About the Photo

Yes, with my long legs and sturdy feet,

I strode into that arrythmic surf,
which tries to cover tracks.
It left two. Sharp ones, too.

Darling, you may wonder
who took the snapshot
and why in black-and-white.
And perhaps more existentially,

did I come back? From what?
I'd ask in my annoying way.
Did I turn left, did I turn right,
did I float out of sight or into jaws

of slashing sharks? This note
may confirm or deny uncertain
hypotheses. You know me,

I love to tease.

*note: the image is of a "found photo" posted on tumblr

hans ostrom 2022

Arlo Guthrie/I Can't Help Falling In Love With You

Keep It Simple

 "Be quick, but don't hurry." --John Wooden

At the clotted airport cafe, a holiday swarm:
the woman orchestrating sandwiches,
unrushed but quick, wears a hajib--

a scarf that finishes by falling
to the middle of her back. Forest green.
A light-gray top and elegant black

trousers accompany. Llke me,
she's part of this society, I'm equal
to her, except if I worked at

the sandwich station in this
bee-hive moment, I'd be fired,
a mercy. Something

about forest green, light gray,
and black: austere, soothing.
Evergreens, mist rising from a river.

hans ostrom 2022

My Soul's Been Working Out

My soul's been working out,

Lifting nightmares with its snout,
Swimming laps in honeyed air.
Tickling felines on a dare,
Weeping hard at news of war,
Grieving deeply to its core.

It lifts the weights of darkest doom
Jabs and punches with gray gloom.
Hikes great peaks of women's beauty,
Hauls me, tugs me to good duty.

Zen-poses til it aches,
Bellows at my fakes.
Sprints through beatitudes,
Ju-Jitzus my bad attitudes.
Wrestles with me to discern,
Spins and skates to make me learn.

Exhausted, it plops down,
Shoots me a soulful frown.

hans ostrom 2022

betweens

 waves between waves

  beats between beats
clicks between
  clicks, quicks between
slows, knows between guesses,
  yeses twixt no's,
stops between flows,
  goes birthed of pauses,
clauses out of phrases out of
  words between words,
gaps between galaxies, leaps
  between particles, articles
of faith in the face of a wraith
  hanging in the night between days.

hans ostrom 2022

Attenborough: the amazing Lyre Bird sings like a chainsaw! Now in high q...

The News from Inside

Inside me, still,

lurks the baby who could walk
but chose not to
(wanting instead to stand up,
hands grasping the rail
of what they called a play-pen)--
and to watch. It seems

I was born wary
and passively resistant.
And that's who I stayed.
In the 17th month, I walked
because, having watched them,
I noted that they
seemed to want me to walk.

Inside me, I don't
contain multitudes,
and Walt Whitman can
go fuck himself. Inside me
there's the DNA of a woman
living in Africa
160, 000 years ago:
it's inside you, too.

And then inside there there's
a few people who worked like dogs
but not as hard as slaves. Maybe
a failed preacher, certainly
a Skid Row drunk, and possibly
the funniest patient in what
they called a mental ward:
no proof of this.

Inside me, I think it's
population: 12. Or so.
But no apostles. In there,

an old non-descript tree
finally gives up, accepts
a lightning-smash, explodes,
and falls. Deer, squirrels,
owls, a cougar, a bear,
and maybe some hiker with
a bandana tied around
dirty hair mark
the arboreal collapse,
but, god damn it,
there's never a Zen monk
around when you need one.
And Walt Whitman
can go fuck himself.

Inside me, there's
a startling, chronic
mild terror--maybe because
at month 15 or so,
I learned from informed
intuition that very little
in this life-thing makes sense,
although we must pretend
that much of it does.

And Walt Whitman...
was one great self-publicist:
American, that is.

"Sunlight, Morning," by Roger Illsley

Tears Like Clean Rain

She cries, not easily, but as needed--

hard, and fast. Her tears flow like clean rain.
Fear, anxiety, grief, affection, gratitude, empathy--
all get cut loose into sobs. Ex-pressed. Such
a show of strength! Me, I learned

to pin down big emotions with clamps.
To control them--as if! To get quickly
to the duty of endurance. To stand as a rock
in a deluge. Such a show of isolation!
When tears do come they leak out
as if from some ancient, buried drought.

hans ostrom 2022

"The Beach at Petites Dalles"

painting by Berthe Morisot, French Impressionist. Also known as "On the Beach" 

Prelude to storm: sky's pallor rebuffs the sun,

green sea regurgitates the waves, and people
trouble yellow sand. Dressed in black,
they seem to mourn the summer or dare
humidity. The painter's pleased. The
palette of the day adores her brushes. Her
work's a frolic of adept daubs and dabs
that play with the play of light.

hans ostrom 2022

Autumn Leaves - Arpi Alto

Superman and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

 Who knew?

Superman in T-Town

"You Will Hear Thunder," by Anna Akhmatova

Dr. Fog

Doctor Fog, what might you

prescribe in your inscrutable scrawl
for this gray pall
through which we crawl?

You will say it's all
in our heads. We'll say
But isn't everything?
You'll take the trouble

to scribble, then send us
away. One night, one day,
we'll hear an awful bawl
from a beast atop a wall

and finally we shall fall
down upon the hide of the city
and we shall know enough
not to expect much pity.

Dr. Fog, you know all this,
now don't you? For you have
slithered daily through moist pall--
physician, ah, magician to us all.

hans ostrom 2022

Awful Pain

The kind of pain
where they have to cut
you open to stop it.

The kind that's chronically
acute. That throbs as if
a sluggish drill bit turns
down in there.

Such pain takes you out
of your life. You sit
in a cold room with your pain,
which may wear a light shawl
of morphine. You two

get to know each other better.
The narrative of your life
dries up, falls apart. You
ask the pain if there's
anything left to life now,

and Pain says, "No, not really." 

hans ostrom 2022

Betweens

 waves between waves

  beats between beats
clicks between
  clicks, quicks between
slows, knows between guesses,
  yeses twixt no's,
stops between flows,
  goes birthed of pauses,
clauses out of phrases out of
  words between words,
gaps between galaxies, leaps
  between particles, articles
of faith in the face of a wraith
  hanging in the night between days.

hans ostrom

I Want to Hope It's Not Too Late

 Some "white" Americans understand

and try to share their understanding
and act upon it: they live their lives
as if all human beings are... human
beings, as if there is no essentially
superior "race," as if the fact that
we're all one species is.... a fact.

But too many millions
now insist, still insist, on White Supremacy
as a way of life and government.
As the basis of their identity.

Every time the country looks
like it might escape the quicksand,
millions drag it back at the behest
of one of two major American parties,
and parts of the media, and billionaires.
This gets people killed. It gets deranged
people, even a president, elected,
and spurs people to violence.

It is America's permanent disease.
It eviscerates its core. White Supremacy
is founded on air, on the irrational belief
that phantom "whites" are essentially
better and more entitled than groups
they choose to hate. 2022 is very,
very late. As with climate change,
and nuclear weapons, I want to hope
it's not too late.

hans ostrom 2022

The Gamblers

Gamblers who play

and lose with other people's money:
These dictators, science-deniers, war-
mongers, riot-inciters, race-baiters, and women-
haters: They don't care
because they don't have to. To
them, depravity's a frolic and a sport.

hans ostrom 2022

Actually, No

As time (as we think of it)
rolls and spins along,
the maybes morph into nevers:

Maybe I'll visit Albania
or Paraguay one day: No,
never. Maybe I'll see one
of my first-ever loves again,
just one more time--
yes, perhaps her--the one who
lives in Long Beach. No, never,
for she just died.

hans ostrom 2022

Bodies in the Sauna

Her body, his body,

nude in a sauna,
and she slick with sweat
sits on his lap facing him,
and he slick with sweat
holds her close. Deep

Swedish winter wraps
around the building of flats.
This is good," she says. This
is very, very good. He likes
the softly scratchy feel of her
pubic hair & the miracle
of hardening nipples. It is
good, he says--and stops
himself from saying a rare
jewel of a night because
she would mock him for
adding  a flourish.

The cold air that strikes them
as they leave the sauna and cross
the hallway naked to their flat
feels like freshly invented air.
Inside they guzzle water, shower,
get in bed, and make love. Later,

as she snores, he sinks like an anchor
into sleep. but he thinks he needs
to button up the night with words.
To himself he says, Good, very
good & then his brain disappears.

hans ostrom 2022