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

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

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

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