An Opening

Gamblers and philosophers--Pascal was both--
need a system. Poets with a system wake up
one morning or night and the system is lying
next to them like a suit of armor made entirely
of mollusks. Unsatisfactory. Poets need openings,
not systems. There is life and there is language
and there are openings between the two and poets
look for them. Here's an opening: go through.


hans ostrom 2019

"The Pascaline"

Have you seen the Pascaline?
Nor have I. It must have been fine.
It was a calculator from
the 17th century, built
by the legendary Blaise Pascal,
who even with a friend (Fermat)
also certainly found a math
to figure the odds of a roll
of the die. Later,

he invented Pascal's Wager,
a thought-gamble in which
you must choose to bet (get
this) on whether God exists.
Is the smart money
on yea or nay?

Pascal's Pensées persist.

Black dots on white cubes
tumble in my untidy mind.
I really hate Las Vegas,
the true ghastly capital
of the USA, and I really
would like to say I've
seen a Pascaline. But I can't
say that I have.


hans ostrom 2015