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

Hiram and Success

Hiram's tried success, and he's tried failure.
By a slim margin, he prefers failure,
maybe because success softened it.
Thing is, success attracts envy
like a wet towel growing mold.
Success needles you with its secret
knowledge of luck and inequality.
It demands repetition of you as it
sips a martini
and listens to "Is That All There Is?"

Failure's more authentic, says Hiram.
It's the experimenter's genial friend.
It's God's way of telling you to grow up.

Like a slim tick, shame tries to attach
itself to failure, but Hiram knows
nobody has to put up with that shit.
You own your failure; it's a sad chair
you built, and only you sit in it.
Yeah, then you do something else, go on
to another foolish errand
in an infinite universe.


hans ostrom 2015

Hiram Goes to Cafe Fear

(another in a series of "Hiram" poems)

Hiram Goes To Café Fear

Hiram thinks, “Here I am sitting inside

my shirt, shoes, and trousers, on a chair

at a table in a café.  I am afraid

of dying.  Also of nothing.  I tell

a waitress what I want for lunch.

She brings it.  I eat it, holding off

fear for a while.  I don’t know

who or why I am.  I am aware

of sitting, afraid, inside my clothes

and body.  This is me, I think. 

So this is me and this my fear.”

Hans Ostrom, 2012

This Happens To Be It

All right, thought Hiram,
this happens to be it--
what is real. I am
walking home on a sidewalk,
and I am drunk,
and I am passing by
a twenty-foot boat
that is situated
between the sidewalk
and someone's yard,
and sophisticated engines
driving cars
are passing me,
and I look at my distorted
shadow exactly
as I did when I was seven
years old: it is
that elongated,
legs-go-forever
shadow.  And I am:
so what? And I
am walking home,
knowing the way,
what is home (?),
what is the way (?),
is this what is (?),
and I must go on
as if this is what is,
and I keep walking.


Hans Ostrom, 2012