The Limits of Anxiety

Anxiety feel like breathless

pressure in the chest,
a fluttering suddely of crazed
birds. Anxiety morphs
into dread, shakes the bars
of its cell for help.

Low charcoal clouds
move in, park just above
the head, which wants
to love hope but can't.

Anxiety's gaze wants
to weld itself to a dark pit,
a kind of sick security.

But it is nothing, anxiety
is nothing compared to what
the tortured imprisoned,
the constantly bombed and
displaced, must feel always,
even as they sleep, if they sleep.

hans ostrom 2024

The News from Inside

Inside me, still,

lurks the baby who could walk
but chose not to
(wanting instead to stand up,
hands grasping the rail
of what they called a play-pen)--
and to watch. It seems

I was born wary
and passively resistant.
And that's who I stayed.
In the 17th month, I walked
because, having watched them,
I noted that they
seemed to want me to walk.

Inside me, I don't
contain multitudes,
and Walt Whitman can
go fuck himself. Inside me
there's the DNA of a woman
living in Africa
160, 000 years ago:
it's inside you, too.

And then inside there there's
a few people who worked like dogs
but not as hard as slaves. Maybe
a failed preacher, certainly
a Skid Row drunk, and possibly
the funniest patient in what
they called a mental ward:
no proof of this.

Inside me, I think it's
population: 12. Or so.
But no apostles. In there,

an old non-descript tree
finally gives up, accepts
a lightning-smash, explodes,
and falls. Deer, squirrels,
owls, a cougar, a bear,
and maybe some hiker with
a bandana tied around
dirty hair mark
the arboreal collapse,
but, god damn it,
there's never a Zen monk
around when you need one.
And Walt Whitman
can go fuck himself.

Inside me, there's
a startling, chronic
mild terror--maybe because
at month 15 or so,
I learned from informed
intuition that very little
in this life-thing makes sense,
although we must pretend
that much of it does.

And Walt Whitman...
was one great self-publicist:
American, that is.

Postcard from Anxiety

Hello! We've arrived.
Our knees have buckled,
and we're sick to our
stomachs. We're terrified
of being afraid. It's
just like home! We're
not sure how long we
will stay. We're never sure,
for certainty always lies.
We gulp our breaths.
Love to all, Us.


hans ostrom 2019

You Take Requests

You're performing every night
inside your head. You play piano,
you play shame. You play

dream flute and percussive
regret. You turn rain into harp
strings and fear into drums.

A low tuba of worry
supports an anxious violin.


hans ostrom 2018

Bank of Dreams

At the bank of dreams,
he deposited seven flesh-eating
nightmares and withdrew
one anxiety-dream in which
he has but three days to find
permanent accommodation
in the swarmed, oily city
of Otos, where many
apartment-structures look
like salmon roe, each spherical
unit holding one frantic life.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

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