Erstwhilers

Yeah, I'm an erstwhiler. From
the province of used-to-be.
I used to exchange letters
with people. In handwriting.
Sometimes three, four pages.

I listened to the radio, lived
decades without a cell phone,
had no social network outside
the immediate. I know a vast
amount of things that are
no longer the case.

I got exiled to here and now,
where we erstwhilers have adapted
to the extent we fake it. We're
virtually tech-friendly, though
in our hearts we remain analogous.
We got used to getting our music
in a new form every decade.

We're obsolete. It's okay. It
doesn't hurt. Erstwhilers
aren't nostalgic. Just slightly
displaced, always at angle
from what's going on. We're
always a moment away
from saying something which,
if not stupid, at least sounds
that way. May it take you a
long time to join us.


hans ostrom 2020

Quantum Bus Stop

At the bus stop, a man
advised those assembled
in cold rain
that the cells in their bodies
were doing quantum things,
such as disappearing and
appearing at the same time.

"Is it bad reception?" asked
a thin gray woman. "Like
the old days, with TV antennas?"
A young woman wearing
a green hand-knitted cap
said, "I guess everyone
is a physicist today."

The bus appeared, hauling
its exhaustive, Newtonian heft
towards us. "All of its
molecules seem to be
in order," said the young woman.
She put her headphones
on her ears, and I imagined
electrons of music dancing
in her brain. Ups the steel

steps we went, finding our
places in spaces that were
empty in the seats.


hans ostrom 2020

Getting in Touch with Swedenborg

Swedenborg went to Hell
and Heaven and back to Earth
again many times when he was
alive in earthly terms. What a
great idea! "Just visiting."

I've been trying to visit Swedenborg
in Hell or Heaven or even a cafe.
(I think of Heaven and Hell as holding
down the two ends of a sliding scale.
Opinions vary.) I haven't

been able to make it over to Hell
or Heaven, let alone back, and
I don't want to get desperate
and rush the dying thing.

I've invited Swedenborg
to my place to discuss William
Blake, Uppsala University,
theology, pastry, or whatever's
on his spirit's mind. I haven't
heard back. Yet.


hans ostrom 2020

I Don't Know Why

I'm sitting in an office
and I don't know why.
I'm sitting on a sidewalk
and I don't know why.

Sitting in a Legislative Body,
sitting in a fork-lift, sitting
in a jail cell and I don't
know why. Lying

on a road, lying on a bed,
lying in a casket and very
very dead, and I don't know
why.

Standing up for someone,
for something, I don't know
why. Standing still in
panic. Why? Nobody

knows why. Nobody really
knows why they do what they
do. Practical answers
buy time. But eventually,

the why prevails, unyielding.
And you have to sit there
and admit, maybe only to
yourself, that you don't know why.


hans ostrom 2019

Doppelgaenger Issues

I advertised for a doppelgaenger.
No one applied. Or, I already have
a doppelgaenger, and he intercepted
the applications. Or, I am the
double, having applied and been hired.

By whom? Me, of course. Or,
I don't have a doppel-double
because I don't deserve one,
someone has decided. Who?

You. Yes, you. Come on,
admit it. You're a forceful member
of the movement dedicated
to raising the standards of
the double, and you betray
a reactionary affection for
Jeckyll and Hyde and William
Wilson and the Justified Sinner.

Or maybe it's your double
I'm thinking of.


hans ostrom 2019

Can You Spare a Moment of Your Time?

I was trying to balance
a moment on my nose. It
fell off and rolled. The moment,
I mean. I lost it.

When next I sweep under
the disreputable couch,
I'm sure I'll find it amongst
a wad of dust-fur, pennies,

a sock, and something plastic. It
appears I did have a moment to spare. 

In the Moment

There is a way to climb into
a moment and stay as long as you like.
Once inside, you may touch
the moment's lining, which
could be glass, fur, mud, air,
tungsten--anything, really.

Other people can join you
in there although that's rare.
The moment can stretch
and expand to accommodate.

The moment's relationship
with time is oblique, as is your
relationship with yourself,
especially when you are
in the moment.


hans ostrom 2020

Fingernail Clippers

I don't know what they're called
in Italian or Russian or Turkish
but I intend to find out.

They are a singular plural
in English.

A sea creature of lore had a
gigantic, snub-nosed head
and a tapering body. Our
digital blacksmiths hammer
out replicas.

Lever and fulcrum and
paired toothless blades:
the spare architecture
of a specialized tool.

Owing to his mania,
the reclusive billionaire
eschewed clippers and let
his fingernails accrue
like stalactites. They clicked
like scurrying roaches.

Crows and monkeys groom
each other, picking bugs
from feathers and fur. A calm
comes over them as they pick
and peck. Thinking of them,
I clip a thumbnail--hiding,
like them, from hunger and
fear for a moment, attending
silently to a bodily chore.


hans ostrom 2020

Image Apocalypse

Images, images, I'm so sick
of images. We're in an Image
Apocalypse, an exponential
blizzard experience behind
eyes open, eyes closed. No
way to stop it (no one seems
to want to). It's like--

no, I won't say what it to me
is like. I'm going to keep that
image to myself. It's called
image restraint, people. Give
it a try. Take one less selfie,
one less otherlie. Mute
and mask a meme or three.


hans ostrom

2020

Machine Eden

       "All watched over by machines of loving grace."
                                    --Richard Brautigan


Having established a friendship
with a machine connected to machines,
he felt better about himself.

What had analogous reality
ever done for him aside from
the conception-and-birth thing?

Nothing but problems after that.
Maybe before he dies--thanks,
reality--he'll be able, he thinks,

to live in a world completely
virtual, a self contained in
machined containment. Heaven.


hans ostrom 2020