Murder Mystery

A certain curtain. An uncertain merchant.
Add a dead body. Subtract a dead body.
Multiply details of an atmosphere. Divide
clues. Some must be concrete, others
ethereal, and some as sodden as
milk-soaked cereal. Why

does the solver solve? That's the most
important motive. Who allowed
the murderer to become what the murderer
is? Indict them. Please

remember we are talking about language.
In a book, nobody really ever gets killed.
That's one of the great virtues of literature.


hans ostrom 2013

Selfish

Twilight: sky brighter than landscape,
which backs slowly into darkness.
Crows fly home, high for them. They
become wrinkled, animated black lines.

So much is wrong out there--
the city, the nation, the world.
One feels ashamed, obligated, compelled,
and weary. This evening I give in

greedily to privilege, sit outside with
headphones on, listening to Ellington
indigos, "Solitude," "Prelude to a Kiss,"
"Mood Indigo," a cover of "Autumn Leaves."

In my heaven, Duke is musical director.
September air, influenced by Puget Sound,
mixes with dimming light sublimely. Yes,
I said "sublimely." Insufferable.

I want for nothing except more commitment
to change some bad things.
How disgusting to write about oneself
at a time like this.


hans ostrom 2015

Refuge

Floriffic blossoms, heavy as toads,
bend green stems like blue notes. This
isn't paradise, only a shabby garden
beside a weary cocktail lounge on
some island somewhere. We're here
to feign the forgetting
of mainland failures, which
we blame on youth and ambition:
we have a point. These blossoms
are not cognizant of criticism
and other forms of judgery,
and that is why we like them.



hans ostrom 2015

Authorities

It's obvious the authorities
ought to be reported
to some other authorities.


hans ostrom 2015

Death to Super-Heroes

Even people over the age of 10 now
seem enthralled with "super-heroes."
I don't take this as a good sign
about our culture. I'm the guy
walking the wrong way as a stupefied
crowd staggers toward me on its way
to a movie house that's playing
"Elbow Man" or "Spandex Woman"
or whatever this week's
piece of silly junk is. I know:

I'm not supposed to "get it."
I'm demographically challenged.

Unless "Ant Man" falls
into the conical trap
of Ant Lion and gets
pulled under the dirt,
I'm not interested.

My mother and I agreed
that puppets are stupid,
and I put "super-heroes"
in that category.

Sometimes she asked new
acquaintances, "Do you like puppets?"
It's a hell of an exploratory
question when you think about it.
It isn't a question.


hans ostrom 2015

The Purge

Yeah, they brought in a tactical team,
a euphemism for heavily armed thugs.
Then said tacti-thugs swept the whole
sector, clearing out anything
they deemed lyrical. They rounded up
short poems by the thousands, arrested
anyone who wrote anything accused
of being quiet. (All poems on the page
are silent until spoken to.)

They roughed up numerous solitary
scribblers caught jotting down
juicy phrases, pithy paradoxes,
and notes on introspective matter.
Rhymes were stripped and mocked.
You can imagine who took over
after the purge. Too many poets
have a weakness for fascism, it's true.


hans ostrom 2015

Admiration Isn't Enough

(Charleston Church Massacre, 2015)


The screen shows an interview with two Black women
who survived. One lost a son
in the massacre: "I watched him take his last
breath." The other had been ready to die; the killer
"let" her live so she could "tell the story."

The story isn't his. The story's about
an ethnic group that's suffered beyond
comprehension--and had to comprehend. That
the suffering doesn't stop is White Americans'
fault and a nation's mortal wound. Nothing
will be right until White people own up

all the way. All the way, without
deflecting, without explaining away.
I'm tired of admiring
Black people for their courage and dignity
because admiration's passive and useless.

There's such a thing as too much suffering,
by a person, by a people. There's such
a thing as moral failure--of a person,
of White Americans.


hans ostrom 2015

Old Notes

The old woman looked at the image in the
mirror and thought, "My hair is a corpse."
Lately she's regarded her memories
as notes about a forgotten novel.



hans ostrom 2015

Happy Birthday to Carter Monroe

A post by Ms. Fouquet elsewhere on the inter-webnets alerted me that it's the birthday of North Carolina poet, publisher, and sage Carter Monroe.

Here is a reading of his poem, "the two hanks":

Attention, Please

The more people there are
(more all the time)
and the more media there are
(same),
the less attention there is to go
around. Celebrity
diverts rivers of it
like golf courses in a desert.

Whole groups, cities, nations, cultures
crave attention (more than ever),
partly because of the illusion
that they may receive it. An
epidemic of narcissism expands.

We manage ourselves as commodities,
with packaging, labeling, advertising.

It is the other attention-deficit
disorder, the more harmful one.
An insatiable mass-appetite. Add
Americanness to it, and
it becomes exponentially worse.


hans ostrom 2015

Söderfors, Sweden

Söderfors, Sweden


Brown mortar, black bricks, buildings
from industry’s youth.

Two girls walk along a narrow
sandy path over the dam. Violent brown-black
water rushes through
the spillway. A sign cautions.

A gull nests in a granite slab.
(Incubation is a branch of geology.)

Reach for the black bricks—
to know them. Their texture is glass.
They were cooked to the point
at which manufacturing gives way

to beautiful compounds. Söderfors
is a silent town. Its cast-iron clock
is ornate and wrong. Bright green,

nearly lime: that used to be the color
of a rusting Saab parked all by itself.

Singing the Marine's Hymn When I Was Nine

Grades 3,4, and 5 occupied
the same room, and the teacher combined
us to have us sing "The Marines Hymn." Later,
Andre Breton's "Surrealist Manifesto"
provided a context for the experience.

The teacher didn't explain why
the Marines had occupied the Halls
of Montezuma (were they working
for Cortez?) or where the shores
of Tripoli were. Lots of Italians

had settled in Gold Rush country,
so I guessed Italy. Hey, teachers
do things to survive the teaching
because every day they have to
establish a new beach-head.

The tune seemed terribly tedious,
and it knew so: the key-change
if often a tell. Hell, yes, we
wanted to be sent on a mission:
recess.


hans ostrom 2015

The Boarding Process Is About to Begin

At this time, we would like to begin
pre-boarding, which may be be thought of
as paradoxical boarding because it is part
of the boarding process it precedes.

We would like to invite anyone
who is in deep despair to board
at this time, as well as any children
traveling with overbearing parents,
invertebrates flying alone, and good
people (there's usually at least one!).

If your carry-on item is larger
than King Henry VIII's coffin,
please let us know.

Now we incite those with no
particular status to revolt
against categories.

Thank you.

We now invite White people
who believe they are
inherently superior to lift
their arms and pretend to fly
around in front of the gate here.
Okay, that's enough.

Finally, we invite those
who are acutely or chronically
tardy to board the goddamned plane.

It is truly our pleasure to serve you:
how could that possibly be true?


hans ostrom 2015