Friday, January 31, 2025
The Goddess Dusk
goddess infused with gold
light, luxuriant in liquid
soft warmth.
hans ostrom 2025
painting by Alphonse Mucha (1899)
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Sine Qua Non
for phrasing. Blank stare,
bunched brow, light in eyes--
words stored in neural bins,
plucked out, strung like beads,
then shipped in blood-drawn
carts along nervous roads
to mouth and tongue and
lips: "Sine qua non--that's it."
And the listenerr repeats:
"Sine qua non--right."
Monday, January 27, 2025
Winter Samba
(song lyric)
I find I need to feel my feet
On Ipanema sand
And see the supple bodies -
So lithe and tawny tan.
I conjure up Brazilian heat -
And sense the
sultry sun.
I crave the fiery chill
of
Cold rum on my tongue.
Play
a winter samba
To
melt my soul’s cold ice.
A
soft & sultry samba -
The
sound of paradise.
Play
a winter samba
That
sways just like a palm
Beside
a breezy beach -
The
ocean bright and calm.
Winter wears me down
-
The city’s gray and cold.
The forecast every day’s
The old same-old same-old.
Who are all these strangers
Who sneeze and cough on me?
I spend my evening shivering,
In front of the TV.
Chorus
Buffalo and Cleveland,
Detroit, Ontario.
Winter wants to strangle them.
Winter won’t let go.
Seattle and Chicago,
Berlin and Paris, too.
The rain and snow and darkness
Dye all our spirits blue.
How much are flights to Rio?
Okay - I’ll check
online.
Do I have Brazilian cousins
Who own a silver mine?
Chorus
Sunday, January 26, 2025
This Side of the River
Over many seasons
I waited and waited
for the river's waters
to recede so that I
might safely cross,
perhaps by using
boulders as stepping
stones. Perhaps
by sloshing throw
a manageable
current. The water
never lowered.
If I tried to wade, I'd
drown. If I rowed
a boat, the waterfall's
catract would
devour me. No bridges
in sight. Thus
I announced to
myself that this side
of ther river
is the place I want
to be--my destination,
my desire, my smoke
and my fire. I love
it over here!
hans ostrom 2025
Friday, January 24, 2025
Counter-Invictus
Out of the day that covers me,
Gray as the gray of dull wool,
I think what gods may hang around
To remind me I'm a fool.
When things have gone quite wrong,
I've acted well or badly or okay,
Up to the challenge sometimes, sometimes
Not: One can't predict which way.
Beyond this sphere of our mortality,
Lies who knows what for sure?
Hell, yes, I am afraid to die,
To go forever from Is to Were.
To say you are the Captain of
Your fate is bluster or delusion
For accidents happen all the time.
And Captains sail into confusion.
If there is such a thing as Fate,
Then It is the big fleet's Admiral,
And we, alas, at best passengers.
So how much can we control?
New Retail
Walking in Snow
that you're heaving breath,
that your feet sink with each step,
that your face gets raw from cold.
Watch your lungs make clouds.
Listen to wind stir trees
and see it tease
boughs into dumping snow.
A deep blue, black-headed
Steller's jay lands on a liberated
branch. And cack-cack-cackles.
This small unclothed, unshod
creature finds hilarity in snow
You do not.
Do not.
Just don't.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Today, In Its Way
On this street, by that purple tree.
With those birds,--black, blue,
speckled, gray. orange.
It leads me to eat this daily bread,
not bread made of promises or dread,
of regrets, threats, or plans, but of
Now's flour, water, yeast, and salt.
Today softly slaps my face
and tells me what people
I must help, what people
help me. Don't go messin'
around with other days,
you dumb ass, says today.
In its way.
Cloud Honey
like fine sunrises. In squadrons
bees took off from every land
to fly up there. Later in the season,
bee hives rose like temples.
Honey drizzled down on us.
Sweet rain. Was it sticky,
golden brown, and sweet?
Was it problematic? Oh,
yes, oh yes it was indeed.
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Coupons
my stuff's bar-codes across
the mysterious prone mirror.
I didn't know what her forearm's
tattoos represented. To me
they stayed abstract &
so I liked them very much.
She continued: "He was a sweet
guy but not very smart." "You,"
she added, "saved 20 dollars
on your groceries today."
"Thank you very much," I said.
"Of course!" she said--which seems
to be what people say now
instead of "You're welcome."
It Burns Low
who stays alive through
a post-mortem force of will.
And to Ma, who is I'm sure
glad to be past life. To an
aunt or two and friends
who went away too, too early.
To James Baldwin, whom
I met once but who wonders
who is this person? I tell him
his book, The Fire Next Time,
which I found in the back of a
classroom and read at 17,
changed my life. No response.
I spoke briefly to some people
who went out of their way
to be unkind to me. I find
I didn't have much to say
to them. Nor did they to me.
They are smoke, and truly,
my own fire burns low.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Friday, January 10, 2025
Amerikan Cattle Drive
In this space-open-wide, sky is burnished, air is rare, dust is unto.
Ranging earth whirls up, hooves percussing, trail's a-risin’.
And the drive is driven toward
a Chicago abbatoir at the end of the loaned prayerie.
In this wide-eyed, yippie-eye-ay, comma-space, in this spaced
TexiCaliKansas range, there is rounding, there is up,
there is longing, and there's horning.
There is brand-name-recognition
for those steaks and roasts, those drive-in
burgers for burghers, those leather
shoes and boots and belts.
The Infinite Lored Cattle Drive pours/roars on through fissures
twixt history and mountains, unsettlers and originals
and fishers of men and women and beasts and burdens.
Every horse has a history, every cow has a price, every
woman has an axe, every badge has a bullet, every
man has a man saying {Man, you're in my way.}
Unholster your history, it's time to ride. Look over stampede's
boiling nation of hooves and horns. Sunlight mounts a fence.
American women and men stand staring composed upon
a hill without a city. See them, just west of where
they are. Now your great gathered herd
goes all to sky, and the loop of your lasso makes an {O
bury me not. . . .}, and ghost riders burst through clouds.
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Boot
It pointed toward the painted
crosswalk it stood beside.
Had its inhabitant stepped out
of it and limped across the street
into a single-booted life?
Or had he hauled the other boot
along, walking in socks?
The tokens of absurdity,
calamity, defeat, and sadness
are strewn across all cities.
Of course they are: masses
of people, masses of things
and accidents and fractured
fates. Oh, stride on, stride on,
single-booted city cowboy.
Sunday, January 5, 2025
O, Mouth
an ode, in abc... form
O, mouth,
Abyss of appetite,
Bureau of belching,
Cannon of cursing,
Dungeon of tongue,
Emitic exit,
Fanatic of food.
O mouth,
Groom of gluttony,
Hall of hiccups,
Inventor of intrigue,
Joker and jester,
Knight of bite,
Lover of lick and kiss.
O mouth,
Muse of mucous,
Nobleman of No,
Obnoxious Opinionator,
Penthouse of Prevarication,
Quarrelsome quipster,
Rude rogue of rebuke,
Soothing sayer.
Tabernacle of teeth,
Union of utterance,
Vector of vocabulary,
Wagon of waggery,
Xanadu of flu,
Yodeler and yeller,
Zone of zest, O, mouth.