Counter-Invictus

 a poem in conversation with William Ernest Henley's "Invictus"

Out of the day that covers me,
Gray as the gray of dull wool,
I think what gods may hang around
To remind me I'm a fool.

When things have gone quite wrong,
I've acted well or badly or okay,
Up to the challenge sometimes, sometimes
Not: One can't predict which way.

Beyond this sphere of our mortality,
Lies who knows what for sure?
Hell, yes, I am afraid to die,
To go forever from Is to Were.

To say you are the Captain of
Your fate is bluster or delusion
For accidents happen all the time.
And Captains sail into confusion.

If there is such a thing as Fate,
Then It is the big fleet's Admiral,
And we, alas, at best passengers.
So how much can we control?

hans ostrom 2022/2025

Tears Like Clean Rain

She cries, not easily, but as needed--

hard, and fast. Her tears flow like clean rain.
Fear, anxiety, grief, affection, gratitude, empathy--
all get cut loose into sobs. Ex-pressed. Such
a show of strength! Me, I learned

to pin down big emotions with clamps.
To control them--as if! To get quickly
to the duty of endurance. To stand as a rock
in a deluge. Such a show of isolation!
When tears do come they leak out
as if from some ancient, buried drought.

hans ostrom 2022

"Judged"

To be seen
was to be judged.
To be heard
was to be judged.
To be silent
was to be judged--

judged for seeming
to withdraw from judging.
Thus silence seemed preferable.

To try to perform any task
was to be judged.
To prefer not to try
was to be judged and
to be forced
to try, then judged.

To conform was to be judged.
Not to conform, the same.

Every so often in this climate
thick with judgment, one
of the judges might throw
some praise your way, grudgingly,
as if it were a bone to a dog.

To read was to be judged but not
effectively, for they knew not what
exactly to judge you for, quite.

Thus reading became a pleasurable,
soft fortress. To write

was to have the written judged.
Worth the risk.

Just to be and to try to fill out
your personhood was to be judged.

They taught you how to judge
yourself: oppression, swallowed
and digested.

The energy they spent on judging
and you spent reacting to and evading
judgment: incalcuable; to be judged
a misappropriation.


hans ostrom 2015