Yelling at the Opera

I think I know exactly
what happened to you.
Over many a conforming
year, you learned not to make
too much of your feelings.
CUT TO: an invitation to
the opera, where every syllable
was bellowed or shrieked,
the singers stuffed with
emotion like gowned
sausages. You felt

buffeted by melodrama,
and you thirsted for a wry
Delta blues song, oblique
and rude. Also brief. To be
trapped at the opera is no
hardship, so you would not
complain. Still it made you
want to yell. So you did,
alarming those assembled
around the intermission bar.
Someone sent for the car.


hans ostrom 2019

Opera Operative

An operative at an opera
ogles the audience,
lets singing sluice her
professional suspicion.

The operative serves
no cause, only fulfills
assignments, and laughs
at the news.

The opera is a tragedy
apparently--like civilization,
thinks the operative, who
has seen what's needed

to be seen, so that the mission
may now blossom like an aria.



hans ostrom 2018

Five-Syllable Aria

For him, opera is a world
where people converse
in shrieks, shouts, cries, and
wails. (Too much like his family.)

Even an operatic comedy
sounds like catastrophe to him.

Right away, the first notes,
opera is too much for him.
Instantly it exhausts him.
Defeated, he sleeps until

a sweet whisper in his ear
sings, "It's over. Let's go."
The five-syllable aria
transports his would.


hans ostrom 2018