Use Your Imagination

Your imagination uses you

when you use your imagination.
It's like walking a burly, leash-defying
dog. Like lecturing a cat
about excess leisure time.

Your imagination goes
where it will and then slobbers
on you. It will yawn, lick itself,
curl up, and sleep where you sleep--
and hiss if you try to move it.

hans ostrom 2024

Palms and Paws

He notes that lines cross his hands'

palms like broken hieroglyphs,
dried up canals, or lost roads
in a desert. Creases and carvings.
Clues of use. Scars. Upholstery
stiched after the fact. Sometimes,

he thinks, it's nice to hold a cat's
or dog's paw--those plump pads,
cushioning for leaps, lopes,
and sprints. Something sacred--
isn't there?--about palms and paws,
blooms on the stems of evolution,

epidermal note-paper, tiny
meadows of toil and calm.

hans ostrom 2024

Schrödinger's Dog

Schrödinger's dog sniffs
the outside of the box.
That hound can smell
past quantum nonsense.
It knows exactly
what's inside. And hair
at the top of it shoulders
bristles, electric. 


hans ostrom 2020

Music of Our Days

Behind the high green
muscular hedge (laurel),
a tall black Doberman
holds his howl mournfully.

He hears the red sound
of sirens. It hurts and disturbs
him. Self-soothing, he howls
again but at the end

of this extended note, he
moves the moan up
a half-note. The sound
is unexpected, artistic.

He is called Caesar, this
tall sad dog. Praise him.


hans ostrom 2018

Return to Uncleton

Return to Uncleton

His uncle had named the town Uncleton,

served as mayor for fifty years.

Except to tidy up the dog’s grave,

he goes back only for the annual

Rust Festival. He owns snapshots

of the Rust Queens and their Oxidized Courts

from the last twenty years. The lake looks

different from before and smells.

His trousers slip off his buttocks,

and teenagers laugh, their goddamned

music thumping out of cars. He’s inherited

just a pinch of his uncle’s rage

but no property. The sun off the lake

makes him scowl. Where exactly is

the dog’s grave? He remembers how,

just a pup, the little bastard nipped him.

Uncleton, O Uncleton, I hate the way you

draw me back like english on a cue ball.

Copyright 2007/2017

Pavlovian Symphony

In the Pavlovian Symphony in E minor,
cello, piano, tuba, clarinet, and howls
from the conductor evoke many dogs
barking.

Then the conductor takes the baton
in his teeth and runs with it
among audience members,
who pet him. Before

the third movement begins,
he is leashed by the concert-
master and led back
to his marked spot.

Implicitly, the Pavlovian
Symphony urges listeners
to respond to their conditioning,
scratch themselves, chafe
against their finery,
and slobber tastefully.

Bravo, brava, bravissimo,
pavlovissimo!

hans ostrom 2015

"Don't Need It"

I'm in a meadow,
moving my hands
as if to design
and build a cabin
there. It is fun.
Good exercise.

I stop and breathe
and leave the meadow
because I do not
have to live there
and the meadow
doesn't need a cabin.

To dogs a meadow
is a gift of data.
To dogs warm sunshine
is like a god.


hans ostrom 2015

"Worry Wins"

I have worried about the sky,
which doesn't exist.
I've worried about rain,
which is none of my business.

I was trained to worry,
to give a shit,
as the American colloquialism goes.

Not that giving a shit
ever made me effective
at righting wrongs or lefting
righties or injecting decency
into the smug corpse called power.

Now I'm exhausted. Worry
has done won. I care in theory.
In practice I don't give a shit.
Thus I have energy to watch
the twitter-feed, and that's
about it.

It isn't relaxation. Nor
is it fatalism, for I don't
have the juice even to philosophize,
either. That's some sad shit.
Even despair is asking
too much from me. It takes
effort to give up hope.

I'm an old dog lying on a porch
in summer. I can smell
developing events, and my
neck-hairs might rise. But
I can't-won't get up
when that raccoon waddles
past the place, chirping.

Well, maybe tomorrow. Yeah,
maybe tomorrow I'll write a
letter to the editor. And send
it? Wow. Join a march? Lend my
body to a protest, scrape
together some solidarity?
Tell a racist to fuck off!
Today I can't seem to get off
my ass. The situation is
troubling. I'm worried.


hans ostrom 2015

"The Dog Ate the Eucharist," by Hans Ostrom

Bob reported that a dog
had gotten into the parish kitchen
and eaten the eucharist-bread
that some members of the parish
had baked, special.

The incident caused some alarm
and may have raised theological questions.

One imagines Jesus
liked dogs, which
do right by poor folks,
for instance.

Of course, Bob wanted
to know whose dog it was.


hans ostrom 2014

"dog," by Charles Bukowski

Are Reviews Necessary?

I don't know: are reviews necessary?
I mean, of books and movies, and so on? I've written some.
Quite a few. I don't the genre. I was almost
always kind, beyond fair. But the
question is more general (who
cares about me?) Many

reviewers seem like little brave,
yapping dogs. They bark
at the stone-mason walking by
as they imagine they're guarding
the huge stone mansion behind
them (Art). They imagine the mansion.

Others are like dogs
that indiscriminately sniff
the boots of anybody
walking by. Everything
excites them. That's not so bad.

A lot of reviews and reviewers
are pleasant to read. Some
reviews save time--you get
the idea of a history book,
or one on science. That's
a service. Otherwise, I'm

just not sure: are
reviews necessary?



hans ostrom 2013

Dog Outside a Bar

*
*
*
*


Dog Outside a Bar


Memory is loyalty
to something not there.
I sit outside the past
like a dog outside

a bar, and what
I'm waiting for went
out the back door
hours ago. I furrow

my brow and alert
my ears and eyes.
And I remember.
The future wants

to take me for a
walk. It hooks
a leash to my collar.
And here we go.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Taxes Make Cats Sick

As everyone except those who don't pay taxes knows, it's tax-season in the U.S. By "those who don't pay taxes," I mean those wily global capitalists. If you can run a company into the dirt, threaten nations' economies, AND get a bonus for doing all that great work, there's no way you're going to mess with anything as trivial as taxes.

Before I get to taxes and cats, I should mention that hotel-owner Leona Helmsley famously said, "Taxes? We don't pay taxes. Taxes are for the little people." Unfortunately, the government convicted her of tax-evasion, and she had to go to prison. There wasn't an immense amount to like about Leona. She was overbearing, and, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, she treated her employees terribly, humiliating them instead of interacting with them as professional employees.

Nonetheless, I had some sympathy left over for her after she got out of prison, lived as a recluse, died, and left all her money to a dog. Leaving it to a worthy non-profit would have been better, but leaving it to the dog showed just how isolated and probably almost mad she was. Apparently the dog doesn't need that much to live on (it is still alive), so I think some of the money does go to charity. "Can't buy me love . . ." does seem to apply in this case.

Anyway, we're getting ready to have our taxes "done"--quite an expression. The process requires as much work as if we figured out the taxes ourselves. The only difference is that, by having a professional fill out the forms, they're filled out correctly. That's a substantial difference.

We begin the process by scattering forms and such on the floor. We like to call this stage of the process "chaos."

The cat threw up on one of the papers. We're working on several hypotheses to explain this occurrence. 1) The cat objects to income tax. Cat's do operate in the world as if they're entitled to everything, after all. 2) The cat found an arithmetical error in the form, or it read the form and believed we'd paid too much for something--or that we should have spent the money on something cat-related. 3) The paper in question had been handled by a dog working as a cashier. 4) The cat had a hairball stuck. Most of the evidence supports 1, 2, and 3, but we haven't ruled out #4 entirely.

The upshot is that one of the supporting documents we're sending to our accountant will have a stain on it.

After we scatter the forms and other records, we fill out a booklet our accountant has given us. It's loaded with questions. Many of them seem strange to me, so strange they induced--as opposed to inspired--a poem of sorts.


Tax-Form Questions

Did you sell a medieval castle last year? If so, then go
to line 25C and wait.

Did an imaginary friend live with you more than
50% of the time last year? Did the friend pay
imaginary rent?

Did a marauding band of unfettered global
capitalists steal your retirement-fund? If so,
join the crowd, and weep in the streets.

Has anyone ever actually asked you what you'd
like your taxes to support? We thought not.

Add the total on line 36A to the total on line
1,401, 263C and divide by the total on line
6F. Then multiply by eleven. Light incense and
chant. Count on your fingers. You are ready.
Welcome to Taxland, Pilgrim.


Copyright 2009 by Hans Ostrom

Seen and Overheard

Seen and Overheard


A man walked his dog near
fir trees and spoke into a mobile
phone. He said, "How's your puppy?"
Then louder, "How's your puppy?"
Louder: "How's . . . your . . .pup-py?!"
Finally he said, "HOW'S YOUR DOG?"


This question worked. He listened
to the answer. His dog urinated on
a fir tree, lifted its nose, sampled
air. "My dog is good, too," the man
said into the phone. Then he said,
"It has been great talking to you."
*
*
Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Nosing Around

This morning I was positing the following: assuming human civilizations remain intact and continue to advance technologically, will it be possible, relatively soon, for humans to experience firsthand (firstpaw) how dogs and cats--for example--see, hear, and especially smell the world? Might the technicians be able to hook us up to a dog-simulation program and trick our brains and noses into detecting odors as a dog does? I assume the experience would be overwhelming; it might be too much for the brain to handle. In the case of cats, smelling and tasting apparently overlap in an official capacity. Sometimes you'll catch a cat smelling something and then opening its mouth as if to breathe in the odor. Apparently there's something called "the Jacobson organ" in the mouth, and it "tastes" odors. Seeing cats do this is amusing because they look like they are about to chuckle, but no sound comes out. I reckon the difference between tasting and smelling is pretty arbitary anyway, as we need our noses in order to taste things "properly," and it's all about molecules hitting a sensor-system, isn't it?

This has all been by way of introducing a poem about the nose:

Nose

Like a cliff dwelling, it hangs
from the sheer visage. Long ago,

Coyote caught a whiff of Moon,
has been yipping, nose to sky, ever since.

Long ago, our kind caught
spore of something dangerous

and sweet in woods, traded
innocence for perplexity, straight up,

has been on the move ever since, pulled
along by scent of something just ahead and

wanted. Come on, catch up, exhorts
Nose, drive that thing to tree. What

it is, why you want it: these
can wait. Smell it? Get it.