am very depressed.
I'm totally naked but
feel like I'm dressed.

There's no one to compare
Eve to. She's nice.
Today I named some little
creatures "mice."

Sometimes my body changes
when I see Eve.
When she touches the change
I never want to leave.

I have this feeling something
bad will happen soon.
I don't know why.
I asked the moon.

The moon talks to me in ways
the sun will not.
The moon is very cool and
the color of my snot.

The moon said, "Things happen,
things change.
And God may disarrange what
God arranged."

I am Adam. This is
my own weird song.
If you're passing through
Eden, sing along.



hans ostrom 2016

I Was Asked to Pass This Along

Poetry's using language
in unofficial ways, including
re-purposing official language.

Sometimes poetry bosses
and poetics conglomerates
make their poetry way official.

They try, anyway. When this
happens, it should signal to poets
to write otherwise. Poetry

is otherwise. It's an attitude
toward language and authority
as much as anything else.

Anyway, someone asked me
to pass these notes along. To
whom? Not sure. Goodbye.



hans ostrom 2016

New Day 3.0

Reset the day. Use the control panel
Or download a new day. Run as
administrator. Scan for viruses--
narcissism, bigotry, willful ignorance.
You can probably get a free night
with any day you download.
Check your memory. Can it handle
a new day? Having problems with
the day software? Eh, we don't
handle that. Try contacting other users.



hans ostrom 2016

Friday, July 1, 2016

The Castle

I built you a castle, using a castle kit. I
staffed it with people who'd worked
in a castle before, castlexperts.

I lived there a while to see what it
was like. The staff were rude. The
British use the plural "were" with "staff."

Anyway, I let the staff go, which is
castle-speak for firing them. I live
alone in the castle now.

I like doing so rather excessively.
I couldn't bear to live in it with
someone else, even you.

So I'm going to move out
and give you the castle. Americans
use "gift" as a verb. Life is a process.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, June 27, 2016

Four Questions About the Future

How sophisticated does any
creature's mind have to be
to conceive of Future? Was
there an evolutionary ad-
vantage to imagining Future
and oneself in it? When
they were hiding from God
in the brush after complications
arose, how did Eve and Adam
discuss Future? What are you
going to do tomorrow?


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Unsalted

Lot's wife, unnamed in the Bible,
at long last unsalted, has her say:

"I looked back. It's a human
response, a habit not without
practical merit. I got salted
because of some arbitrary,
impractical order, and
without naming me they
named a stone pillar after me.

I'm a mother. You don't think
I knew we had to leave the city?
Who do you think got the kids
ready and packed? Not Lot.

For Christ's sake (thinking
prospectively), let's have less
drama, catastrophe, and
excessive, gratuitous extortion
and a lot more common sense.

You need to salt a fleeing woman
to get your goddamned point
across.  What was your point?
Yeah, I know what the write-up
says. I'm talking about for real.
Admit it. You over-reacted."



hans ostrom 2016

Park and Fly

At the place with the sign that read
"PARK AND FLY" people were parking
their cars, getting out, and flying.

A lot of them roosted in trees
nearby. Up there they tore through
their baggage and briefcases,

grabbing paper, pencils, and wires
I guess to build nests with. Some
people perched on roofs

and huddled shoulder to shoulder,
cheeping or cooing. I think they
just wanted to get away from their

jobs kids pets companions husbands
wives partners televisions poverty
depression phones & asexual routines.

Anyway it was quite a thing, and it
made for an awful commute,
selfish of them really.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, June 20, 2016

Nutritious, Too

It was a little bistro, as I recall, located
somewhere between Sierra City, California,
and Istanbul. "Tabula Rasa" was the name.
Minimalist dining. Never to be found using
GPS. Somehow they block the signal.

Minimalist dining. No decorations.
Simple wooden tables. Two kinds of soup,
one kind of bread, olive oil. One type
of salad, one entree. No specials.
Water and/or vodka. Table white, table red.

Servers wore white aprons and did
not reveal their names.  They opened
the conversation with philosophical
questions, such as, "Is language
a medium of deception?" (I think
I answered, "It depends." )

Ten different desserts, three ports,
several brandies and scotches.
Absinthe. It kind of sneaks up on you,
a place like that. Impressions are made
on your senses. Things about a bistro
of this nature catch in memory's webbing.

Yeah, and after the kitchen closed,
the dancers came out. The lighting
changed.  Tables disappeared. Short
surrealist films appeared on the walls.
I think of it now as a transformative
dining experience.


hans ostrom 2016

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Candelabra in a Desert

Like a candelabra stuck in desert sand,
I wonder what my purpose is. Like
a coin made by the previous empire,
I wonder what I'm worth. Like a stray
cat in a cold alley, I wonder if I'll
ever be wanted again. Like a statue
opposite the Bureau of Statistics,
I'm facing facts. Like a traveler

picked clean by thieves, I have
nothing to trade for that old feeling
of being interesting, desired,
caressable. Like a hermit, I close
a door on all this silly yearning
and read until I fall asleep.
Sleep it seems will still accept me.


hans ostrom 2016

Boxes

WOODEN CRATES

Boxes full of possibilities
when emptied. Cupboards
or bookshelves for
the lean of budget.

CEREAL

So much packaging
So much printed matter
Bag inside box
So much surreal imagery
Just to deliver cooked grain and sugar.

ALLEY

Two empty produce boxes
fight in an alley,
slamming their rectangled
cardboard together, trying
to cut each other with corners.

A dishwasher comes out
for a smoke-break,
clothes damp from water
and grease, and separates them.
"What's this all about?"
is the dishwasher's question.
The boxes, they/re not saying anything.

LUNCH

Our parents didn't go in
for lunch boxes painted
Disney or Wyatt Earp.
They sent us to school
with silver or black lunch pails
shaped like barns. The idea
was schoolwork. I think they
were in a hurry to make us old.

AIRPLANE

Black box, bottom of the ocean,
holds its secrets like sinister jewelry.
Malfunction, malevolence, murder?
why why why why why why
cheeps the beacon, voice of the
box.


hans ostrom 2016

Fast Food

An apple really moves when
you get a good grip
and put your weight behind the throw.
Better though to save or eat it.

If you're hallucinating
mildly, cups of tea and bowls of soup
can shift positions in a room--
like that! Nobody knows why.

When you think about it,
frozen peas are like hardened pixels
exploding out of a pointillist painting.
When you think a little more,
they don't seem like that at all.

Did you see how fast that
sausage was going? That's
German engineering, my friend.
Nothing like it.


hans ostrom 2016

Sunday, June 12, 2016

How To Fix the Humanities in Higher Education

It’s a true fact that in the U.S., the humanities division of higher education is in trouble.  Students are voting with their feet and staying away from history and English and other humanistic venues.
I’d like to take a moment to address the problem in a way that most humanities professors and administrators do not seem to emphasize and, in some cases, reject.  It’s called practicality.

In one practical move, the humanities need to go back to classical basics, except I’m not talking about teaching Greek and Latin and rehashing what used to be the grand narrative of Western Civilization.  Many Greek and Roman thinkers and teachers (the categories are not necessarily exclusive) were empiricists and nascent social scientists.  Aristotle’s writings on rhetoric reveal a mind keenly aware of how public discourse functions, how political arguments get put together, and so on.  Whereas many English Departments and colleges farm out the teaching of rhetoric to graduate students and adjuncts, Aristotle embraced it as essential.  I doubt if he’d have much time for most of what the Modern Language Association represents. 

At my own university, the English Department decided to manipulate the notion of “writing across the curriculum,” which was never meant as a replacement for first-year composition, and have the faculty at-large teach in the form of “first-year seminars.”  One problem, of course, is that writing really isn’t getting taught the way it should be, in most cases.  I don’t blame the faculty who have taken on the seminars.  I blame English for jettisoning their responsibility—not just English at my school, but English across the profession.  A second problem is that those students who once became interested in the humanities by means of a first-year composition course now never have the opportunity. A third problem is that enrollments in English courses have plummeted. Of course. 

So my first suggestion is to re-embrace rhetoric, not just at the first-year composition level, but also with new courses in public and political discourse.  In an age when these two areas of communication are undergoing revolutions, English departments are sitting on their hands.  It’s ludicrous.
My second suggestion is to find out, in detail, why students are walking and wheeling away from humanities.  Hire social scientists, if necessary, or even if it’s not necessary, for we know how humanities types love their confirmation bias. I know I do. 

I’d be delighted to be proved wrong by data, but my moderately informed guess is that students will take ethnic studies classes in history and literature even if most of them may not choose to major in such disciplines.  African American and Latino Studies classes at my university continue to attract a lot of students, even as enrollments in English plummet. It makes sense, at least on first glance, for just as public/political discourse is undergoing a revolution, conflict and cooperation between and within ethnic groups is another area undergoing revolution.  Why wouldn’t students—of all ethnicities—energized by Black Lives Matter and related events and conditions be interested in ethnic studies courses that dovetail with these phenomena?

Think of students as citizens.  That is how Aristotle and Quintillian thought of them—if you feel the need to seek classical approval.  The original seven liberal arts were rooted in civil practicality.  That’s why they included arithmetic, rhetoric, and music.  How beneficial it would be for students to learn how the blues, for example, massively influenced later genres of popular music but also the American culture at large. Ethnic studies courses—in a variety of humanities departments—think of students as citizens, too, he wrote, climbing on his hobby horse one last time.

Yes, that’s right, I’m invoking the call for relevant courses that arose in the 1960s.  No, I’m not suggesting that colleges base their humanities curricula on whatever students deem relevant.  I am suggesting that colleges look at what’s happening in society, how young people are responding to some of what’s happening, and adjust accordingly.  Besides, ethnic studies have come of age.  Texts are more widely available than ever.  The scholarship and pedagogy are seasoned. 

If, in English, it’s creative writing students want to take, then offer it—in the forms of poetry, fiction, and screenwriting, among others.  Offer playwriting.  Teach journalism. Teach blogging. Teach magazine-writing, including online magazines (obviously).  These are all opportunities to refine critical thinking and sharpen writing in general.  If you, personally, recoil from such courses, then hire someone else to teach them.  Keep teaching what you teach, but get out of the way. Please.

I don’t want to drift too far from the main point of my second suggestion, however.  Get empirical. Find out what students are interested in academically and why.  Make some adjustments based on the data. You don’t need to burn your dissertation (although you should stop trying to teach it) or give up on your pet critical and cultural-studies theories.  Just suspend your beliefs and find out what’s really going on. If necessary, respect your youngers, a radical concept, I know. 

Finally, I’d suggest reaching out across disciplines and campuses to find unlikely partners.  When I served briefly as the director of the writing center at U.C. Davis (about a hundred years ago), we were interested in pairing upper-level writing courses with courses across the curriculum.  I  made cold-calls to many departments and asked if they’d be interested in a partnership.  I vividly remember picking up the desk phone and calling someone in in wildlife science.  Pretty soon a writing course taught to students in that field materialized.

I’m not suggesting that anyone ought to turn the cold call into the primary mode of reviving the humanities, although it couldn’t hurt.  It’s probably more practical and workable for people in the humanities to reach out across their own campuses, to walk or wheel or drive to other departments and start with a tabula rasa, asking how you might collaborate with business departments & schools, education departments, engineering, sciences, and social sciences.  Teach all kinds of professionally applicable writing and socially vibrant literature courses. 


Be peripatetic. Get over yourselves.  Get out there and mix with students and colleagues.  Attend conferences outside your specialty and outside humanities.  Go on the road, see what’s what.  Ask questions (not rhetorical ones).  Shut up and listen. Revive the humanities brick by empirical, grounded, socially alert, sometimes old fashioned (rhetoric), innovative brick.  

Friday, June 10, 2016

Plausible

Wind so hard the lake-surface bristles, and because the word
Saturday appears above a box representing a date, the person,
categorized as a man, is not somewhere else but here, for
even in so called off hours everyone is regulated. He's

hunched inside a coat, hearing wind so hard it whistles
through reed stalks and he notes he can't distinguish
between a vaguely recalled sadness and this day's
specific one, as if all pumice-gray clouds were one smear

across one sky he's lived under, wind so hard his ears
ache, and he knows eventually he'll do something called
"the sensible thing," and his legs will move him toward
something called a "house," but he like standing in muck

near the whipped up lake because standing here seems
like the one thing that hasn't been arbitrarily labeled,
wind so hard now his nose runs, and he mutters,
"whatever you say," which encapsulates what he's felt

like saying to everything from STOP-signs to tweets
to good-mornings to cityscapes and his own name
and all the names for things, including life--life?
Whatever you say, wind so hard it blows a bird

sideways and the man's chilled deep and grateful
for that and walks buffeted back toward sensible
things, wind so hard it's almost but not quite
made life plausible today.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Advertisers

They went to a lot of trouble
because they didn't know any better.
We speak of advertisers, decades
ago.  They crafted heavy metal
signs in the shape of a flying
horse (petrol). They made radio
and TV commercials as subtle
as pile-drivers. They showed
stag films to unsavory clients,
lots of smoke and leg. A steak,
potatoes, beans, martinis, and
pie a la mode every night:
deserving of a medal, maybe.
In retro-spectro-vision, I guess
the marketeers were as obvious,
naive, and simple as us, their
targets. Because they were targets, too.



hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Wish Lists for the Dead

You know there's these online wish-lists
for people about to get married.
Toaster (1). Champagne glasses (12).
That sort of thing. A lot of pre-newlyweds
just want cash. Why did I just write "just"?

Anyway, I think there should be wish-lists
for people who've just died. Some things
with far more granularity than a will
or a trust or a box of photos. Bouquet
for Giselle (1). Fuck-you to cousin
Rexx (3). Trees planted (1,345,238).
Bourbon-and-branch-water for
Dolores (3). Kind word (1).


hans ostrom 2016

I Demand to Know

A dragonfly, wearing standard-issue
lead goggles, downshifts its wings,
which when still look like foggy
cracked windows. Resting,

this dragonfly pulses. Its curved
blue tail befriended a scorpion
once during a vacation in Mexico.

I demand to know
what this dragonfly thinks.


hans ostrom 2016

The Fiddler's Response

The absorption of music operates
individualistically, in spite of
communal structures, hitocracies,
group performance, and ubiquitous
corporate dispensers. Thus

was the violin-player in a four-
person acoustic jazz band induced
by the present music and her
personal compunctions to play
with her hair, twisting it with
one finger, then looking at it

as if it were a clue; this, as
she waited (was she waiting?)
for a guitarist to complete
his wailing interval.


* "wailing interval"--sometimes
used by Duke Ellington to refer to
an instrumental solo


hans ostrom 2016

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Mutant Pop Song

I don't want to see you tonight.
Baby. I want to see you sometime
today. Let's say between 1:00 and
2:40 in the afternoon. I want
to sniff your abdomen.  Baby.

I would walk many kilometers
to be with you. Just not all at once.
Plus you're the one with the car.
Oh, oh Baby. 

Cool Reaper

We who will be harvested
are understandably grim
about the prospect. That
doesn't mean the reaper--
constant change--is grim.

The reaper's merely
impersonal, although our
misery is not. That
coolness chills the blade
and menaces the hopeful,
who are hopeless.


hans ostrom 2016

Nevada

A human view has it that
a city of casinos and libertines
will be the center of sin
while piety flourishes on
the sagebrush plateau. God
probably thinks otherwise,
not being human. Not
opposite, just otherwise.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, May 13, 2016

Faith Is Bulbs

Faith? Don't speak to me of Allah, Yahweh,
Jahova, Christ, Moses, da Buddha-man, Zeus,
Sky Papa, Earth Mama--or any of it.

I'm no atheist. I'm a modest gardener,
vegetables and flowers, who in Spring
is online-ordering tulip bulbs to plant

in October and to witness the following
Spring. That is faith.


hans ostrom 2016

Mutant Country-Song

When it all falls apart
and I'm lying on my deathbed,
I hope the Lord'll forgive me for
what flashes through my head.

"I hope someone's getting laid,"
for example. Or "I hate Nashville
worse than bosses." Or "I don't
think God gives two shits about
your politics--or your religion."
And, of course, "Ouch, that hurts
like a motherfu--."

[Docking complete: begin transfer
of pickup truck (old), farm, train,
mama, daddy, pretty girl, "darlin'", 
we, they, goodbye, dancin', 
hungover, fishin', gospel.]

I hope the Lord'll forgive me
for what may flash through my head
when everything falls apart and
I'm lying on my deathbed--or

on a couch, a highway, grass,
the crapper (Elvis!), a stretcher,
or a woman (darlin').


hans ostrom 2016

The Director of the Center

He's the Director of the Center for Let's
Wait and See. He's been worn down by
urgency. His social network includes a few
remaining pragmatic empiricists, resigned
skeptics, and anti-dualists. the CLWS
believes culture's terribly noisy, even
for the deaf, and maliciously distracting.
CLWS does all it can, which isn't a lot,

to promote counter-measures.
For there's so much drama
and so little repair,
not to mention
thoughtful original design. The
Director chooses not to whine.


hans ostrom 2016

Curve of Life

Hello, curve of life.
Darling, you bend me.
You give me the blues.
So generous.

From all directions
(he whined and over-stated),
comes the onslaught of aging.
I'm too tired to list them.

Mitosis and meiosis. Oh,
how fresh my cells were
when I first studied cells.
La-dee-dah. Curve of life,

where will you take me? Over
a dark ridge--and then soaring
over vast landscapes under stars?
Perhaps something a bit less fancy.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, April 25, 2016

Our Days to Get Through

Everybody has a day to get through.
It may look like other people's days
to other people, but no: each person's
particulars make the day unique. Many
days I don't feel like I've known anyone,
and each time I feel that differently.


hans ostrom 2016

Song: Another Kind of Eden

It's another kind of Eden, I supposed.
What do you think: Should we remove our clothes?
We're on a rugged beach.
The seagulls strut and screech.
And in the sun your lovely person glows.




hans ostrom 2016

I Had My Eyes On You

I had my eyes on you. They were
those plastic ones from the novelty store.
I had them on your bare abdomen.
You were lying down (as

opposed to lying up) absorbing
sunheat. "I can't seem to take
my eyes off of you," I said.
Eyes closed, you said something

like "Huhnhmnm!" Which jolted
your stomach-muscles. My eyes
tumbled off onto what covers
Earth's crust. You put your eyes

on me--a warning glare. That's when
the devil showed up in the form
of the neighborhood's vicious
cat. I cast an eye at him--missed.

But he scampered. "Get you out
of here!"I yelled. "Same goes for you,"
you said to me. I gathered my eyes
and kept spinning in space on

this thing we call a planet.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Less Than Petty

On Twitter literary opiners complained
about poems concerning petty crises.
More attention to broad social emergencies
is wanted. Makes sense. You know how
it goes sometimes, though. The admonishment
has an unintended effect sometimes, even
on poets who sympathize.  I blew my nose
into a red handkerchief, which I opened.
I looked at the snot.  Tapioca. The shape
looked like an obese number 1, with sarif.
The topic of this poem is less than petty.


hans ostrom 2016

Humans Can Kill Easily

Once they breach the membrane
of empathy and kill with calm technique,
an order of evil descends. Those well
removed who have deployed and justified
the killing puff up and stink like toads.
They speechify, murmur, count, and preen.
Dead bodies rot in sun and shade
as the day moves on. Killers rest,
their eyes dulled, their nerves in service
now to evil. They care for their weapons.
Humans can kill easily, Lord knows.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, April 11, 2016

Feline Disappointment

I aspire
to earn one day
the scorn expressed
sometimes
by certain cats I know.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Are We We? Oui

How are you enjoying the Pre-Apocalypse?
Other species through no fault of their
own get clocked by asteroids or Ice Ages.

We're just self-destructive. And we
think we have the right--don't we?--
to blow up everything. Wreck it.

Including the future. Who are we?
Are we we? Is there time. Is there time?


hans ostrom 2016

Caught Playing With Words

Are you playing with your words again?
Stop playing with your words! Put them down.
Oh, my God, they're all over your face, in
your hair,on the floor, the walls.

And stop laughing! It isn't funny.
You're much too old to be playing
with your words. You're never going
to amount to anything. What do you

mean what do I mean by "anything"?
People can amount to things!
But only if they stop playing
with their words at an early age.



hans ostrom 2016

Friday, March 18, 2016

Poets

One orders French wine and quizzes me about
who (what poets) I know and what I've read.
He's not quite insufferable.  He seems to think
he's hot shit. I start to get bored.

Another one sings a verse of a bluegrass song
on voice-mail--in tune, on pitch, with a
Carolina accent.  And another

edits a prestigious anthology which a
prestigious scholar skewers in a review,
and I don't care because their prestige
seems like a well preserved automobile
from 1936. Plus with the Internet,

anthologies don't matter, and
prestige is a penny stock.

Millions of others are just starting,
farting around with words.  It's a fine
thing to try to imagine: millions of poets
writing, clotting in cafes, tapping
on screens, falling asleep after
a swing-shift, wondering why White
people are so crazy, trying to get
another poet in bed.

Me: never prestigious, my obscurity
well seasoned, robust, full bodied.
The fascination with poetry stays
fresh.  The uncertainty about poetry's
place in society enlarges.

Anyway, it's one word. After another.


hans ostrom 2016

Language Charged With Meaning

Ezra Pound wanted to charge language
with meaning.  A misdemeanor, surely.

Who could testify against language?
They'd have to use language to try

and thereby make themselves
accessories after the testimony.

I say exonerate language from meaning.
Or convict but pardon it.  Commute

a few of its sentences. I mean, really.


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Novel and Poem

(ars poetica)

A novel is a thousand lovely cacti.
A poem is a shot of tequila.
Novel is the breathing of a marathon-runner.
Poem is the intake of breath felt when a woman
invites you to be nude with her.
Novel is a wheat field. Poem
is a vegetable patch.

A novel is a city.
A poem is hearing music or seeing
art or going broke or having sex or
falling in love or hating work or fearing
or being all alone or getting acclaim or
arrested in that city.

Novel is a search for spices.
Poem is cardamom.

A novel is a battle.
A poem is dog-tags hanging
on a war memorial.

Novel is someone you know well.
Poem is an intimate stranger.


hans ostrom 2016

Monday, March 7, 2016

Bible and Rifle

I saw a man
wrestling his Bible.
I saw a man
clutching his rifle.

It was one man.
One and the same.
And all confused
by hate and shame.


hans ostrom 2016

Quest Ionnaire

What is your gun rights?
Why is movie stars?
Who is bombing sites?
How is luxury cars?

When is bigots?
Who is frackings
How is forgets?
Where is hackings?

Why is hedge-funds?
What is gun rites?
Who is bombing raids?
When is megabytes?

How is racists?
Why is time-shares?
What is billionaires?
Who is malwares?

Consciousness

Consciousness floats in virtual air
like a weightless golden pear
the body imagines with its blood.

Consciousness is absolutely
absurd, partly because it
can reason. Not least of all,

intuition forms an illuminating
shadow. In closing, let us
pray, and let us note

that prayer is one way consciousness
expresses its hope that it's not
talking only to itself.


hans ostrom 2016

Patented New Sonnet Form

Pablo Parabola patented the ten-line
sonnet for a sleeker look, increased
speed, and tighter handling. Interviewed
at his apartment in the Pommes de Plume
hotel, Parabola said, "We;ll be in full

production before Fall." Critics
say he and his investors have grossly
overestimated the market for ten-line
sonnets, leaving aside the question of
demand for sonnets globally.


hans ostrom 2016

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Medusa's Morning

One morning Medusa put her hair up all
in snakes. What do you think? she asked
her lover. Looks great! he said. You didn't
even look! she said. I did so, said he,
and it looks terrific. At the same time,

your hair looks hungry, and what people
forget is that snakes stink.  He got out
of bed and asked Medusa what she thought
of the red hawk he'd attached to his groin.

She said, You're scaring my hair.

hans ostrom 2016

Monday, February 22, 2016

However

"However."  Strange word. Gets away
with looking ordinary. How. Ever.

One part has to do with in what manner;
the other part, with time. However
makes as much sense as Wellsoon.
"Wellsoon, we did find the broth too salty."

However, "however" is as reliable
as a steel pry-bar and never wears out.
It leverages a turn
of direction in writing, speech, and thought.
Whatever it means, it functions
and does so more slowly than but.

In the U.S., however has enjoyed
a long friendship with the semicolon;
however, that probably doesn't
interest you.


hans ostrom 2016

Clusterville

I'm living out in Clusterville. Out here
we cluster up the huts and houses, apartmental
lego-heaps, and all the rest. The clustering
seems fine. I have a job at Clusterworks.

The Clusterwork motto is
"Trust Your Clustering to Us!"
We've been trained never to omit
the exclamation point.

Believe it or not, my wife Clemithia
is a direct descendant of one
of Clusterville's founders--
Alchemia von Kluster,

who was German by birth,
Belgian by culture. A grim,
exacting gourmand, so they
say. Aggressive pacifist.

Clemithia takes after her.
I would call my spouse
an imposing figure.
You would, too.

Again by marriage I'm related to
Colonel Jean von Kluster,
who's first and last stand
occurred just outside Clusterville:
he sank his savings into
a failed jousting tournament.

Look,I'm no deep thinker, no
existentialist, anarchist,
or pub philosopher. I work in
Clusterville because that's what I do.
I like self-evident just fine.

Other people call the shots
and legions more (the sad cases)
believe they have control.

There are clusters of people,
places, and things in Clusterville.
That is all you really need to know,
amen. Come to Clusterville.
Call it home. Stay.


hans ostrom 2016

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Having a Word with It

I'm never quite sure of who you are,
depression. I ought to hate you. I don't.

It's like you're some kind of gray-garbed
circuit judge. You ride into town, glower
down at me, then summon me to a cold

brown room where we sit silently.
You like it fine. I start to stare

into a pit I've hallucinated.
Eventually you leave. Or seem to.
When they finally sort out all
the brain science, your current name,

depression, will seem as quaint
as a Model T. Anyway, . . .


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, February 5, 2016

Black's Beach

(the clothing-optional beach near San Diego)

The heavy sand is as black as the stuff
that abides with gold in the Sierra.

Black-suited surfers march
along the beach in martial service
to the obsession. A nude

woman enacts yoga poses,
and I wonder why they never
offered that kind of thing
in high school physical education.
A solid replacement for
the badminton unit.

I sit naked on a purple towel
laid out on a washed-up wooden pallet.
There are other old washed-up
hippies (not the most accurate word,
but it will do) who dot the beach
in stupendous sunshine and fresh air.
Erosion-scarred brown bluffs rise above us.

I suppose we're absently wondering
where all the parties went to.
Answer: nowhere.  They just go on
without us. Somewhere we got

separated from our pods and
ended up on this beach.

It's not a big gulp of freedom.
Only a sip or two. Now a brown
young woman wades out into surf,
presents her body to the ocean,
dips her hands into the water
as if it were cool liquid silver.

She brings her hands to her face.
She runs her fingers through her hair.
I lie back like an old sea lion
and close my eyes.


hans ostrom 2016

The Shark Teeth Underground

I bought six shark teeth today.  Small ones.
Inexpensive. Also cheap, although not from
a shark's point of view. They came in a week
plastic box with a black foam mini-mattress.

They look a little like bobcat teeth.
Their color runs from taupe to blonde.

They remind me of when I bought
a chocolate-brown baby octopus
at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco,
when I was 8. These cheap,

eccentric creature keepsakes
(my mother's word) keep me going.
They symbolize a child's economy,
which dictates that all the stuff

in the world, like sticks, rocks, bones,
and bugs, is a vast, astonishing
pile of wealth. You can just pick
some of it up and have it! Holy shit!

You can even covet it and save it.
But most of it you just let go,
a re-investment in the infinite treasure.

The economies in which I've had
to participate in sell things the seem
necessary or desirable.  But almost
all these things harbor a tumor
of dullness. That's why advertising

must work so hard to distract
us from the dispirited quality
of goods and services.  As a
practical matter, the more I keep

current on child economics,
the more sanguine I am as I go
undercover into the adult,
capitalist polity. My

code-name today is Shark Teeth.
If you want to join this underground,
you're already a member, and remember:
the wealth we explore, the miraculous
forms that delight us--they're cool
and inexpensive, often totally free.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, February 4, 2016

To Eddie Some Weeks After the Winter Solstice

Oceans are the ultimate artists, Edward,
more variously capable and constantly
original than earthquakes, rivers, ice,
and erosion. Of course, human art,

in contrast to all of these, is not
really in the conversation. Human art
is always a bit of a knock-off.
Sculpture, painting, surrealism,
realism, epic tales, Dada, absurdism,
comedy, tragedy, scrambled genres,
modes, and impulses, and forms
we cannot even grasp abound

in oceans, by oceans. The oceanic
opus is constantly changing,
ever-expanding, and utterly
unconcerned about audience,
remuneration, and critical success.

Sad Plato, when he was thought-seeking
for ideal forms, should have recalled
the ideal generator of forms:
the sea! The Greek seas alone
would have cheerfully overwhelmed
Plato's wee dialogues and allegories
and turned them into fantastic
shapes to nourish starved imaginations.

What do you think about that, Eddie
of La Jolla? I know how you like your
Plato and his greatest invention Socrates,
who, like a professional wrestling
star, always won his contests.

As you warm up your pipes to sing
in response to me, Eddie, let me stand you
to a salty tequila cocktail, an
ocean unto itself, some say.

hans ostrom 2016

Early Days Yet

Come all you
myopic visionaries,
procrastinating inventors,
and clumsy magicians!

Join us in the project
we like to call
"Ambition and Other
Toxic Ideas."

We're not sure
what we want
out of the endeavor,
or where it will

occur. Or when.
Or even what
the endeavor may
entail. But

we're warming up
to the notion,
and we've given
serious thought

to a mission-statement.
No doubt you're
as excited as we are
about all this.


hans ostrom 2016

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Our Conversation So Far

Are they than closer appear
may mirror in objects? Seated
while belt seat fasten your
under vest life!

Refrigerated keep. Sale
individual for labeled not
unit this, all right?

Tough song, fly
along, boogety, boogety.

You count my blessings
if that's what interests you.
I don't think blessings
belong in a ledger.

Yes, there is at least
one mirror in every
object humans perceive.

Experience online
exclusive an to redirect
we as wait please. Please.

There are no objects
in mirrors. Mirrors
are objects.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, January 22, 2016

If Riven

Mary Christ
cross criss

Joseph cross
rises boss

early daze
Christ bright

Jesus common
strums some

romans romans
romans romans

occupied rocks
goats flock

sun sun
sun sun

no details
know details

the hole
whole thing

the holes
whole blood

thing blood
thing well

no not
bread no

push back
pay back

you'll pay
back pay

push back
react shun

done it
done sun

son done
it done

Christ whoa
woe Jesus

yes mystery
mystery no

lore lore
lore lore

gospel true
blue truth

anyway anyway
rising rising

risen and
if then

and when
if riven

riven risen
end there



hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Alice Axe

Action hero Alice Axe
drops explosives down
the rabbit hole and obliterates
imagination. Her carved,

starved body glistens
and flexes for the camera
set-ups. Acting is
manufacturing. She's

on a mission. Certain
accounts depend on her.
The box-office weekend
slouches this way.

Know you are supposed
to believe phantoms
want to invade the nation.
Huh? Yes, oh yes.

Wonderland had it
coming. That is
from the movie, Alice
Axe has been celebritized.


hans ostrom 2016

Sistern Chapel

iron steel
steal, irony

please court
short pleas

angel angel
math moth

no pattern
known patter

sistern chapel
water sister

pleasure tongue
sung leisure

incense friend
ginseng end


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Regrets

Lots of people tell me
they have no regrets
about anything, they don't
believe in regrets. Because
they're people, I suspect
they're lying. So what?

Then there are those who
urge other people never
to have regrets, as if regrets
were bunions and not
potential signals of a
conscience. These people
aren't lying. They're tyrants
of one sphere or another.


hans ostrom 2016

Use Your Head

I spend all day hauling my head around,
sometimes setting it down on a pillow.
My head's attached to my body (should
go without saying?). Even if it weren't

I'd bring it along because that's where
I most like to be. I've often gone into
my head, mostly for fun, not to mention
narcissism, but also to get way

from the world, which is inexplicable
and excessive, and from people,
who are--well, you know. We'll never
know whether I would have gotten

along better with an evolved
version of Neanderthals.


hans ostrom 2016

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

This Facility

Unintended consequences follow
and then lead. Inconsequential
tendons don't exist, although the
import of those meat-strings comes
clear often only after snap or pull.
I'm not proud of the way my mind

works. It stumbles around
like an optimist in a dark cemetery,
where names on stones change
themselves but change back
before anyone notices. Also

graveyards seem the least
likely place to see or hear
a ghost because if you have
freedom of movement, why
wouldn't you get out of there,
haunt elsewhere, and see
the sights? In conclusion,

the staff is threatening
to take away my privileges,
as if my haunted mind were
powerful; and as if I weren't
the owner-operator of
this facility.


hans ostrom 2016

Night Train in Fog

You hear the fractured racket of the beast,
its engine, horn, and steel on steel. The total
sound is one of the heaviest you'll know.
Fog's turned the invisible train into
a backstage cataclysm. Imagination

rises like an exhausted porter. A Black
stoker sings early versions of "Casey Jones."
Jackie Gleason offers Sherlock Holmes
a highball. John Henry stirs a kettle
of beans for hungry hobos. Dr. Zhivago

and Lara get it on joyfully in a sleeper,
and Agatha Christie shows Hitchcock
a few card tricks, but he can't concentrate
because a platinum blond just entered
the dining car. Butch and Sundance

ride disguised as old Methodist women.
Johnny Cash and Leadbelly sing
a train song, and Rain in the Face
(the engineer) leans on the horn hard.
It ain't no whistle.


hans ostrom 2016

Captured Pawns and Pieces

They're relieved to get off work early.
Two pawns have a threesome with a rook.
The other rook smokes weed. A knight
gets drunk with a bishop, a medieval
tradition. Soon the queen shows up,
sweating, the sleeves of her robe
rolled up. "We're horribly mis-managed.
Let's unionize," she says. No one listens.


hans ostrom 2016

Unhappy Teriyaki

Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten at
the "Unhappy Teriyaki." For the sauce
was morose, the service glum. Clientele:
numb. It was as if we all were extras

in a black-and-white film, waiting
for the star to come in out of the
fake rain playing a humorless,
wandering anti-hero. Short handsome

zero. Even if it wasn't as if that,
I tell you only the rice looked upbeat.
Songs of lamentation emerged
from the kitchen. A percussion-section

warms up in my orchestra pit.


hans ostrom 2015


Thursday, January 7, 2016

Photo from Dallas 1963

There's that lesser known photo from Dallas,
1963. Johnson, crowned by a cowboy hat,
almost smothers the foreground. He's
come down the steps of Air Force One
and hit the tarmac bellowing, bellicose.
Citizen Canine. The camera seized

his right arm as it rose in salute
to Texans, so it seems like a fascist
salute. Kennedy, bad back and all,
is several steps above him but
upstaged. Johnson has put his boot
on the throat of protocol. The President has
reached across his body to grab

Johnson's shoulder and hold him
back. It's hopeless.  Johnson and time
have become mad bulls. Kennedy's
sad face suggests surrender. Between
the men, Mrs. Kennedy seems to sink
beneath the surface of something.

The immensity of the suited males
becomes grotesque and arid--
menacing, but not like the slobbering
dogs of Birmingham. Mrs. Kennedy
looks politely terrified, glassy-eyed,
impaired by celebrity, sick to death
of the spectacle of power. In its own
way, the photograph is obscene.


hans ostrom 2016

Poetry Mountain

Mountains of poems, peaks
like Killimanjaro and Rainier.
To one of them a poet
brought a poem. "Here you go,"
she said. (She'd hiked to the top.)
A poetry-mountain attendant
said, "Thanks! Without poets,
there would be no poetry mountains."

He tossed the poem on the heap
and took a smoke-break.
Something then to do with
poetry-mountain physics
kicked in.  An avalanche.

The poet rode it all the way
down, where parts of the poetry
wreckage clotted cafes, open
mic venues, and other spaces.
Several famous poets awoke
to wads of words in their
mouths. They coughed and got
fussy like babies. The search

is still on for many missing
critics, last seen disappearing
under the crust of the mass.
The poet, she posted
an adequate apology online.


hans ostrom 2016

Under the Horizon

Thinking today of how like all workers
the Old Man got body-tired of and bored
with labor about the same time, like me
today chopping at a vegetable garden's
frozen mud in January.  Your mind

lets your body make your mind
think, "This shit is getting old."
You feel like you think the sun
looks when it seems to drop
below the top of shadowed hills:
ready for bed. Of course there's more
work waiting under the horizon.


hans ostrom 2016

Friday, January 1, 2016

Artist's Statement

Using the combined skills
of impatience, lassitude, imprecision,
obsession, genius, dullness, impracticality,
and distraction, I am able

to craft these wobbly, pathetic
structures, and to paint colors
and shapes that dislike each other.
These artifacts are fluent in me.

They're dear, embarrassing,
and perfect. They embody
the ideal of the mongrel
Get what I'm saying?

If not, I recommend the cafe
next door. If so, you'll stay
in this gallery for hours, meet
someone, and fall in love.


hans ostrom 2016

Thursday, December 31, 2015

The Breakfast Special

Some people are ordering
the Breakfast Special
because it's the best they can do.
Some people are cooking
it. It's the best they can do.
This city is a city. It's
not the best it can do. At

the same time, it doesn't
exist. No cities do. They're
just jammed together
bits and people. This
is the point where poems
get into trouble and need to
stop. It's the best they can do.


hans ostrom 2015

Answer the Phone

Answer the phone. Will you please
get that? Nevermind. I'll get it!
They hung up. I don't know: the
number is blocked. This really
an insane time in telecommunication
history, isn't it? Why

don't you like to talk on the phone?
I don't understand you. What do
you mean "that part is accurate"?
Next time, you're going to answer
it. It's your phone! I'm not going
to answer it. And you owe me
an apology.


hans ostrom 2015

Horse for Sale

Good morning, horse for sale.
Hey should we shell out funds to buy
horse for sale? Let's not forestall.

Hello, horse in stall.
Your gray mouth is of soft
flannel. I guess we own

you now, horse not for sale.
You don't know we own
you, so we don't.

Shall we brush you now
and blanket you and feed
you oats? For you're

a horse for sure, a fine equine.
Not hers, not mine, not ours
Goodnight, horse your own.


hans ostrom 2015

Monday, December 14, 2015

Duke, Again

With Ellington, never
just one mood, ever
two or more.

State profoundly
something simple
but please

don't decorate.
Slip something
gut-bucket,

not quite profane
but close, into
urbane constructions.

Make smart choices.
Move efficiently
like a chess

assassin. The players
are the source:
so obvious, but

almost always
overlooked: Aristotle
understood. Remain

madly allergic
to cliche. Dodge in
and out of the fray.


hans ostrom 2015

Epistemological Hash: Sheesh

A cat for instance is routinely perplexed--
not alarmed but calmly
situated in ignorance, seeking to understand.
--Whereas humans
have evolved, so to speak, into the expectation
that they have a right to know
and understand all
in a big goddamned hurry. Often they state

that expectation with believed nonsense,
hideous lore, and all manner of bullshit.
And anyway, what if science epitomizes Zeno's
Paradox, always advancing but never
finally knowing, so that human seeking

finds that the essence of the universe
is never quite what and not really there--
not a bad prospect, if you think rationalism
sans romance is, albeit necessary, a
bit of a bore. I see
I've made quite a hash of things here.


--hans ostrom 2015

Friday, December 11, 2015

Listening to Monk


("Well, You Needn't")

Concerted jazz effort produces
a jazzerted zephyr forthwith.

No frazzling in the port, no
impertinence in the fort. A

rush of notes arranged by
practice and intuition

suggests at least a nod to
the transience of people and things.


hans ostrom 2015




Oakland Talk


Gertie Stein, Otis Sistrunk, Al Davis,
Mac Dre,Sharon Shore, Bert Camapneras,
Frank Epperson, and all, oh
where have you gone? You're hiding

in triplicate under the sun. That's
where you must to be. Oakland's changed
greatly and not at all. Always and forever
a hard place. I sat on a bench across from a bench
staked out by a homeless guy who dreamed
he was still a young man. I played

chess on my phone in Jack
London Square. What do you think
of that, Jack? After a red-headed woman
walked by and gained distance, the guy
on the bench said, in the growl of a carnival-barker,
"She's got a chin like Brunhilda!"

Neither a compliment, nor an insult:
that's Oakland talk. Silver and black,
Oakland slips out of your grasp like mercury.


hans ostrom





Death of a Myth


The Grudge Master is dead. He's grinding his axes
in Hell. He left us with nothing except our lives,
which from the first moment have not been enough
to sustain us. We're losers because we fight
to the death and then fight Death. Winners
hire people to fight on their behalf
in a fixed game.They use words like "behalf."

It is over It is over Every sign
Every signal, Every seagull and fat cow
has surrendered. We are nothing!
Therefore, celebrate. We are nothing!
Our shields are made of cardboard.
We're lost in a forest set on fire.
We desire someone to arc

her/his back, up and above us,
and come. Come for and by us and
with us. A trivial physical
apotheosis, true, but real and fierce.

We desire the sun, but someone owns
that, too (it had to happen). Ah,
put my profaned body in a cheap box,
throw a blanket in, and bury.
That's all, that's all, the myth is dead.


hans ostrom 2015