"I Thought It Was Tangiers I Wanted," by Langston Hughes

Letter from Samuel Johnson to Mrs. James Boswell, 1777

"Sexual Orientation," by Hans Ostrom

"Mistakes," by Hans Ostrom

"Four A.M.," performed by Joe B. Vaughan, Jr.

"love is more thicker than forget"

"Alicante," by Jacques Prevert

Time Squall

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Time Squall

A cloud of time came over
and rained minutes. I
watched them come down,
generate rivulets, create
puddles. Wonderful to see.
I went out into it
and stood beside an hour-sized
puddle, observing its
ad hoc intricacies. The cloud
moved on, the downpour
of minutes stopped, and
the sun went to work.


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2010

Repairing

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Repairing


Have you ever been trying
to fix something when you
realize you've made it worse
and pushed it past the point
of reparation? I took a pair

of spectacles to an optometrist's
shop. They looked like a Cubist's
sculpture of a bird--glue-smeared,
bits of tape hanging, sad bandages.

The woman behind the desk said,
"I see you tried to fix them."
She said it warmly, without
irony, like an aunt sipping
a gin-and-tonic who has no
interest in parenting you.

She looked closely at the
stupendous failure of my
project. Her whole young
life, she had already seen
many men pursue the male
dream of fixing it themselves.

"Let's get you a new pair,"
shall we?" she said. When
I signed the form, I couldn't
see. Writing had become like
stabbing the fog with a
pen. I enjoyed it.

I hope Heaven has assistant
angels like the optometrist's
front-desk person--there to
check you in, get you registered
for pre-Judgement events. I
hear one saying, "I see you
tried to fix your life."


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Writing in the Dark in Vancouver, Canada

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Writing in the Dark in Vancouver, Canada

the surface of the world,
as sorted by senses,
ripples, stinks, attracts,
abrades, confuses, salts, scorns,
and so off we go.

we live not in the world but
only in its epidermis, our vibrations
and toil adding only infinitesimally
to the shifting product, adding

nothing to underneath. what's
beneath this roiling Heraclitan
surface? Emptiness, chant the
Buddhists--sacred silence.
Particles, sing
the scientists. God, pray
Godly ones. Nothing, say
the confidently righteous--
nothing at all, of course: what
you see is . . . .oh, but

nobody really listens to them
because they're not as interesting
as the others. I mean, what's
less imaginative and more boring
than nihilism? Nothing.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Pound It

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Pound It


H.D., Pound, and Richard
Aldington wrote:
"To use absolutely no word
that does not contribute
to the presentation." They
could have cut "absolutely,"
as it didn't contribute to
the presentation of the rule,
but I like that word there.

The rule itself is strict--
like Pound, so American, bossy,
anxious, wanting to regulate--
as long as no one regulated him.
His last name suited him. Eerily:
an extra word. As both noun and
verb: a humorless weight, a unit
of measurement; and an obsessive
striking. --Oh, and before I
forget, define "contribute"
and "presentation." And if

you're a poet, and you receive
a rule, what's the first thing
you'll want to do? That's right.
Pound it. 'Til it breaks.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Not Quiet But Spare

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A Shorter Distance

(in the midst of the "Quietude" debate)


Not quiet, no, but spare:
there--pithy, tough,
not much more than enough,
as if spoken while working,
or during love, or in hiding.

Utterance reduced--not
primitive or shy, just
taciturn, in that one
kind of American grain.
--Dickinson, whom the Beat
Boys ignored or belittled.
Not Walt, the loud guy
in a bar, and bless his
bearded heart for that.
We needed that as well.

--Thought through, pondered
on, then let go, not heavy
on the rhetorical gravy. That's
how some people talk and
some write. It's a quantity
of language showing up after
thought. Not shy, not quiet.
Just brief, one of those
short jabs no one sees
because they're watching
the guy fall down. A
straighter distance.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Ken Kesey talks about Neal Cassady