Grendel's Agent

My client's one of the
earliest antagonists
to show up in Western
Lit., and you're offering
scraps? How dare you
low-ball a bankable,
A-List monster! Plus,
I can get you the Mother
and B-Wulf!


hans ostrom 2016

Alice Axe

Action hero Alice Axe
drops explosives down
the rabbit hole and obliterates
imagination. Her carved,

starved body glistens
and flexes for the camera
set-ups. Acting is
manufacturing. She's

on a mission. Certain
accounts depend on her.
The box-office weekend
slouches this way.

Know you are supposed
to believe phantoms
want to invade the nation.
Huh? Yes, oh yes.

Wonderland had it
coming. That is
from the movie, Alice
Axe has been celebritized.


hans ostrom 2016

Hollywood's Not Doing it For Me

I was watching a digitalized video
of a film in which immensely wealthy
celebrities with slight builds
(made more slight by Hollywood's
emaciation-demands) were pretending
on a sound stage to be tough cowboys
or gangsters or spies or cops. It wasn't
working for me. Their acting

couldn't overcome the built-in
farce of the system that made
the product--the insincere,
serious, transparently cynical,
ghastly moving-picture factory.

I turned off the machine.

I imagined the two men
having to work a shift
building a house. That scene
worked for me. I imagined
them quitting after ten
minutes and hobbling
toward the limousine.

After that scene stopped
in my head, I went outside
and dug a hole to plant
a green-gauge plum tree in.
I was entertained.



hans ostrom 2015

"Discreet Books," by Hans Ostrom

Old books, discreet, keep what now
seems naive, quaint, or embarrassing
enclosed, hidden in stacked pages
between covers. Replayed TV episodes

lay bare what's now funny
for the wrong reasons. They
show how the writers
sank their lives into a wicked,
remunerative genre bound
to betray them as now

they sit in fine houses,
their bodies ravaged
by the stress of the Industry,
looking at the spines
of novels they've collected.

Faint noise of grandkids
splashing in the blue pool,
Hollywood hills, reaches
the interior, paid for
by residuals. It was,
it is, a living, and as Sam
Johnson said, "No one but
a block-head writes
for anything but money."


hans ostrom 2014

Oh, Of Course, Yes

Oh, of course, yes sir,
I'd very much like to pay
to watch another film
about sociopathic Americans
starring Robert De Niro or
it-doesn't-matter-who. Yes,
fascinating, humorous, ha-ha,
chuckles. No, of course,
there really aren't any
other subjects for cinema
that are quite as interesting
and exciting. Yes, sir, I am
very happy with the cinema
you provide. You are a genius!
Everyone in Hollywood is a genius!


hans ostrom 2013

What Should I Watch?

Wow, I can order, like a general,
movies on my TV! On Demand, with a
price. So: On Pay. That's
kind of cute. I see what
you did there. What should I watch?

How about the tenth sequel based
on a fucking comic book, with a short
actor dressed in latex
and a plot
as predictable
as a
bowel
movement
and credits
as long as
the Bataan
Death March?

How about the 15th gangster movie
from the noted director who makes
gangster movies with short actors
who have New York accents and
play at being tough, with make-up
and all? Bada-Boom, Bada-Wadda-
Dada could you please just
stop talking, stop
talking
in
that
accent?

How about a film in which Black
women actors play maids or whores?

Or another film with the wrinkled,
70-year-old actor whose eyes look
like charcoal piss-holes in the snow?
He will be paired with a woman
who has had her faced carved
by switch-blade Frankenstein
cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills.

Or another political thriller
in which a short man with a broad
female ass plays a rogue agent
who is American
who is American
who is American
who blows up shit
who glows up shit
and flows up shit and
who never grows up? Shit!

How about a goddamned puppet-movie?
Or a virtual puppet-movie, with
that digital puppet-crap they
invented? Yeah, a talking fucking
car, a virtual teddy bear, all of it
"voiced" by members of this
bizarre celebrity oligarchy
that invites world leaders
to parties in Malibu, pays
people to carry dogs no bigger
than postage stamp, and gets
high-colonic enemas in Costa Rica?

Oh, I know. A romantic comedy,
in which the actress, who is 45,
plays a flirty nerd who is,
I shit you not, supposed to be
less than 30. You know, one
of those romantic comedies
that isn't romantic or funny
but basically a set of still photos
paired with frozen jokes
and inept physical stunts?

Jesus Moses Sebastian Mohammed
Buddha Bogart, what ever
happened to timing?

Oh, wait. There's another movie
by that guy who is 108 years old
and jacks off to kiddy-porn
and lives in New York
and is important
and gets the financing
and gets the financing
and has a broker
and is afraid of anybody
not White
and is
a
genius
and is
a genius
and is
and is
and is
and is
a genius? Have
you seen his
latest movie?
Oh, it's wonderful.
It's set in a famous city
that middle-class
Americans
visit
by
the
millions. He
is a
genius. Have
you seen it? Oh,
he is wonderful. Oh,
I love
his
movies.

Yes, please, a movie
by the hick-genius
who made one good movie
and who is short
and talks tough
and now says "we"
when he means "I"
and is no doubt
and is no doubt
thought to be smart
in Hollywood.

Better yet, a movie
with one of the three
older Black male actors
who get work in Hollywood.
One has a voice but doesn't act.
One acts but doesn't have a voice.
The third acts and has a voice
but is just a bit too
talented to be safe.
"A Black man in Hollywood ..."
say those in the know. Inside
joke.

Imagine if people, seriously,
Occupied Hollywood. Imagine
progressive, suave poseurs
having to call the police
to have the police
beat up the people. Imagine,
that is, Hollywood
without the makeup,
no longer the last
institution that is
beyond
scrutiny,
beyond
contempt.

Imagine Hollywood
on
the
run,
shitting
its
pants,
stuck
in its BMW,
stuck
in a mob. Cut!

Wow. I think I'll
watch
that.




hans ostrom 2013

Is All Beige

Is all beige, is the color
of the faces in the long-running
series, "Hollywood Exciting Series,"
with the ubiquitous directionless
lighting that is seen to come from
nowhere and everywhere: large
light bulbs, tin foil that reflects
sunlight as it is in L.A.

There is a script. There is acting.
There is a three-digit number
for the channel on which one may view
"Hollywood Exciting Series."

And we watch. Why? Well, what the fuck
else are we supposed to do,
after working in our jobs,
which are held by the suckers
in society, whereas the all-beiged
"Hollywood Exciting Series"
will make a profit for the ones
who make a profit by moving
their earlier profits into other
profit-making areas. Oh, my.

I'm not against anything.
What would be the fucking point?
I merely state. State haphazardly.
Sometimes I ask. "Are we irrevocably
fucked up?" It's not as though anyone
must answer, unless of course they're
saying something from a script,
and are being paid,
and are beige
because of the lighting
because of the because
because.


hans ostrom 2013

Hiram Displays a Bad Attitude Toward Popular Cinema

Hiram, in his cups, which had been full
of vodka, says, "Let the miserable blob
lay. Lay the miserable fucking blob. Lay
miserly blob. Hey, Miz, lay Miz, Fizz Miz."

I can fill in the rest.  It isn't so much
the genre of musical, or the tears
being squeezed out of melodrama
like hot fat from cooked bacon,
or the celebrity-actors shoved out
in front of the cameras like mannequins
with entourages, or that the Public
eats this shit up, it's the combination
of all five; and more--that gnaws
at Hiram's sense of what is all right.

 "The whole fucking thing . . .," Hiram mumbles.
The combination. The combinations.
That's what gets a body down. In an age
of Packaging, Hiram opposes the Package.


hans ostrom 2013

Sudden Infinity

not sure.
do know history's owned.
driver's ed.

the allies. you remember them.
cut the heads off.
indescribable scene.
sources say myth.
sources say fear.
sources. say.
sources. "the thing is,
he had to have known."

percentages on the back end, said
my friend in Hollywood, which
does not give
does not give
does not give
a
shit.
in other news, we, collectively,
have raised the average
temperature.
what to do?
 did you say, "what to do?"
well then to that i say,
yes, let us ask and let us try
to
answer


hans ostrom 2013

Weary of Movie Acting

Sometimes I get fed up
with the "great" acting
movie-actors enact.

I watch a scene,
and I think, "These
are famous people

doing something
for which they're
famous." I look

at the make-up,
the mannerisms,
the evidence

that the director
has had to suck up
to the celebrity.

I don't give even
one fuck what
the alleged

"story" is about.
I see angles, noses,
lips. I listen

to the goddamned
dubbing. I see how
the famous actor

demanded better
lighting and lots
of money

on "the back end."
They are acting up a storm.
And I am weary. 

And what do I do?
I go read a novel in
well worn paperback form.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

The Down Escalator

We recently stayed at a hotel in Hollywood that gives the appearance of being designed on the model of a London hotel, so (for example) the signs for what Americans call "elevators" say "lifts."

As far as I can tell, the British call "escalators" "escalators." I have to say (well, I don't really have to) that "lift" is pretty impressive. It's so simple. And it does describe what the machine does to (for) you--if you're going up, that is, and if the machine is working properly. This escalator-poem was first written in Canada, not Hollywood or Britain, though, if memory serves. So it goes.


The Down Escalator

A sign specifies I ought to stand right or walk
left. Standing right, moving, and thus moving
as I stand, I take this escalator, which takes
me--down, against the grain of its name.

Ahead I see the floor inhale grooved metal
steps insatiably. The ingested steps fall
into an abyss, which I escape undramatically
by getting off a step just before it vanishes.

The momentum of moving while standing
right makes my first stride betray over-
compensation. A slight hint of stagger mars
my gait. I proceed to plod without the escalator.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Sunset Strip

(image: a section of the Sunset Strip in Hollywood)

*

*

*

*

*

Sunset Boulevard

*

Sunset Boulevard is asphalt and concrete rolled

onto crushed rock. The rest is mirage. If you forget

this, then Hollywood's done one of its jobs. Above

the line of boulevard, wealth's fortifications protrude

from high ground. Below the line, a stew of stucco cooks.

Simmering, it releases gray vapors. Conduits of

sewage, electricity, gas, and such connect it all--

networks of basics, expelled and consumed.

Most buildings and signs on Sunset seem weary

in spite of designed protestations to the contrary.

People look hunted, haunted, or harried, in spite

of display, tattoos, feints, fashion, and façades.

Beneath the boulevard lie geological formations.

On top is us, the decoration. We're the close-up.

Time's the long shot in which all of this will be

out of frame.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom