"Nobody Knows the City," Lyrics by Hans Ostrom

 rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8UGFt96mU

Busker in the Rain

(apparently, the word "busker" springs from the Spanish "buscar," to seek)

He’s just another busker

strumming in the rain,
singing on the corner
down on First and Main.

Seven people listen,
Looks like four will clap.
Look, one drops some coins
In that old black hat.

  He’s played like this
  Around the world,
  Belgium to Berlin,
  Paris to St. Paul.
  He might move on
  To Tulsa, or to
  the metro, Montreal.

Yeah, it’s hard to find
A gig in a coffee house or bar.
Well, that’s the way it is
So he’s a sidewalk star.

Folk and rock and pop,
Jazz and country, too.
Someone drops paper money--
Time to nod, "Thank you."

    Buskers play like this
    All around the world,
    Ireland to Spain,
    Paris to St. Paul.
    They might move on
    To Tulsa, or to
    the metro, Montreal.

He used to have a dog
But sadly it's has passed on.
The blues tunes made him
Moan. That old dog’s name
Was Don.

A woman listens hard
He can see her sigh.
That feels pretty good,
It’s true—he cannot lie.

If that woman walks up
And tosses in a bill,
That will help him eat:
A different kind of thrill.

The cities of the world
Are the troubadours’ abode.
They’re out there playing now
On this street or that road.
Stand or sit, play and sing—
That is the busker’s code.

hans ostrom, 2025

Boot

I saw a single cowboy boot,

brown, upright on a sidewalk.
It pointed toward the painted
crosswalk it stood beside.

Had its inhabitant stepped out
of it and limped across the street
into a single-booted life?
Or had he hauled the other boot

along, walking in socks?
The tokens of absurdity,
calamity, defeat, and sadness
are strewn across all cities.

Of course they are: masses
of people, masses of things
and accidents and fractured
fates. Oh, stride on, stride on,

single-booted city cowboy.

hans ostrom 2025

Vibrations

The elevated train shook

and rattled his dank studio

apartment. A a cat sleeping next

to him began to buzz its own

body with purring. Indecipherable

words from a cranked up TV

next door hummed inside wall

studs and plaster-board. Somewhere

in the city, his former lover

snored, he knew, her nose

morphed into a kind of kazoo. 

He listened past the dins

and thought he heard the rustle

& tap of cockroaches & now a

furnace pipe joined the noise.

hans ostrom 2024

Poetry Consulates

 (second version)

Pushkin loved the idea of St. Petersburg
and the bronze horseman who saw
the city before it was built. Langston
Hughes loved the idea of Harlem,
also some people there. Did Baudelaire

love Paris? Splenetically, maybe.
I don't think Dickinson loved
any cities. The village of her mind
sufficed, urban in its way.

It pleases me to think
of all the poets writing now
in Istanbul and Mainz, Hong

Kong and Honolulu, Uppsala
and Houston, Brasilia and Berlin,
Tehran and Tangier and all
the other cities where poets
live--every city in other words,
in their words, which
follow their cities around,
no matter how often the
cities change disguises
or suffer horrors. Poets'

words attach themselves to love
and food, despair and dreams,
rage and work and filth and beauty.
If only these poets could meet
and read their poems and argue
but not fight, ask questions
about language and children,
mountains and rivers and trains.
Should we, then, build poetry consulates
in all these poem-filled cities?
Yes, yes we should.

© right now    poetry • cities   

New York

I lived in New York for two weeks
once. Doing some research in Harlem.
The apartment's sad kitchen
had been in New York quite
a while, had arrived full of
confidence. The cockroaches,
who made me pine for my college
studio hole, belonged to well known
New York cockroach families.
I could tell by the way they
carried themselves. Only years
later did it occur to me
that New York's intensity
must, to lonely people, become
a merciless cruelty.


hans ostrom

City Fixer

I went around the city
fixing things today.
With my wrench, I fixed
a tree, tightening its
branches. I advised
a tall building on how
to improve its posture.

One of the parks was
badly fractured. I used
special bolts to mend it.
Logic dictated that I
give food to a hungry
woman. I tried to

spray the mayor
with political  disinfectant
but was rebuffed. Now
I'm conducting an ad
hoc choir on the
underground train,
for as you know the noise
of the metro begs
for assistance. Citizens,
I am here for you.



hans ostrom 2019

Cities

Mutant geometries. Labor
mills. Silos of capital.
Rivers of sewage. Noise
wars. Reservoirs of suckers.
Culture forts. Illusions
of Always. Power bunkers.
Hives for the homeless. Rodent
carnivals. Poverty gardens.
Ministries of fashion. Megaliths
of indifference. Injection sites.
Status farms. Cargo inhalers.
Leverage cathedrals. Temples
of excess. Catacombs of loneliness.


hans ostrom 2019

Poetry Consulates

Pushkin loved the idea of St. Petersburg
and the bronze horseman who saw
the city before it was built. Langston
Hughes loved the idea of Harlem,
also some people there. Did Baudelaire
love Paris? Splenetically, perhaps.
I don't think Dickinson loved
any cities. The village of her mind
sufficed. It pleases me to think
of all the poets writing now
in Istanbul and Mainz, Hong
Kong and Honolulu, Uppsala
and Houston, Brasilia and Berlin,
Tehran and Tangier and all
the other cities where poets
live, every city in other words,
in their words,  which
follow their cities around,
no matter how often the
cities change disguises. Poets'
words attach themselves to love
and food, despair and dreams. If
only these poets could meet
and read their poems and argue
but not fight, ask questions
about language and children,
mountains and rivers. Should we
build poetry consulates in all the cities
we can? Surely it couldn't hurt.


hans ostrom 2019

Of Time and the Prairie

There's a lot of prairie
under all those cities.
It isn't waiting--that's
a sad human thing. It
is, however, prepared--
ready for any histories
that come along to replace
the previous ones.



hans ostrom 2017

Floating Windows

Like you, I've noticed windows without buildings,
ghost panes floating above city streets.
Local officials sometimes gather to argue
about how to get them washed, and would it
be a union job? Boosters plot
a Floating Pane Festival.

Local professors challenge the physics,
opposing plain sight. Like you,
I'm thankful that these hovering frames
of glass are at least something fresh
and new, for the city is, like all cities,
a weary site of congealed geometries
covering underground rivers of liquid dung.



hans ostrom 2016

The Breakfast Special

Some people are ordering
the Breakfast Special
because it's the best they can do.
Some people are cooking
it. It's the best they can do.
This city is a city. It's
not the best it can do. At

the same time, it doesn't
exist. No cities do. They're
just jammed together
bits and people. This
is the point where poems
get into trouble and need to
stop. It's the best they can do.


hans ostrom 2015

Party of One

I walk around the city. I'm a one-person
parade. Wave to onlookers, hold to the route.
Nobody knows I'm being honored. That's okay.
I prefer it that way. I stroll proudly,
give thumbs up to stray cats, seagulls,
and insects. After it's over, I
head home. There's only so much
adulation this hero can take.


hans ostrom 2015

Toes

Yes, I agree: toes
are risibly absurd.

They are pudgy, failed claws.
We encase them like jewelry,
divas, or prisoners, and let them out
for fresh air occasionally.

Their curling's an atavistic
practice that migrated
from branched communities.

When people say, "Kick up
your heels," they seem
to mean nothing.

Heel/toes, heel toes:
onward the masses walk hard
on hard urban surfaces.
It's the economy, stupid.

Our dogs is tired.
Our gods are remote.
This is the greatest age
of toenail polish.


hans ostrom 2015

Fashion District, Los Angeles

Hope Street:
End of Road Work,
One Way.
No parking--
Tow Away Zone.



hans ostrom 2015

People from the Sky

So many people
fall out of the sky.
They congeal and
become moving crowds
in cities,
thick and sticky
populations.

Thank you, sky,
for all the people!
yells a forlorn
figure, homeless
and friendless
in the mass.


hans ostrom 2015