The Six-Drawer Bureau

In a room of this rented,

creaky, tired house, a thick
brown six-drawer bureau
stoutly stares at me. Although
made mostly of empty space
(modern physics claims), it

convinces me of its reality.
One drawer contains my socks
and T-shirts: thus have I put
my faith in illusion. Reality

takes me seriously: a bus
will crush if I get in its way.
The weather's cold today.

I retreated to this room to rest,
to read, to think, to scribble.
I think I'm probably a real
illusion to myself. I think I'll nap.

hans ostrom 2025

Fashion Sonnet

The fashions come and go,

drifting in like sparkling snow.
Buttons, zips, and cloths,
woolens for the moths.

Silly cuts and dyes,
laces through the eyes.
New York, Par-ee, Milan--
the models want to yawn.

The cotton comes from soil,
the sweatshops do the toil.
The famous want our gaze--
surplus value is what pays:

after capital infusion.
Fashion: just an illusion.

hans ostrom 2025

Our Grandest Illusion

Even if what we know is incorrect,

and most of it is, 

how could it not be, 

it's knowledge: it's in there,

camped in memory, sending

smoke signals from box canyons,

tramping around neuron trails. 

The grandest illusion of all,

knowledge, freeze-dried 

in old books, hoarded like grain

and gunpowder in electronic

forts, marbled into our speech

and memories, alive in lore,

legend, lies, logos, ethos,

eros, and pathos. Still,

add it all up, and it's just 

a single torch held up

against abysmal black

darkness in a forest

no one's yet named on

one of a trillion planets. 

The one and the zero 

in binary strings: we know

everything, we know nothing,

a lot, a little bit, maybe, hard

to say, wait and see. You know?

hans ostrom 2021

So It Goes

The scene's a blue barge
on a green river. Twilight.
Many lights on land: a
society, a world. The illusion

of a fixed place moves
away from me like a barge.
I am a point of view, a wry
observer on a river dock.

Then I am of the darkness
falling. Then I'm the
darkness itself, then
nothing, & I am not.


hans ostrom 2018

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

Happeningness

The happeningness
of reality never pauses,
"is" being a fiction,
a slice of approximation
imagined to be there
between "was" and "will be."
No wonder wonder
sometimes tires me.


hans ostrom 2013