Unfulfillment

unfulfillment

unfulfilament

unspool filament

unfunfillment

one full fill meant

one full fool mentor

fill fool emolument 

feel fray fragment

moonfullfilment

dune full film tent

soon full tilt sent

hollow, hollow, somewhat

almost always hollow,

do not wallow

in unfulfillment,

help is hopefully on the way

hope is helpfully on the way

hans ostrom 2019

My Song for You

Days and leeks
and mouths and years.
Ways and beams
and jaws and fears.

Wishes and misses,
fiends and trees.
Reins and stones
and cogs and bees.

This song is for you.
It's not going very well.
It's absent a message,
as you can tell.

Anyway: skunks,
aluminum, flowers.
Sadness and sneezing,
minnows and hours.


hans ostrom 2019

I Thought Broth

I'm trying to understand
why I'm writing about broth.
Was it your idea?

I thought broth, and then--
here I am, wrangling
words about it.

Broth is good, right?
It's basic and pays
due respect to water.

The word itself, Broth--
excellent. Could even
represent a Nordic figure--

Broth, son of Erik the
Ambivalent. You know,
I think I'll leave it there,

bring this broth boat
back to port beside a warm
and salty sea.


hans ostrom 2018

Alps

odd word, alps--
awed by these massifs we
use a word that is a gulp


hans ostrom 2018

So Somewhere Sally

So somewhere Sally
got lost on vacation.

She was working too
hard at relaxing.

She heard a cat
mew-owing.

The sound brought
her back to here,

where she were, in
the blur of being somewhere.


hans ostrom 2018

The Letter L Gathers Intelligence

Xylophone, chlorophyll--
tones of green tunes.
Isopropyl, pteradactyl,
prophylactic: in each
of such words, the letter

L functions as a secret
agent. Yes, we found polygamous
platypus written on plain
papyrus but alas the key

to the code evaporated
long long ago.




hans ostrom 2018

Pope Pourri

pontiff, pope, papa.
paparazzi photograffiti vatican
man. Point If, on the coast of doubt,
where lives holy fatherson's

ghost. what toppings does
the top-of-the-Church
like on his pope-pizza?
geez, a woman really

ought to be pope soon,
breaking the arthritic
seal on a new era
that can breathe, a boon.

and let priests have
consensual sex if they
want to and even the pontiff too
if he-she has such a friend, or two.

time to re-sort-out which credos
are credibly from an above
and which are human edicts from
let's face it obsolete cultures.


hans ostrom 2018

sierra nevada

sierra nevada see
air over nevada
serrated novena
snow sloughed redoubt

quartz veins in diorite
and granite, vanity
goes viral for gold
blast rock haul ore

or give up. for it is
written it shall be
hidden, gold generally
hides in specific gravity

gravely. washo and maidu
watched euro-waves crash
flash in the pans & rockers
sheer face of bluffs onlooked


hans ostrom 2018

culinary difficulty

culinary difficulty
your goose is cooked
you're all shook up
a chafed chef

the sou chef
vouchsafed for you,
said you can dish it out
after you bake it

par course par boil char
boil loyal to butter
salt and cream, utter
and scream, slow-

roast a daydream
of opening your own
someday restaurant
restore rant, saucy savant


hans ostrom 2018

And the Frogs Croaked "Affidavit"

I think an affidavit should be something
different from a legal statement. An affidavit
should be a mythical bird or a frenetic folk dance.
Or perhaps a ritual response in a liturgy.
(Affidavit, affidavit, said the assembled, gravely.)

I was listening to some frogs last night, The
dear frogs, moist creatures enamored of moonlight.
They just kept croaking affidavit, loud and crisp,
with syncopation borrowed from another aural plane.
The amphibious chant mesmerized me. Down

the years it has done that, for I have listened to frogs
my whole life, and I will sign a statement to that effect.


hans ostrom 2018

Facts and Oxygen

We need a system.
We need a Boris or a Jean.
We don't need a judge,
but we do need a day with a
stream in it.
We need facts like we need
oxygen: no substitutes.


hans ostrom 2018

Remember, You Know?

To know, remember.
Remember to know.
December and snow:
Remember? September,

remember, is a different
month, and November's
hardly a June. So
long ago. So long, Ago!

Words are diplomats
They mean to know.
All are members
of the Memory Chateau.



hans ostrom 2017

Creature Brains

Creature brains feature
lanes nature grooved
as species moved into
spaces over time with
their accidental
                adaptations.




Hans Ostrom 2017

Jambing Jam Jive

Jam of the berries, plums,
and sums of water, sweetness,
concoction. Jamb of a door,

a line, or a vine propelling
itself gradually toward
a window sill: vegetative

will. Jamb of the saying
when English meets French,
leaving you singing

the time-and-place blues
on a bench. Jam of aggression,
reckless and crude, forcing

parts to fit into
what's falsely trued.


hans ostrom 2017

Nymphs

Well, that's a gnarled word. Six consonants
invite tongue, teeth, larynx, lips, and roof
of mouth to a pronunciation party. Awkward!

Now, about those wood nymphs. I've invested
much time-capital in the woods, which
are always a going concern. I earned
a nymph-sighting. You'd think so, anyway.
But, no.  Just squirrels, rattlesnakes, deer . . . .

And then: nymphomaniac. That got flung
around last century. It seemed to have
expressed either male fantasies of a pulp-
fiction kind or pseudo-scientific, puritanical
indictments of women who had sex, if
they did, but that was their business,
so what the hell?  One ministry

of fishing flies goes by the nymph name,
meant to mimic gnats, mosquitoes, and other
tiny hatchers. You unhook the nymph
from the caught trout, and before you release
the fish back into flow, you think you know
what that frowning face suggests:
Is this sport-fishing really necessary?

That's the problem with mythology. Sooner
or later, it disappoints everybody, among others.


hans ostrom 2017

The Ballad of Mr. Who

A certain Mr. Who ordered
his where whated--why,
he wouldn't say.

He hired reliable whaters
trained in necessary hows,
which earned them pay.

When all the hows were done,
sad Mr. Who wished he'd kept
the whaters at bay.

Indeed he missed his otherwhere,
which his impatience had reduced
to dust of clay.

Old Who brooded about what-now.
He grew consumed with whys that led
his mind astray.

It will straggle back sometime,
somehow. Meanwhile now, Mr. Who,
he tries to pray.


hans ostrom 2017

You Know?

We know we know
enough to know
we'll never know
enough to say
for sure we're sure
we know enough.


hans ostrom 2017

Dialectic

Mother, gather. Father,
proffer. Mother, other.
Father, farther. Mother,
smoother. Father, rather.

Mother, feather. Father,
weather. Mother, mystery.
Father, factory. Mother,

whisper woe, oh
no. Father falter slow.
Father go, gone.
Ma, Pa, dead,

dust, as they
must, as we
must, just so
very soon. And

the moon here
from the first,
once of Earth,
round and round.


hans ostrom

Twisted Words

You're twisting my words. Thank you--
it feels good. You spirally wrought
ragamuffin into finfumagar: well done.
It had contortion coming.

And look what you did to
chirioscuro.  It is unrecognizable.
Obviously, you are not new
to wrenching words.

If you don't mind, I'd
like to keep mademoiselle
as is, for as is it's perfect:
a sound sculpture.


hans ostrom 2017

Prism Time

Having been convicted
by light, I was sentenced
to prism. A three-year
stretch in spectral stir,
just trying to survive
in fractured colors
and rainbowed lock-up.
It made me a cold,
hard, hallucinatory man.
Prism changes you.



hans ostrom 2017