Duke, Again

With Ellington, never
just one mood, ever
two or more.

State profoundly
something simple
but please

don't decorate.
Slip something
gut-bucket,

not quite profane
but close, into
urbane constructions.

Make smart choices.
Move efficiently
like a chess

assassin. The players
are the source:
so obvious, but

almost always
overlooked: Aristotle
understood. Remain

madly allergic
to cliche. Dodge in
and out of the fray.


hans ostrom 2015

Epistemological Hash: Sheesh

A cat for instance is routinely perplexed--
not alarmed but calmly
situated in ignorance, seeking to understand.
--Whereas humans
have evolved, so to speak, into the expectation
that they have a right to know
and understand all
in a big goddamned hurry. Often they state

that expectation with believed nonsense,
hideous lore, and all manner of bullshit.
And anyway, what if science epitomizes Zeno's
Paradox, always advancing but never
finally knowing, so that human seeking

finds that the essence of the universe
is never quite what and not really there--
not a bad prospect, if you think rationalism
sans romance is, albeit necessary, a
bit of a bore. I see
I've made quite a hash of things here.


--hans ostrom 2015

Listening to Monk

("Well, You Needn't")

Concerted jazz effort produces
a jazzerted zephyr forthwith.

No frazzling in the port, no
impertinence in the fort. A

rush of notes arranged by
practice and intuition

suggests at least a nod to
the transience of people and things.


hans ostrom 2015

Oakland Talk

Gertie Stein, Otis Sistrunk, Al Davis,
Mac Dre,Sharon Shore, Bert Camapneras,
Frank Epperson, and all, oh
where have you gone? You're hiding

in triplicate under the sun. That's
where you must to be. Oakland's changed
greatly and not at all. Always and forever
a hard place. I sat on a bench across from a bench
staked out by a homeless guy who dreamed
he was still a young man. I played

chess on my phone in Jack
London Square. What do you think
of that, Jack? After a red-headed woman
walked by and gained distance, the guy
on the bench said, in the growl of a carnival-barker,
"She's got a chin like Brunhilda!"

Neither a compliment, nor an insult:
that's Oakland talk. Silver and black,
Oakland slips out of your grasp like mercury.


hans ostrom

Death of a Myth

The Grudge Master is dead. He's grinding his axes
in Hell. He left us with nothing except our lives,
which from the first moment have not been enough
to sustain us. We're losers because we fight
to the death and then fight Death. Winners
hire people to fight on their behalf
in a fixed game.They use words like "behalf."

It is over It is over Every sign
Every signal, Every seagull and fat cow
has surrendered. We are nothing!
Therefore, celebrate. We are nothing!
Our shields are made of cardboard.
We're lost in a forest set on fire.
We desire someone to arc

her/his back, up and above us,
and come. Come for and by us and
with us. A trivial physical
apotheosis, true, but real and fierce.

We desire the sun, but someone owns
that, too (it had to happen). Ah,
put my profaned body in a cheap box,
throw a blanket in, and bury.
That's all, that's all, the myth is dead.


hans ostrom 2015

Juvenal in the Desert

Who pays for the trespasses of the satirist?
In my case, the satirist. For my imaginative
attacks, I suffer dull imprisonment
in this shabby oasis.

To their minds, I'm uncivil,
self-righteous, and worst of all,
correct. I record the bulbous
nose as bulbous, the politician
as compulsively depraved,
the dreadful poet as pitiful.
Who pities me? Here

I see melons. Leather bags of wine
and water. Camels chewing nothing,
smirking. These odd desert people
in their smelly garments who
with their brand of irony let
me know I'm free to leave at
any time. Actually, not. The
shape of women's breasts
still fascinate me. Late

in afternoons, a little drunk
(all right: a lot), I see in
warping sand a chastened city
where fools are not honored.
Are not in power.


hans ostrom 2015

Kings

In chess Hiram doesn't
like to move his White king except
for castling. Otherwise the king
sleeps, oblivious and kind, waiting
for nothing as in checkmate or
nothing as in checkmate.

The Black king, Hiram knows,
had to learn to move,
dissemble, and adapt
so as to make up for White's
eternal advantage, its
unearned, privileged edge.

In the end, both kings bore
Hiram. But the Black queen
and the White queen enchant
him, goad him into fashioning
a fantasy. He dreams of an
extravagant, satisfying threesome
with two women magically
embodied from the symbolism
of chess, fully human
and yet mythically erotic.

Yes, it's all brought to life there,
albeit in Hiram's mind,
directed by Fellini,
narrated by Nina Simone.

Sometimes chess isn't
exciting enough for Hiram.


hans ostrom 2015

The Retirement of Literature

After you teach what they used to call literature
for a long time, there are some poems and books
you don't want to teach anymore, not because
of something in them or on account of
the students but because you don't want
to submit the works to any further
analysis--by anyone, especially yourself.

You want these works to enjoy
retirement, lying in the sun,
simply existing as a collection of words
and punctuation, without a career.


hans ostrom 2015

Cows, Sun Loves You

The several stomachs of a cow brew
bilious cud out of grass and grain.
Excretion follows in due time
as cows create sweet brown mortar
that dries into thick discs.

Cattle consider and consider,
all day. They earned their Ph.D.s
in Bovinity. The sun created
them. The sun loves them.



hans ostrom 2015

Surrounding You

Fresh oxygen in cool air surrounds you
as do social contracts pulling you
into roles that weary and bore you.

Don't whine, even to no one,
you tell yourself, for you've
imported voices that force

conformity and sustain shame.
To the end, you'll be maneuvered
into doing shit you don't want to do.

Some of it may be necessary,
but not that much. Who needs
a dictator when people volunteer

to push each other around? No
wonder so many drop out any way they
can, often desperately, paced suicide.



hans ostrom 2015

"in unjust Spring"

(with apologies to e.e.)


"in unjust Spring
after the po-
lice state had arisen (peo-
were dis-
tracted)(fires
burned in Baltimore,well
known to be
a terribly terribly racist
city:plagued
by the pale doom of
american history.
Baltimore is all the rage
that builds up:frus-
tration & americans rather
likesitscities to die,
especially
black&brown
spaces,"
he spoke, in despair and not
knowing what else to do.



hans ostrom 2015

Collage Degree

I was just blowing up a balloon when
Italy won a soccer match
and Abraham Lincoln gave a speech
concerning railroad law. Then
Chairman Meow mad a cameo appearance
on Tahitian TV to discuss Titian's
use of shadow, and naturally
an abandoned ship sank off
and on an Aleutian island.

The phone rang virtually,
and gunpowder was invented.
Milton wrote a line with
an inverted hand while
Joan of Archimedes developed
a crush on a dark-haired
Viking. Frederick Douglass
scowled, and I have no idea
what I did with the utilities bill.


hans ostrom 2015

Excellent Persons

Like butterflies in fog, excellent persons
are often overlooked. They
perform the good and the necessary,
ameliorating cruelty,
appreciating the melody of words
like ameliorate.
\
They won't become celebrities.
Technically, they're suckers
who relinquish advantage.
They plant perennials in Fall.
They get shit done.


hans ostrom 2015