Dread

It's August in California's

Sierra Nevada mountains.
Green and gold and wildlife
reign. Bluest skies. You're
11 years old. You think of
September and school
and cold ball bearings
gather in your guts: dread.

It's July, same place.
You're sixteen, working
at your uncle's gravel
plant. He's often enraged
at life. He scares you.
Every workday morning,
carrying a gray lunch pail,
you walk slowly, as if
condemned, from your home,
up a dirt road
to the rock crusher.

It's more than five
decades later & you're
lying on a bed
in an operating room
lit up like a stage.
You stare at an
unspeaking semi-circle
of technicians
and nurses, waiting.

No one's given you
the drugs yet. The
surgeon won't enter
until you're under the sea.
Suddenly the sun-bright
lamps trigger a panic
attack, and you feel like
leaping up to flee. You
tell yourself, "Suck it
up," as a man you met
once is about to drill
a hole in your skull,
and go with tools
into your brain, your you.

hans ostrom 2024

Brain Surgery

A squad of technicians, dressed in blue,

arms folded, looks down at me in bed.
The anesthesiologist's potions
put me fast under before the surgeon,
Dr. Cho, gains the stage.

In my blank darkness, I don't know
he's drilling a keyhole into my skull,
then sawing a crescent-cut. Then it's
on to slicing into the brain, shoving muscles
aside, and peering in to find the Culprit:

a manatee-fat artery stalks the trigeminal
nerve from neck to jaw, lying on it
like Jabba the Hutt. The t.g. controls
eye-business, cheek business, taste
and tongue and gum business--much
show business in one facial hemisphere.

Stressed and pressed, it shoots electric-
bolt spasms into cheek or gums, deep
throbs into gums, electric flutters into
eyelashes. Before some minor palliatives
arose, the ailment drew the quaint nickname,
"the suicide disease."

In this case, the smitten artery
never gives up. Dr. Cho, pugnacious
neurosurgeon, begs to differ. He tracks
the obese entity like Kit Carson, slipping
Teflon pillows under it so that it may
lounge ineffectually, thus liberating
Mademoiselle Trigeminal Nerve.

Scheduled for 3 hours, the surgery
goes six. Awake, I'm bashed and bushed
(tell that to Cho!). Now, recovery: cautions,
gentle rainstorms of brightly colored pills,
sleeping upright (Dear Lord Give me Strength),
trying to hide from my loving, effective,
but Jesuitical wife, watching the brain
recalibrate and reboot. Suddenly I have
a Tom Waits voice and must eat in tiny
garden-party morsels. But: no pain.

I must add that a Black nurse
absently stroked my forearm
before the dance began. It was a task,
but she did it. I squeezed her fingers.
Empathy, the original medicine.

hans ostrom 2023

I Don't Know What You're Thinking

I don't know what you're
thinking. What are you thinking?
Are you thinking? What is
thinking? Is it a big restaurant
just behind the eyes with light,
noise, and bustling? Is it
automatic electric theater?
Is it language marinated in
instinct? Well, I need a break--

too much thought! But
you go ahead and keep
thinking. Thank you.


hans ostrom 2020

Self Government

A federation of doubts governs
my days. Fear, the old dictator,
has risen again. It's enough
that you're breathing, proclaims
this moment's fretting mayor.
The mind continues as a manic,
busy legislature.


hans ostrom 2019

Bird Reticence

Well, maybe if you
didn't try so hard
to understand birds,
they'd share their
observations with you.

They're very busy, they
know how horrible
humans can be, and
they used to be dinosaurs.
Hence the reticence.


hans ostrom 2018

Synesthesia

Oh, the brain is such
a busy beast, operating
on its own, only oh occasionally
letting will pretend it is a manager.

On its own, the beast
associates the Thursday word
with an aubergine purple
and velvet texture.

It links Saturday
to red, Sunday to hard
translucence, Monday to off-white
or beige, Tuesday

to blue and an upholstered feel,
Wednesday to tan and cinnamon,
a graininess. Friday: black and gray,
the vintage whimsy of

a checkerboard linoleum floor.
Brain, to what end, this
communication between strangers
in the internal jazz cafe?


hans ostrom 2015

"Images Coalesce," by Hans Ostrom

I have come to believe
(note somber rhetoric)
that when the images
don't coalesce (there
is a chrome fender in
manzanita, a desire in me
to seem clever, billions
of objects and animals,
blue fabric, scalded flesh,
nothing, hydro-electric
dams, nothing, no connection,
and "surrealism" is no excuse,
shut up) we need to
let them be art.

The images coalesce
because to see patterns
has been drilled into us.
Capitalize. The images
coalesce because
our brains evolved,
along with much of what's
on the surface, and our
brains change what's here,
manufacturing patterns.
(Incidentally, who am I?
No, I mean really, who
am I?) The brain is
at home, that is.


hans ostrom 2014