"On Giving and Taking," by Kahlil Gibran

The Christmas Ornaments Convene

 A white angel, a black angel,

three black Santa Clauses. An angel

made of a toilet paper cylinder,

child's cardboard craft. Ornaments

made of beer-can aluminum,

glass ornaments from Aunt Nevada,

who loaded the mincemeat pie

with whiskey every year. A blue

sphere or two, survivors

from Christmases way-past

when Ma insisted on her blue tree

every year. A pink motorcycle,

a wooden elf who jumps

like a Cossack dancer

when you pull a string. A horse,

a cat, a crystal icicle. Red bird,

yellow bird, peacock. . . . This

is an annual reunion of ornaments,

who approve the minutes

from last year, chat while we're asleep,

stay cool with the LED lights

on an artificial tree;

who serve as metonyms

for clusters of nostalgia, loss,

and tattered joy. What about Jesus?

Well, he's there implicitly in

the eclectic hospitality.

hans ostrom 2023/2025

The Ornaments Convene

 A white angel, a black angel,

three black Santa Clauses. An angel
made of a toilet paper cylinder,
child's cardboard craft. Ornaments

made of beer-can aluminum,
glass ornaments from Aunt Nevada,
who loaded the mincemeat pie
with whiskey every year. A blue
sphere or two, survivors
from Christmases way-past
when Ma insisted on her blue tree
every year. A pink motorcycle,

a wooden elf who jumps
like a Cossack dancer
when you pull a string. A horse,
a cat, a crystal icicle. Red bird,
yellow bird, peacock. . . . This
is an annual reunion of ornaments,

who approve the minutes
from last year, chat while we're asleep,
stay cool with the LED lights
on an artificial tree;
who serve as metonyms
for clusters of nostalgia, loss,
and tattered joy. What about Jesus?
Well, he's there implicitly in
the eclectic hospitality.

hans ostrom 2022

Belief

The first time I heard my father pronounce,

"When we die, we're meat for the worms,"

I was about ten. He repeated the wisdom

occasionally. He thought "preachers"

were hustlers. Ma ran away from her 

evangelical minister father when she 

was 18. He was a bigot and a creep. 

She never worshipped publicly again,

thought of Heaven, I think, 

as an earned vacation. She gave me

her leather-bound Bible, Oxford U.

Press, all of Jesus's words in red. 

I joined the Catholic Church

at age 45, but my "worship" consists

of giving food to the parish's

food bank and trying to be kind. My

wife's the real Catholic and prays for me,

in both senses of "for." As to God,

who knows? Believing isn't knowing.

Nor is atheism. I'm too busy fearing

humans--of every belief, including

atheism, to fear God.  It never surprises

me to see that another American 

Christian has turned out to be evil.

Sometimes evil and popular.

After my college

History of Philosophy class, taken

at age 17, I never stopped thinking

Spinoza had it right: God equals

everything there is, but probably

no more. A cold view, true. 

Of course, the Jews expelled him,

the Christians condemned him,

and Leibniz envied him. 

Spinoza made a living grinding lenses. 

It's a true fact, as we say

in the American West, 

that the body disintegrates.

Aging gives it a head start. 

The universe is too big, 

dynamic, and complicated

for us to understand

all the way, but I say to science:

keep trying.

We should concentrate on peace, 

equity, and care of Earth. Make these

our primary worship. Keep it

simple-like, you know?

hans ostrom 2022

Thumpers

Hail Grace, full of Merry, how
does your garden grow? And another
thing: why are people
who are full of hate and empty
of sense in charge of things?
Is it just tradition?

Blessed art art, at least
it's a vector in which to stuff
the rage of futility, the roar
of despair. Jesus, Christians

have made up a bunch of crap
about you, turning you into
a white supremacist policer of sex
& gender and a lobbyist for guns and greed.
They preach the "gospel of wealth."
No, really. Thugs, they really
thump the love out of the Bible.


hans ostrom 2018

Blood Estuaries

Blood estuaries, the slaughter arts,
and radioactive crania of psychotic
power-addicts all have me a bit on
ledge. Industrial Whiteness

sells bigot spigots, 90 days
same as cash. Keep the hatred
flowing is their slogan. A
certain segment of the public

weaponizes Jesus and beats up
people who know facts.
Dictators proliferate worldwide
like syphilis chancres.

Ignorance is tidal.
Civilization's suicidal.


hans ostrom 2018

"Soldier's Dream," by Wilfred Owen

"Broken, Amazing, and Awful"

Jesus Reminder

And the Man said,
the name is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.

Not Jesus Price
or Jesus Pri$e,
not Jesus Whites
or Jesus Right or
Jesus Lite.

Certainly not
Jesus Might or Jesus
Might-is-Right, and
no not Jesus Kike.

Nor Jesus Flight,
as in your wealth-gospel's
corporate jet. Nor
Jesus Blights. Okay?

Not Jesus Sites,
as in a real estate de-
velopment, or Jesus Sights,
as in the things you
aim your guns with.

And the people, they
got a little quiet.
And then they started
talking, too much, again.



hans ostrom

In Pursuit of Happiness

Headquarters, be advised,
we are in pursuit of happiness.
Officer is down
on his knees, praying
for redemption. Alleged
miscreant has been advised
of his lights,
and is rising in a red sky.
Moses and Christ,
also Buddha and Allah,
we ask:
what has happened
to our species,
which achieves, achieves,
but that is all?
Headquarters, please
copy our call.
We are over. We are out.



hans ostrom 2013

the attempt becomes a gesture

the attempt becomes a gesture

the man wearing a thin sweatshirt
and no hat stands at an uncovered
bus stop in freezing rain. he isn't me.

he's trying to light a cigarette. his
attempt becomes a gesture--
ludicrous but noble, less than
tragic but not bad at all.

he's inside whatever being alive
is for him, and i'm inside what
being alive is to me. i see him
from a warm place out of the weather.

if i were like jesus i'd go to the
man and perform a miracle--
like getting that cigarette lit,
or giving him money,
or giving him my parka, or
embracing him. he might
like all of that. except for
the embrace. he might
bite my nose off for that.

i don't do any of these things,
because it's easier not to,
and it's acceptable that i
think i'm not his keeper.

at moments like these, i
think of Bukowski,
who--i gather from his
words, i never knew
the man--thought like
jesus sometimes, i mean
with a similar toughness.
tough on everybody--
including, let's say especially,
the reflective, ignoble fuckers in
warm parkas out of the
weather.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Out of the Ordinary Time

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Out of the Ordinary Time
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A turquoise cable-car, yes, something
like that and not like that is tonight's
craving. I've learned not to lose sight
of basic needs (water, money). But
there's more to life than survival,
or so it seems when you're surviving,
anyway. So yes, long-haired, brown,
unamused Jesus riding a Harley
out of clouds to pay a serious visit
to pious "wealth-gospel" punks: that
would be of interest. Or a wheel-on-fire
chasing Donald Trump down an alley
in Calcutta, Shiva waiting for him
to Come to Mama. Or a furry llama
standing in mist just outside my dreams.
A seagull's scream, a shark's devotion,
some old shaggy, long-lost emotion:
these are sorts of things tonight called
to say it needed. I stood in rain. I pleaded.
Lightning sawed off a chunk of sky,
dropped it in the bay. That's
what I'm talking about.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Biblical Capitalism?

I was on my way to a used bookstore today when I drove past a church, and it had one of those signs on which you can change the words as often as you like. It is a Presbyterian Church.

The sign read, "Capitalism/Biblical/Practical." I thought at first that the sign referred to three different worldviews or epistemologies. You know, like C, B, or P: choose one! But then I realized (correctly, I think; or if not, then my realization was a delusion) that the sign was suggesting capitalism was not just practical but supported by the Bible.

Is that theologically and historically correct? --To assert that capitalism is Biblical? I don't think it is. Isn't capitalism as we know it more or less one function of industrial society? And I don't think the words "capital" or "capitalism" appear in the Bible, in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or English. We'll leave aside, for the moment, what Jesus's attitude toward wealth seems to be in the Gospels. Is there an Aramaic equivalent to "capitalism"? Hmmmm.

Anyway, at least the sign made me wonder, and I do know that the "gospel of wealth" is popular in certain Christian circles. To which I say, "Oy," or maybe "Get thee behind me."

I expended some cash but not real capital on the following books:

A first edition of Karl Shapiro's Essay On Rime, a book-length poem about prosody. (Hey, watch the prof. party down at a used bookstore.)

Oxford Blood, a mystery novel by Antonio Fraser, widow of Harold Pinter. I once interviewed her about her book on Henry VIII's wives. It was one of my favorite interviews during my three years as a part-time "books" columnists. Pinter called her during the interview--honest, I'm not lying. He did not ask her to put me on the phone. Oh, well. One with whom I live will read the mystery first. It has already disappeared into her reading-sphere.

And Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics, by Jeremy Schaap.

I didn't find any books on Biblical, practical capitalism, but I must also admit that I did not look for any.

Rained So Hard

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Rained So Hard
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It rained so hard the roof started barking
and woke me up to a satisfactory feeling.
I got up and looked outside, saw how much
and fast water'd fallen in that prehistoric
way, where clouds bunch up, get weighty
gray with devaporated wet, set themselves
just so, separate water into individual
pearls, let go, and give them graciously
to gravitational pull. Hey, I'd have to check
with theologians and meteorologists, but
there might be molecules of perspiration
from Buddha, Moses, Jesus, the Prophet, and
Confucius, or from just plain folk, in a drop
that hits your roof or hand, and the thought
of that's satisfactory, too--is what I was
thinking in my groggy condition when
I heard that hard rendition of rain working
angles overhead. Satisfied, I went back to bed.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Superiority

Superiority


He looked out his window.
A stream of people flowed
past his abode. The fact
and number of them startled
him. He turned and asked
his cohabitant, "Who are they?"
She said, "They're just some
of the people who think they're
better than you are." "Better
at what?" he asked. "At nothing--
or everything. Superior. They're
better overall than you." "They
know me?"he asked. "Of course
not," he said, "Don't be ridiculous.
Or be ridiculous. They don't need
to know you. They're superior."
"Oh," he said, as if he understood.
"What should I do?" he asked her.
"Probably what you've always done," she said.
"Work. Keep to yourself. Stand by friends."
"Am I better than anyone?" he asked.
"Of course not," she said, laughing.
"No one is better than anyone else.
Remember? Jesus, don't you know
anything?" she said. "Don't take
that superior tone with me," he said.
They shared a bit of a laugh,
cooked some food, and ate it.
He looked out the window again,
and all the superior people were gone.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom