Escapes

An elephant escaped

the Point Defiance Zoo

and strode the streets

of Tacoma briskly, briefly,

as if going to work.

At a summer party

my parents threw, outside

in the High Sierra, the ever-

silent plumber, Otto,

sipped whiskey. He

saw a horse come up 

to the pasture fence.

Otto climbed the fence

& leapt on the horse, 

which galloped and tossed

him off. Otto got up,

came back, climbed over,

and sipped more whiskey.

First time

her husband struck her,

she loaded the two kids

and some luggage 

in the Chevrolet and drove

away, {No more of that shit,}

she said to her friend.

The old woman 

who had fought cancer

for five years lay

in a hospice bed,

comatose--but suddenly

woke--tried to get up

and run away. One last

attempt before

entering the light. 

hans ostrom 2024

Mavis Staples & Chris Stapleton "Friendship" 4/18/24 @YouTube Theater-85...

Best Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame induction you will ever see! Leon Russell ...

Ancestry

You collect photos, public records,

articles,, obits. Follow DNA maps.
Recover family lore. As you work,

you float out on a cloud,
looking down on all those people
you will never know

and who will never know you.
The mothers and miners, soliders
and bankers, caped eccentrics,

farm wives who plowed, gay
married uncles, preachers.
You cannot know them, only

scraps left behind, ghostly
outlines in chalk. They are
your family. They are not

your family. You want to build
a castle out of names, places, facts.
And live there, calling it Family.

It is a grand, fascinating
illusion, this ancestry, these crumbs
leading into a forest of the dead.

hans ostrom 2024

In a sentimental mood & Claire de lune (Stochelo Rosenberg & Joscho Step...

Dread

It's August in California's

Sierra Nevada mountains.
Green and gold and wildlife
reign. Bluest skies. You're
11 years old. You think of
September and school
and cold ball bearings
gather in your guts: dread.

It's July, same place.
You're sixteen, working
at your uncle's gravel
plant. He's often enraged
at life. He scares you.
Every workday morning,
carrying a gray lunch pail,
you walk slowly, as if
condemned, from your home,
up a dirt road
to the rock crusher.

It's more than five
decades later & you're
lying on a bed
in an operating room
lit up like a stage.
You stare at an
unspeaking semi-circle
of technicians
and nurses, waiting.

No one's given you
the drugs yet. The
surgeon won't enter
until you're under the sea.
Suddenly the sun-bright
lamps trigger a panic
attack, and you feel like
leaping up to flee. You
tell yourself, "Suck it
up," as a man you met
once is about to drill
a hole in your skull,
and go with tools
into your brain, your you.

hans ostrom 2024

Centerfold - bad boy (1984)

They Become the Exhibit

 In a queue, people shuffle

toward a museum's door.
Finally all inside, they take off
coats, hats, gloves, scarves.
Winter chill did not come in.

The walls of the single vast
room remain blank. No art
depends from them. The people
sit or stand or lie and examine
each other, and each one

becomes a work of art, and each
one's a startling rendering. Shadow
and light, noses in profile or not,
heads, shirted shoulders,
bellies, lines and angles.

Sculptures alive, paintings
that breathe, dancers in repose.
Some people seize delight
from being seen & stared at.
Others look away or down.
Glances ricochet, stick, or slide.

The people often smile. This
is one of the finest exhibits
they've attended, attending
to themselves, their bodily
being in Time.

Hans Ostrom 2024

A Merest Song of Gratitude

 I own hundreds

of regrets.
I've made dozens
of bad bets.
I lavish love
on household pets.
I am a wealthy man.

It seems I always
had a job.
Cash in pocket,
corn on cob.
Clock on wall,
watch on fob.
I am a wealthy man.

I have love and hope--
interests, too.
These help to ward off
deepest blue.
People to see,
things to do.
I am I am I am
a wealthy man.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Dreaming, Again

 Editors who loathe the Linear

cut and splice hybrid scenes
as I lie on padded islands
in sleep's softly surging sea.

Under slumber, I lumber
into the theater of these films
like a weightless rhino.

Swing low, sweet
licorice lariat, wrapping up
my stubby hooved legs.

Sing low, buzzing
baritone, I'm lullabied
like incubating eggs.

Hans Ostrom 2024

"After the Winter," by Claude McKay

Simply Red - If You Don't Know Me By Now (Symphonica In Rosso)

Almost All Right

Hiram takes the pills

for lifelong "clinical depression,"
which means "often more
than simply sad." When
the pills don't work, he

knows only one way
to try to climb out of the well:
to turn outward & do something
for someone else. Help them.

Connecting again like that:
it's like a rope. Hiram grabs it,
climbs slowly, his feet finding
niches in the deep well's
slick stone walls. Until he's

out, sitting on the ground,
breathing, looking around.
Ah, yes, the world again--
and it's almost bright,
and I'm almost all right.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Comedian Larry David calls Trump "such a little baby" for his election lies

BEACH BOYS Their Hearts Were Full of Spring

Paul Simon - Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Official Video)

The Mountains Taught

They protected you with danger,

those High Sierra Mountains.

Cliffs and snakes, rockslides,

flooded rivers, icy narrow

twisting highways, dirt

roads cut casually into hills,

hours between you and a

doctor or hospital. Chainsaws,

knives, guns, lightning,

freezing temperatures. 

Wherever you went, 

whatever you did, you kept

caution in your pocket

like a talisman. You quickly

came to equate useless

risk with lack of thought,

not with bravery. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Bookshelves

In a musty library room

in a friend's old abode,

dark wooden shelves,

floor to ceiling, look like

rows of secrets, willing

to be opened like gates

and doors and windows

and minds. To reach

for one book, clothbound

with no dust jacket, and 

take it from its snug space,

fulfills a desire. For what?

You don't entirely know,

do you? But there it is,

the book, quiet and pliant

in your hands, centuries

of the printing art floating

invisibly behind it. The rest

of the books on all the shelves

and walls look on,

like spectators at a stadium--

but they're the quietest

audience ever. A clock's

bell dings, softly, softly. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Longtime Married

Two candle stubs

in old candlesticks

drown their flames 

in wax. A few strings

of gray smoke disperse

in the dim, darkening 

room at dusk.

We're both quiet

as we look, together

and separately, 

into advancing darkness.

Finally, one of us

says, "Well, . . . ."

and the other says,

'Yes, . . .". We rise

from the table,

pick up the dinner plates,

silverware, glasses,

and take them to 

the kitchen where one

of us flicks on the light. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Conan O”Brien - Suspicious Minds @ Love Rocks Beacon Theater 3-7-2024

Poet's Musings: Poe Sonnet

Poet's Musings: Poe Sonnet: Poe Sonnet He was so utterly American, Careening through his life deliberately, Addicted to both impulse and ambition. He wrote for art...

March, in the Northern Hemisphere

March, a grunting month,

a mound of mud, a flood
of flotsam, a stormy brawler
drunk on rain. March, a sentimental
sap, half in love with shapely April,
half in hate with freezing Feb.

We want such a month
because of what it portends
but beg that passes fast
because it only pretends.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Cinquain for a Spring-Fevered Cat

The cat

seems fevered by
the warmth and light outside
his lair, this house. He yowls and runs around,
Spring-zinged.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Procession of Cats

Like a long silver ribbon,

the path from the moon

stretches to Earth tonight. And

down the path come the cats,

striding with their lazy lope.

Thousands of them, leaving

their lunar lair, returning

to this ground with moonlight

in their round unblinking eyes.

Arriving, they take their feline

time to scatter to homes,

hideouts, forests, plains,

jungles, mountains, and alleys.

Anvil

Bolted to the bench

in the Old Man's workshop,

the anvil seemed to have

a bow and a stern--a ship

of steel that would never see

water. A rock of ages

on which to pound things,

will things into shape. Always

cold to the touch, like a snowdrift,

even in high summer. It had jaws

and teeth to hold things if need be,

but never ate. It was

indestructible and passive

like the blue bedrock over which

impulsive rivers ran. While tools

broke, rusted, disappeared; 

while nuts and bolts came

and went; and jobs and tasks

were asked and answered,

the anvil stayed like an anchored

asteroid, like a god of patience. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Questions at a Cafe

The 3-year-old sips

his hot chocolate.

His face expresses

pleasure. He tells me,

"Cows make milk."

"That's correct," I say,

as if he needs my opinion.

His grandma, my wife,

is at the cafe counter

getting her drink (I sip

my two shots of espresso).

The 3-year old asks,

"How do cows make meat?"

I say, "Well, cattle, male

and female, eat a lot of

grass and hay to make

their muscles big."

I dread the follow-up

question and in my mind

see abbattoir images,

hear horrific terrified

bellowing, smell blood. 

The question doesn't come,

for he sees grandma

returning to our table

with her drink--a cafe latte--

made with oat "milk."

Hans Ostrom 2024

Colbert & Poetry

TNN Grand Ole Opry - Earl Scruggs & Andy Griffith performing (11/13/99)

Steven Tyler - Golden Slumbers, in The End

WHITE VS BLACK CHILDREN IN GROCERY STORE | Ali Siddiq Stand Up Comedy

Collecting Thoughts

In their abode, "I'm going

to go collect my thoughts"

became a code 

for "I'm going to take a nap."

The euphemism's like a cat's

toy or anything a feline feels

like batting around, slobbering on,

and then--before a nap--ignoring. 

Well, there those thoughts are,

spread out on a cloth in the mind.

Not very many, not of the highest

quality. Mostly worries, minor obsessions, 

images of flowers or birds--something

pleasant, maybe, to look at 

as one rolls over and feels

grogginess close the eyes

and fog the conscious mind. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

He's No Emperor

Well, we have to eat,

even as genocide, rapes,

atomic arsenals, and pious

bigotry persist, destroy, so

I roast beets. With a paring 

knife, I peel off dull hides,

reveal purple fiber of the roots.

Purple ink stains my fingers.

Has anyone painted with beet

juice? Chopped into small

pieces, the beets go in a

hot oven. When they're roasted

soft, I take them out, dribble

honey and shake salt on them,

serve with pasta and a simple

marinara sauce & a green salad,

plus a shared slice of a quick

raisin oat-bread I baked. I like

cooking for me and my wife.

It's a good thing, basic,

necessary. And about all

the influence I have

on the world, for as things

stand, I'm no emperor. 

hans ostrom 2024

Rondeau for a Father's Hat

And what am I to do with my Dad's hat?

Always a hat--he never wore a cap.
After he died, I've kept it all these years--
A little token of him, it appears--
A cloth thing under which he sat.

His body was cremated, so that's that.
To me his soul's a mystery, not a fact.
While I get old and face some stern cold fears,
What is it I'm to do with my Pa's hat?

I have been charged with being a pack-rat.
I'm sentimental, unlike our deadpan cat.
For me, things link to people, it appears,
And maybe soothe a bit some grieving tears.
"Just let it go": advice that sounds so flat
Regarding what to do with Father's hat.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Why Crows Are as Smart as 7 Year Old Humans

Luke Combs Praises "Fast Car" Singer Tracy Chapman After He Wins CMAs Si...

America - Lonely People (1975) | LIVE

Lana Del Rey - Take Me Home, Country Roads (Official Audio)

The CEO of a company that makes a lifesaving drug refused to commit to l...

Bloomsbury Park

 (September 2022)

Bloomsbury Park
isn't melting yet
in the plump heat
of London, late summer.

A locust tree
shows tendons
and bends like an
arm at the elbow.

The only birds
are pigions. Brown
plates of stone make
a center square

and we strangers
sit on black benches.
We're mostly mute.
Cornflowers persist--

the rest of the beds
are parched like a
hangover. On my way
out, one pigeon escorts

me to the gate. We say our
forms of goodbye. I wonder
if one of his ancestors
spoke to Virginia Woolf.

The "melting" in the first stanza alludes to the famous/infamous Jim Webb song, "MacArthur Park," as sung-spoken by Richard Harris. "MacArthur Park is melting in the dark 

Lewis Black Recalls Seeing The Grateful Dead At Folsom Field

Beware: The Billionaire is Angry

The billionaire's enraged. Angry

with women, with labor unions, with

"woke" people (but not mad enough

to say what he means by that word).

Lava-livid with academics,

except the ones whose research

undergirds his products. He's ticked

off with a former wife and a "disloyal"

child. He's not, though, especially upset

with neo-Nazis. Meanwhile,

the fellow who bags the groceries

people buy and retrieves carts

from the parking lot in cold rain,

cheerfully greets me. We exchange

polite words and laugh. He reminds

me not to forget that he's placed

items at the bottom of the cart.

"Yesterday, two people forgot theirs,"

he cautions. He seems to like

his minimum-wage job and life

well enough not to project rage.

The angry billionaire will "earn"

14 million dollars today. My mind,

as it doesn't forget to load the under-cart

items in the back of my car, goes

to Steve, the man who bagged

the tomatoes and rice and

so on. . . .  His red-bearded

face, full of good will. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman's Epic Fast Car Duet at The Grammys 2024

Party Behaviors

 At the party, a light turned on

inside one woman and it shone

through her skin and shirt.

A man brought a private 

darkness with him. He climbed

inside it but still we heard his voice.

One person bent the air,

warping what we saw

making things seem to wiggle,

making us giggle. And some of

a verbose fellow's words became

visible and rose to the ceiling,

full of gas, helium, perhaps.

Only briefly did I become a 

turtle so as to be left alone. 

Hans Ostrom

Like a Turnip

It might start with the shriek

of a hawk or the ruining racket

of a jackhammer. Or with the low,

low flute note from a great horned

owl, or with the wail of a baby nearby. 

Anyway, a sound that seizes you,

uproots you from your moment,

like a turnip from damp soil,

and tosses you into the basket

of a different reality. Pulled

or pushed into one space

of the "real after" another,

only falsely sure we know

what's coming in the mirage's flow--

oh, such is life, life such as it is.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Vibrations

The elevated train shook

and rattled his dank studio

apartment. A a cat sleeping next

to him began to buzz its own

body with purring. Indecipherable

words from a cranked up TV

next door hummed inside wall

studs and plaster-board. Somewhere

in the city, his former lover

snored, he knew, her nose

morphed into a kind of kazoo. 

He listened past the dins

and thought he heard the rustle

& tap of cockroaches & now a

furnace pipe joined the noise.

hans ostrom 2024

At Paddington Station

At Paddington Station, in a tunnel

just off the platforms, you want to capture

images of faces & bodies with memory

not camera--the ancient pickling mode.

Impossible. Commuting workers

stride with purpose verging on menace.

Tourists--sluggish, confused, quarrelsome,

sweaty, laden. . . . The tunnel space

seems eager to ingest people (it has

seen them all already, the Alis and

the Bens, the Antonios, Angelikas,

and Vlads, the Prufrocks, Sukis,

Eriks, and Khans). Such tunnels

snake like arteries through urban

bodies, delivering toil to the maw

of the Economy, serving sweat-labor

and schticks of expertise, nutrients

of the perpetual Now. The proper

English woman's voice narrates

train-info ("with breakfast service

to Swansea"), a positive-thinking

pigeon head-thrusts into the mix,

content with crumbs. What a seething

thing is a big city, but every person

is still one person, loaded with duty,

aches, words, terrors, whole worlds

of thought hiding behind stoic faces. 

A mind among millions, holding on,

holding off insanity and defeat.

A large sign states WAY OUT. Its

message is a mirage. And so it is

if you're a certain you, you'll enter

stage-lit platorms to board a serpent-

snouted Great Wester Railway train

to Cardiff, from where you'll go to

Aberdare in search of dark grey

headstones and places where

the dead once walked, worked,

and wondered. They couldn't see

your present, the future. You can't

see their past, that present.

Ghost trains roll

by each other silently on tracks

laid down by Time. 

hans ostrom 2024

Conductors, You and I

Me and you, protons

and electrons through and 

through atoms that compose

our noses and toes. We

give off light and heat, you

know, of course you know,

oh omnivorous power plants

are we as we with our flows

of energy, heating each other

up in beds and other close

quarters, which is why

windows of cars and buses

fog up and sweat and even

trickle tears. Conductor

of electricity, today I shall try

to sluice my energy

appropriately in public and in

this wired-up, copper-webbed

abode, this wireless, fireless

cave. It's kind of exciting

to my neurons to have a bit

of lightning coursing through

what one calls one's brain,

which rewires itself in sleep to dream.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Melanie-Peace Will Come According To Plan [HD]

Will Ferrell on Navigating His Best Friend's Transition in 'Will & Harpe...

Earth: The Mad Planter

This Earth, this spinning, orbiting ball

of rock with a sizzling center--like

a weird truffle candy--seems

to want to cover itself in carbon-addicted

life: weeds, trees, vines, moss, lichen,

brush, and on and greening on. Well,

it is chilly in space, so why not grow a coat?

I love to see cracks in concrete 

become narrow weed gardens,

to see vacant city lots turn into

jungles, which people of course 

turn into dumps for paper, aluminum,

and bloody needles. And

think of the underground,

the massive, brute tangle of 

leg-sized roots under a conifer

forest, my God. Vast tendril

clusters under pastures. Can

a planet have a will? I think so:

The Earth will keep sneezing

seeds, rooting rhyzomes, 

making bulb-grenades, pulling

vines out of vines, calling 

its berserk plant-army into

peaceful, triumphant war. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Wine-Red Clouds at Twilight

Red-wine-soaked clouds

at dusk sing an intoxicated anthem

of light to summon such 

night creatures as raccoons,

bats, cats, and certain devotees

of Charles--Baudelaire

and Bukowski, those bad boys.

Sing, you wine-dark sacks 

of rain. Sing!

Hans Ostrom 2024

Unlovely Impulses

What did envy ever do for you?

Like washing wool in hot water,

it shrank your soul. Self-shrivel.

Same goes for excess pride,

the striding great inflater, which

turns you into a boastful blimp

bound to bust up on rocks. 

Then there's greed, which morphs

your hands into grasping claws,

your mind into a maniacal mouse

in a maze, addicted to cheese.

Throw them out, reduce your

inventory of unlovely impulses.

You're the shopkeeper of your thoughts

and actions. Tidy up your shelves. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

River Run Dry

 thinking of Ann Monroe

Though we may not know it then,
some goodbyes are forever. She
cried in the cafe--cold-rain Spring
day. We went to her place and made
love just one more time. Her black hair.

We drifted like untied rowboats
in a harbor. One hot Summer day,
we met to say goodbye. Decades
rolled by like freight trains, clack-clack,
on the time track. I see her

face on that goodbye day. When
both of us thought in frames of hours,
days, weeks, months. I don't recall
precisely what we said besides, "Okay,
see you later. Bye." I know neither
of us thought forever. And those decades

later, after no contact, I heard she
died. I felt like I stood on a cliff,
looking down, down, into a deep
canyon in which a river had run dry.
I wrote a note on one of those
obituary sites online. It felt like
scribbling with charcoal
on a canyon wall no one would see.

Hans Ostrom 2024

Parsonage

 Is the Self

an apparition

barely in view,

then gone, like a last

bit of mist leaving trees,

pushed by a breeze?

Is it a certainty

like a boulder that shapes

the flow of a small

creek singing, bells

in the distance ringing?

Does it simply 

seem to be,

out of necessity?

Perhaps the self's

a symbolic personage,

like a mossy-bricked

parsonage in an old village:

It stands, orienting

the town around itself,

a landmark, but not the core

of the town, nor the whole

village, no certainly

not the whole.

Hans Ostrom 2024

2024 Book & Media Awards Ceremony

The Dreaming Mind Versus You

A squat building, five floors

tops, with a flat roof. This structure

features in recent dreams. One dream:

you live on the roof in a truck with a camper.

Another: You watch commuters

in cars compete to use an exterior

off-ramp to get off the roof.

They rage and roar as you

stand in the maelstrom. In another,

you perch alone on the roof

and stare at big leafy trees

and know you're stranded. Beyond

the trees a campus may lie--

you can't know.

The dreaming mind is mulish. It

conjures what it will and does not

serve you. You serve it. Sleeping,

you can't leave the theater 

or even close your interior eyes.

Which is only fair, as your ridiculous will

pushes your mind all day and into

night, often not wisely. On that

flat roof of a nondescript, unglamorous

building, you feel a useless,

barren loneliness. Get used to it. 

Says the dreaming mind. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Bing Crosby - Send In The Clowns (Parkinson, August 30th 1975)

Cat's Eyes Revery

I left sleep's velvet shack,

walked across a field of dew-

doused feathers, arrived

at two identical round ponds,

both glowing pale green

like a cat's eyes. I

then picked up a couple spongy 

pale yellow orbs, palm-sized,

tossed one into one pond,

the other into the other.

They floated to the centers

of the ponds and turned dark.

The nearby forest, black

in shadow, purred loudly,

vibrating my ribs, cranium,

and feet. At my back came

a cold rough breeze. 

hans ostrom 2024

Sierra Ferrell – Fox Hunt

NAZI TOWN, USA | Chapter 1 | American Experience | PBS

"That's the Day I'll Forget About You"

Great Horned Owls Perch Together and Have a Conversation 01.07.2024 (exp...

Alpine Lake

Sometimes the lake takes sunlight,

turns it into a deep blue

that might make you leave your mouth

open slightly like a child

just awake from a nap.

On some leaden summer days,

the lake quits moving, stays

so still it turns frog green.

Sluggish fish nap. Anglers

take their tackle-boxes home.

Giant bugs come and dance

on the water. At night?

At night the lake puts its colors

in an old drawer. It hums tunes

and talks to raccoons and owls

and hiding water fowls.

In Winter the lake turns white

with ice and snow--becomes

stationery from 1925 on which

you scribble pleas to Spring. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Doctor My Eyes | Jackson Browne | Song Around The World | Playing For Ch...

You Hold the Door

You sometimes think, What

does any of this have to do with me?
Everything, of course. You and the
8 billion breathe the same air,
recycled from the air early Africans
breathed before the land
got named Africa. The children

bombs, bullets, and missiles kill
for not one single good goddamned reason
raise your ire, eve if you ire's impotent.

The woman earning her wage
at the cafe knows your name,
and you know hers, and you two
sometimes speak of San Francisco.

At any moment, someone you have
never met may need your help,
and you theirs. Still, a person

knows that others plan the future--
often by refusing to plan, often
with sinister, even evil, habits in play.
No way the future belongs to you.
You ask no one, To whom does it

belong?" You take a last gulp
of coffee bean syrup and watch
the woman pull the wool hat
over her ears and go outside
to smoke a cigarette, check
her phone, and be alone. On
the way out, you hold a door
for a stranger. He says, "Thanks,'
and you say, "You're welcome."

Hans Ostrom 2024