Reflected Reflections

Lamplight ricochets

off a bit of foil, enters
two eyes, appears in a
brain, in a mind.

Sunlight softly shines
through and on a window,
where two eyes see
themselves in a failnt face.

Here are mirrors and eyes,
illuminated blindness. Skies.
Wet heat in a gleaming greenhouse
rises. A reflecting mind apprises.

hans ostrom 2024

Receiving

Tried receiving, not

broadcasting. Sat next
to a tree, took in
a breeze, leaf rustle,
taps and clicks
of shoes passing,
my lungs & heart
pumping. Walked

in a crowd as No One.
Among bodies, felt
the muscle, bone, fat
flow of fabricked bodies,
dances of passing, jostling,
slipping-bay, stop-starting.

Engines, motors, voices,
glass reflections, smoke,
all of it as it was, just
itself, not a message,
just signals received.

hans ostrom 2024

Aspects of Living in the Moment

I tried to "live in the moment,"

as recommended

& found that moments stuck

together like hard candies

in hot sun. Other moments

seem to pour in and out

of life like red ants out of

a sizzling nest. Some

moments just evaporate--

gone before I could 

even knock on their doors,

let alone live in them. Which

can be okay, as for instance

that moment in the dark

when I stubbed three toes

on an old oak chair. 

hans ostrom 2023

Hatching

This darkness--
too small suddenly.
I hate it and hit it
with me. I shove
my head and shoulders
through, cracking
this thing that became
a cage overnight.

Comes now the shock
of whatever this is I'm
breathing, seeing, smelling.
Comes the shock now
of its form, my form, me.

Staggering on twig
legs and big feet,
I move through cool
air that burns vision.

Huge shapes walk
around & around me,
wide-eyes, loud,
they gab and gab.

Hunger makes me use
my head as a hammer
and peck. Not knowing
I am, I am.



hans ostrom 2019

Lizard and Person

A lizard springs out of always and scurries
perpendicular to level across a hot face
of tan granite. Stops. Stares at a person
who stares back with perception larded
with knowledge, free association,
and mind's always frenzied business.

The lizard focuses, grins thinly, sprints
into a crack between boulders, and settles
into shadow to digest a fly. The person's
mind is beset by why.


hans ostrom 2018

Rational Dreamer

"By one estimate, . . . people dream through half their waking hours."
--The Atlantic, October 2017

The mind is smarter than us. It knows
living's a strain, at best. So it wants
to dream, flushing the toxins of perception
from receptors of reality.  It orders
body to sleep.  Even when

body's awake, half the time mind
goes down an alley or into a clearing,
gossips with the past, or drifts
to the edge of the crowd.

Mind is a professional and will
concentrate if necessary. But
the world is dangerous, and many
people in power are insane
and depraved, so mind likes
to keep its distance. It is perhaps
most rational when it's dreaming.


hans ostrom 2017

Ghost Pavilion

I have been admitted to
the Ghost Pavilion,
which rises from a
plateau beyond fatalism.

There one is invited
to view reproductions
of the groups and squads
and masses of faces

one has passed by,
through, or among
in life. Students at
the Ghost Pavilion

accept that reality
exists but also learn
that anybody's perceptions
of it are little more than

a cache of roughly
recorded glimpses.



hans ostrom 2017

"Images Coalesce," by Hans Ostrom

I have come to believe
(note somber rhetoric)
that when the images
don't coalesce (there
is a chrome fender in
manzanita, a desire in me
to seem clever, billions
of objects and animals,
blue fabric, scalded flesh,
nothing, hydro-electric
dams, nothing, no connection,
and "surrealism" is no excuse,
shut up) we need to
let them be art.

The images coalesce
because to see patterns
has been drilled into us.
Capitalize. The images
coalesce because
our brains evolved,
along with much of what's
on the surface, and our
brains change what's here,
manufacturing patterns.
(Incidentally, who am I?
No, I mean really, who
am I?) The brain is
at home, that is.


hans ostrom 2014

All Are All Alone

All are all alone
in the cave of the cranium.

Data and, via language, guests
may enter. Only the one

lives there though, bent over
a fire, cool-napping or

listening to underground streams
and echoes of screams.




hans ostrom 2013

Alive, I Am Allowed

Alive, I am allowed
to perceive large pieces
of whatever this stuff
is we call the world.

Today (what is today?)
I feel the arrangement
to be such a strange
and temporary contract,
one I never signed
but one I greedily fulfill.

Sunlight comes under
blinds, a jet plane high
sounds like an air-duct's
mumble, and  later I must
go collect some things to eat.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Consciousness, This Space

This customary space, consciousness (as you hear
the hiss of evening traffic): a pliable, warped
sphere with membrane boundaries. Sometimes

the activity called thinking permeates
the membrane. And there you are,
situated in a non-view. 

Not so much detached as unbounded.
You see a gleam for a while without
knowing or naming it; it isn't gleam.

....Chrome....toaster....fender...glass...?
Utterly receptive perception . . .

You settle into out-settledness.

Sounds. Blurs.  What is there
enwraps you loosely like
the lightest fabric. There's

the merest hint of, well,
forever (as you hear the
hiss . . .)


Hans Ostrom, 2012