Cookbook Unrest

I hear the cookbooks in the kitchen--
garrulous relics from pre-digital times.

They flop around on the floor. They
gossip about how and what I cook.

"Seriously," one of them says, "if he's
going to improvise all the time,

why consult us, why insult us?"
God damn their greasy pages.

The chefs who authored them: bah!
No one should be famous for cooking.

A cat has heard the books now.
He becomes a lynx and bounds

off into the kitchen.  It's quiet
in their all of a sudden.  That's right:

close yourselves, you recipe barns.
Digest your dissatisfaction.



hans ostrom 2017

Fowl Dreams

If I were a bird,
I'd ride on air and often
cock my head for different
angles. At night I'd close
my eyes from the bottom,
snooze on a roost,
and rest my beak.

Anything with a brain
dreams. Oh, imagine--
you can try: what
kind of dreams do
birds dream, and why?

Maybe they dream
of staying still and having
food come to them.
Maybe they dream
of the time when they
were dinosaurs.



hans ostrom 2017

Ghosthood

I'll tell you what it's like to be a ghost:
No one sees you.  If you talk, people
don't hear. They will not see you wave.
The apparitional circumstance
is worse than loneliness. It is

to experience nothing.  It is to be
the consciousness of No. Being a ghost
is like wandering an Earth covered
with desert.  It is the desolation
of an infinite bleached sky.


hans ostrom 2017

A Blues Collage

brown earth, muddy river
slashing sun, hard hands
long train, long train, long train

hard laughter, heavy fatigue
broken tools, bad food
long train, long train, long train

sweet tea, hot coffee
cold beer, good jukebox
cool rain, cool rain, cool rain


hans ostrom 2017