For One Night Only

I dreamed books,

the pulp and paper kind,

floated overhead like circling

birds. They

opened and words

tumbled out, came down

like dandelion seeds.

I grabbed what words

I could and put them

in a pail. At home

I dumped them

onto a table,

arranged them

into lists and phrases,

sentences, paragraphs . . . .

I cooked and ate, washed up,

spoke prayers into empty

silence, got in bead, read a book,

and fell asleep knowing I'd never

have the book-dream again. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

The Dreaming Mind Versus You

A squat building, five floors

tops, with a flat roof. This structure

features in recent dreams. One dream:

you live on the roof in a truck with a camper.

Another: You watch commuters

in cars compete to use an exterior

off-ramp to get off the roof.

They rage and roar as you

stand in the maelstrom. In another,

you perch alone on the roof

and stare at big leafy trees

and know you're stranded. Beyond

the trees a campus may lie--

you can't know.

The dreaming mind is mulish. It

conjures what it will and does not

serve you. You serve it. Sleeping,

you can't leave the theater 

or even close your interior eyes.

Which is only fair, as your ridiculous will

pushes your mind all day and into

night, often not wisely. On that

flat roof of a nondescript, unglamorous

building, you feel a useless,

barren loneliness. Get used to it. 

Says the dreaming mind. 

Hans Ostrom 2024

Head-Shrinks and I

I went to a Freudian. She didn't

say anything, just took reams of notes.

I wanted to read them: No. Once

I said the word "emblematic,"

and she rolled her eyes. I quit

after the second session. Freudian

time-waster. 

A psychologist had me 

write charts of when I catastrophize,

over-react. They made for a good

map of how nutty I was,

but didn't crack the nut. 

I liked her a lot. 

Then a psychiatrist, polymath,

know-it-all. I listened a lot,

which suited my diffidence. 

I want to be told how to fix

things, not blab and gab

and gas-bag. He prescribed

meds that work. Finally! 

I just don't have the time

or energy to stay crazy,

you know? Too much of

a commitment. 

I noticed that if a session

ran out of gas (because I

didn't talk), a couple of shrinks

would say, "Want to talk about

dreams?" Inside joke among

shrinks, I think. Doubly funny,

as after I sleep through 

a great night of dreaming,

wild surrealistic rides,

I feel as sane as hell. 

hans ostrom 2022

My Father Wading Toward Me

My father was from that generation of men

who always wore a hat outside.

After he died, I dreamt repeatedly
that he was wading up a small river
toward me, looking to me for help.

We didn't speak. I feared I was
failing him. He wasn't wearing a hat.

Where was his hat?

hans ostrom 2022

forgotten dream

you woke up

and the dream

floated out of
mind like pollen
patterns on a
spring stream

hans ostrom 2021

Cicadas and Spider

A cicadian chorus sings
in my circadian sleep. In a dream
I weep and laugh and weep
a little more. I knock on a door.

Who opens it is a spider playing
four violins. "Why, come in,"
says the spider. "You're just in time."
"For what?" I ask.

"For to be yourself, to tap a drum,
to have some have some have
some fun." That's what's left
us in the the end: a chance
at fun, and then . . . .


hans ostrom 2020

Seeds in My Bed

Dark brown seeds
in my bed. From bread.
(Bed is a place for sleep,
books, and sex. Beyond
these three, life does have
a few other highlights.)

The seeds look like tiniest
canoes. I'm going to sleep
beside them because I
am not moved to tidy up.

I won't have the recurring
dream of lying flat in a canoe
and floating down a river,
night, many others floating
in their canoes beside me.

The river rivers me
toward a sunny place where
people seem okay and help
me ashore. Because the

brown seeds made me want
to dream that dream,
the law of dreams will not
let me dream it. Goodnight.


hans ostrom 2019

Threshold

Maybe there will be rabbits
in my dreams tonight. Not bunnies--
jackrabbits, wild hares. Maybe
I'll see a vast brown plain filled
with gray smokestacks
overseen by stained skies.

Or maybe centipedes
by the thousands will pour
out of the mouth of the President
of the United States. He'll
speak in centipedes, which
will invade the ears of his
audience. And still a lot
of people won't be horrified.
In fact will be ecstatic.


hans ostrom 2019

More Lies

Some more lies, then:
today in a fabricated storm,
clothes fell from the sky.
The tiniest of birds flew
through my eye into my
brain, which dreams of
the bird every night now
in jail: I am. I have been
arrested for false imaginings.
I use state-invoiced spoons
to play the bars like a xylophone
hoping someone will answer.


hans ostrom 2018

Dream Snow Leopard

I haven't seen
the snow leopard
in dreams. I know
it's there behind
mind's mist or
inside subconscious
caves. The psychic

snow leopard
is meant to be
absently present.
It represents something,
I can't know what,
perhaps just itself.

It is a messenger
sent from forever
and never quite
arrives. Its eyes
follow me now,
is my surmise.


hans ostrom 2018

Bartok and Stars

"The ways of life are infinite and mysterious."  --Georgio Scerbanenco, Traitors to All, translated by Howard Curtis


In spite of my playing, the piano
produced a simple minuet by Bartok,
which made me think of walking
cautiously across a frozen pond.

An empty coffee cup was sitting
on the bookshelf.  Cool ceramic.
Out there, and "up," night,
are stars, which we think of

as a permanent installation,
not a chaotic map of explosions
or freckles on an infinite face.
I dream recurrently about new

stars, close and bright,
flowing past in a sky-parade
as I look up from a meadow
in mountains and watch,

thrilled and terrified. I almost
forget to breathe. Someone I can't see
says, "Words are stars. I've
told you that before."


hans ostrom 2017

Fowl Dreams

If I were a bird,
I'd ride on air and often
cock my head for different
angles. At night I'd close
my eyes from the bottom,
snooze on a roost,
and rest my beak.

Anything with a brain
dreams. Oh, imagine--
you can try: what
kind of dreams do
birds dream, and why?

Maybe they dream
of staying still and having
food come to them.
Maybe they dream
of the time when they
were dinosaurs.



hans ostrom 2017

"Canal Dream," by Hans Ostrom

Oh, lovely nightmare
of the canal and futile,
panicked paddling, I do
love to wake from you
with you. A film

of absurd residue
coats my grogged
consciousness. You
depart like a cool
lover. I get up and

get into a day,
which joins other
days I haven't understood.
Dearest canal-nightmare,

you're so easy
by contrast to these
lived days. I enjoy
working with you.


hans ostrom 2014

"Dreams," by Langston Hughes

In Dark Vegetation

In dark vegetation I couldn’t see

my body or hear thoughts.  Fevers

rotted memory.  Maggots flourished,

established a parliament.

I hung in delirium, a sack

of neural bits and pieces.  Birds in

endless green hooted and screamed.

I was transported to a desert that

cooked off confusion, revealing

basic elements of who apparently

I’d been.  My body became obvious

once more, eating dry food and

drinking wet water. I worked

in the factory of noon—my job to attach

objects to their shadows.  Memories

returned, walking like scattered

soldiers returning across sand,

descending from red rim-rock,

shedding uniforms, looking for

lovers and work. 

Hans Ostrom, 2012

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

Crossing the Creek

Unfortunately, one's dreams are about as interesting to other people as tales of one's socks. Or maybe "fortunately" is more apt. If we were all fascinated by one another's dreams, we might not get much work done.

Anyway, I'll keep this short: After my father died in '97, I kept dreaming that he was in the middle of a creek, wading upstream, toward me, or at least a P.O.V. that represented me. He and the creek always looked the same. He wasn't in distress, but he was laboring, and of course there's almost no occasion for anyone to wade directly upstream into the force of the water. Dreams are fiction. He had jeans and the usual workshirt on--but not the hat he always wore outdoors. (His was a hat, not a cap, generation.) In some versions of the short dream, he'd ask, calmly for assistance. In some he'd say someting like "It's okay. You go ahead." It some he said nothing. I rather liked the subtly of the dream. Significant (to me; boring to others) but subtle.

Almost simultaneously, I was musing casually about that dream and also wanting to engage in some poetic aerobics and write a poem in formal verse, so I decided to do both at once. Of course, sacred texts, vast crowds of poets, and so on, have been there before me with the basic "crossing" image, including Tennyson with "Crossing the Bar," so I viewed the poem as an exercise, but not necessarily as one in orginiality.

Crossing the Creek

They wait for me across the creek.
They look like shadows from this side.
One day I'll wade across to seek
The insubstantial. Petrified

With cold and fear, I'll stand, midstream,
And feel what's real: round, slippery stones,
The force of water in a seam
Of that ravine. My skin and bones

Will read the creek a final time,
Will feel its push and temperature.
I'll stand unsteadily, a mime
Without an audience and most unsure

About the balance of the act.
But then I'll move, make it across.
The creek will be the final fact--
Its gravel, boulders, trout, and moss.

The far side shall be near. I'll fall
Into the life of death. Will they assist,
Who've gone before, and bear the pall
When I fade into mottled mist?

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Dreams, the Old-Fashioned Kind

If dreams, the kind that come with sleep, were a stock, we would say that they probably peaked in the early post-Freudian era and that then the bottom fell out of them. Nobody can say for sure what they're for, and Freud's & Jung's "interpretations" were simply interesting guesses that told us more about Freud and Jung than about dreams. There's simply no evidence that a book you or I "see" in our dreams means what Sigmund, Carl, you, I, or anybody else says it means. If anything, there has to be a statistically better chance that you know what the book means in your book-dream than anyone else, since you, at least, are the resident historian of your life.

As far as I can tell, almost everyone seems to agree that one's own dreams can be quite interesting (or not) but that the moment you tell your dream to someone else or someone tells his or her dream to you, the listener stops listening because other people's dreams are boring. Moreover, psychologists and psychiatrists don't seem to want to hear about dreams anymore. In fact, I suspect there's an inside joke in that profession whereby if you run out of things to ask the client, ask him or her about his/her dreams, right before minute 49 turns into minute 50. "Oh, I'd love to hear more about that dream, but we're out of time!"

The only "dreams" you hear about anymore are the aspiration kind--you know, all about "realizing your dreams," which is basically the same as achieving goals. Probably dreams (the sleep kind) fulfill some kind of biochemical, neurological function, flushing the wiring after a long day or helping the brain deal with stress physiologically. I assume the biochemists are working assiduously on that, especially if the pharmacological corporations think they can sell pills based on the research eventually. Dream-enhancers.

Dreams may also tell you what you may already know, namely that experience X had a powerful impact on you. For example, I still have anxiety-dreams about not passing some imaginary class in graduate school and not earning my Ph.D., which I earned in 1982, for heaven's sake, but I've just told you about a dream, and we know that no dreams but your dreams are interesting to you, so I'll stop. A poem, then:

Dream On

A small council
of evolutionary matter
in a county of the brain
knows the real purpose
of dreams, a purpose
wholly unrelated to what
we imagine dreams do
for, to, with us. So I
dutifully dream, as if
it were a chore that came
with sleeping (it is), as if
I were a member of that small,
secret provincial council,
which meets in a lodge
somewhere off of Highway Zero,
East of West, as if I had
a choice in the matter of
dreams, the dreams of
matter.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom