"Moonlight Night: Carmel," by Langston Hughes

Minor Intimidations

A tag on a blanket
tells me in writing
not to remove the tag.
Removal, it notes,
is a criminal act.
Another entry, I think,
for The Encyclopedia
of Minor Intimidations.


hans ostrom 2013

The Plot of the Universe

Plot, a human invention, a narrowing
we need, is something
the universe doesn't require.

For the universe
is thermodynamic
and never exactly
itself any time.

It
is infinitely, multi-
dimensionally episodic,
in all and no directions.

This is a little
story about the universe.
You tell one. It's
what we do.


hans ostrom 2013

"Fall Wind," by William Stafford

"Full Moon," by Henry Dumas

People Are Disappointed

When I say "October" I feel
compelled to say "again."
People are disappointed.

A military aircraft flies overhead
and makes great noise as I try to teach.
People are disappointed.

Today somebody said, "I saw a scorpion in
my house,": and her friend said, "That's impossible."
People are disappointed.

In Syria alone there are two million
refugees. And elsewhere refugees. Refugees.
People are disappointed.

Over the years, several times, I've said,
"I can't influence anything political."
People are disappointed.

Into the o's of October, I stuff
my acrid outrages, what a joke.
People are disappointed.

I tried to tell someone about jazz,and the
person said, "You mean like Light Jazz on FM?"
People are disappointed.

I think I've died a hundred times, and yet
I still look forward to death.
People are disappointed.


hans ostrom 2013

"Morning at the Window," by T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot's birthday today.

The Organoids

I enjoy how science hunts down philosophy
like a big cat on a plain:

the clever bastards now make
organoids--
yes, that's right, brains
in vats, the old
thought-experiment.

Yes, of course, maybe
it's a case of brains in vats
imagining
they're making brains in vats;
and of

other brains in vats imagining
they're reading and writing
about same. Alas, not likely.
Occam's Razor slices a leak
in vats of that sort.

I do hope there is a neo-funk-
rock-digital-punk-post-sexual
band out there now named
"The Organoids." That,

by the way, is something my
brain thought, some meager
morsel a big cat might snack on.


hans ostrom 2013

In the Chambers of the Sounds

Hearing the off-off-beat rhythms,
sonic schisms. Hear-
ing the syncopations out of
diasporic nations: ah, the
daughters sweat when they dance
and they laugh into lances of light. Ah,

the world, too much, in its trembling
under the weight and the hate
of its machineries: beat-
en down. One mind's

a mental gleanery, a picking up
of bits from a mowed-down
psychic scenery. Hear-

ing sounds made of sounds recorded
sounds effected now, an overlooping
digi-lapping mix-re-mixification,
queen and princess and
good king syntheslaus
at the feast of even beatsintune.

Hearing
the on beat, off-again
ch- ch- ch-echoing
in the chambered
arterials,
air-displaced materials,
endless musi-chilled imp-
rovisations,
hearing.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Name of It is 'Autumn,'" by Emily Dickinson

"Blue Monday," by Langston Hughes

Animal Authors

Ernest Hummingbird
Emily Cricketson
J.D. Salamander
Charles Chickens
Jane Mothsten
Leo Toadstoy
Herman Moleville
William Bobcat Williams
Otter Conan Doyle
Flea S. Eliot
Percy Fish Shelley
William Rattler Yeats
William Snakespeare
Margaret Catwood
Allen Ginsbug
Albert Camoose
Franz Calfka
Charles Bucrowski

hans ostrom 2013

The Sheriff Has Absconded

You touch the moon on water,
a century collapses into a train
& the engine's light shines
on tracks, which ladder up
from night into a blue dawn
buttered. And now unfixed

factories march across
a plain to kidnap fugitive
workers. You're at red
rim-rock's edge, watching
all of this--you,
the emperor of images,
brewer of creosote beer,
melter of topaz, escaped
sheriff.



hans ostrom 2013