"Open Your Soul to the Stars, " by Roger Illsley (music, guitar, vocals) and Hans Ostrom (piano)

Open Your Soul to the Stars

 this one is a song lyric & my friend R.I. is working on the music--I hope!

Verses
In the space between the beats
of music, time, and heart,
lives a mystifying silence –
source of life, muse of art.

In the space between the stars
float expansive lakes of time.
In the dreams encasing dreams
stairways rise in mists of mind.

Chorus

Open your soul to the stars
dancing with creation.
Floating in that space,
ride on elation.

Open your soul to the stars—
imagination.
Sense the source of love
And adoration.

Verses

In your time within all time
and the life that moments make,
you will find your destiny
in leaps of faith you take.

In emptiness there is a cup
That holds infinity.
Time and beats and rhythm
pour from divinity.

repeat Chorus

Bridge:

Our time’s a space to explore.
Love from the universe is ours.
Find what your time here’s for.
Open your soul
Yeah, open your soul
to the stars.

repeat Chorus

hans ostrom

copyright 2024

My Soul's Been Working Out

My soul's been working out,

Lifting nightmares with its snout,
Swimming laps in honeyed air.
Tickling felines on a dare,
Weeping hard at news of war,
Grieving deeply to its core.

It lifts the weights of darkest doom
Jabs and punches with gray gloom.
Hikes great peaks of women's beauty,
Hauls me, tugs me to good duty.

Zen-poses til it aches,
Bellows at my fakes.
Sprints through beatitudes,
Ju-Jitzus my bad attitudes.
Wrestles with me to discern,
Spins and skates to make me learn.

Exhausted, it plops down,
Shoots me a soulful frown.

hans ostrom 2022

"Grand Is the Seen," by Walt Whitman

 Reading/video of a short poem by Walt Whitman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baIKdHPVowg

Over: A Song

Over the bones,
monuments stand.
Over the stones,
dirt, grit, and sand.

Over the stream,
one heron flies.
Over our heads:
banal gray skies.

Now lightning,
now thunder,
now rain.

Umbrellas
will bloom
in the lane.

Over the years
the town's grown sad.
Over the good
runs all the bad.

Over my soul,
crows and owls fly.
Over my days
looms the great Why.

Now silence,
Now whispers,
Now crying,

As always
we're selling,
we're buying.



hans ostrom 2019

Of Them and Of Hiram

While the others
majored in pre-law,
Hiram majored in post-law.

While they practiced
their interviewing skills,
he fell in love with women--

in particular and as a
concept. While the others
began good careers,

Hiram drove on dirt roads,
found some employment,
and wrote odd poetry.

While they took over a
political Party and insisted
on hating Black people,

Hiram read Black authors,
listened to blues, soul,
and funk, and was politically

powerless. They sold their
souls. He rented his out, but
never for very long.

They dined on the entrails
of the poor. He grew
his own vegetables.




hans ostrom 2013

The Number of Likes in the New Era

(found language)


i want to puke bc 
my friends'  lives now revolve 
around the number of likes their pictures get on facebook
 and instagram and there are only a handful left who still have souls
 so who wants to be my friend


hans ostrom 2012