Monday, December 9, 2024

Word Woman

She stayed open to words
any day of time or night. Sang
words if they wanted thrumming,
mumbled humbled ones, bathed
others in black ink. Words

were people in her mind. Without
them she couldn’t imagine the
something she might be.
Come in, come in, she said when
they arrived. She fixed a place

for each, knew most of their
morphological needs. They
knew they might denote, connote,
obscure, shade, or just freely lie
around, lying, telling truth,

cursing coarsely, moaning
hoarsely, leaping into phones
to ride electrons in the clouds.
Toward words she truly
tried to act the perfect hostess.

hans ostrom 20

Freight Ships

 Tacoma, Washington, USA


Anchored, freighters look like farm towns
burning necessary lights on dark fields.

Their crews, like miners, are unapparent.

We know these ships to be steel buckets,
as basic as water, profit, gravity, and greed.

We do not know why we stare at them

like art or why they  stare back
with the wise vacancy of cats.

hans ostrom 2024

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

If It Hits the Ground

 Words on the side
of a groaning recycling truck:
IF IT HITS THE GROUND,
IT HITS THE SOUND--
Puget Sound, an adjunct
to the Pacific Ocean, which
is choked with plastic.

Studying for an advanced
degree in futility, I pick up
as much as I can. Black forks.
Cracked food containers Massive
clear cups. Straws, spoons, bits,
shards, pieces. Tossed from cars.
Thrown down in parking lots.

Debris from mass insanity, is
what it is. Evidence of lethal
indifference. Effluvia of the
Consumocracy. We, the ones
named the persistence of
the fittest (not the strongest),
make ourselves unfit for our
only niche, Earth. If it hits the
ground it hits

a drain, a creek, a culvert,
a ditch, a river, a lake, a Sound,
an ocean, a sea. See? See.

hans ostrom 2024

Monday, December 2, 2024

Vienna

 (1980)


1980

How the fuck did I get here? I asked myself.
By train, dummy. Winter. Yes, yes: opera,
history, magnificence, Sigmund. A big so what?
to all of that and more when you're thin

on money, low on rest, and wracked
by mistakes you made. Back "home,"
they'd elected Reagan president. That, children,
was a point of no return. Austria is

of great historical importance. Okay, fine,
but I'm hungry, I thought. So I went out,
and I went out, and I found myself a cafe,
which featured a kind of importance I

required--hot food and wine, buzz of
customers, glowing lights and cigarette
smoke, a blond woman with a wry
smile, and a sense of proportion.

hans ostrom 2020/2024