Better and Best

Better to be lucky than good. Better
to be good than middling, middling
than bad. Better to be pragmatic than
pure, sensible than righteous. Better
to have good shoes than bad, bad shoes
than none. Better to be housed than
homeless. Better to consider people
without than people with and than
only you and your own if you have.
Better to do it than to write of it,
best to do both.


hans ostrom 2016

The Question and Answer Portion of the Evening

I could go for you in a really big way,
he said to her. It wasn't subtle, and
it was not hip. Thank you for sharing
your perspective, she said to him.
It wasn't rude, and it was droll.

Shall I leave you alone, then? he
said to her. It was polite. It was not
clever. Yes, you shall, but not right
now, unless of course you want to go.
It was permission. It was restrained.

What shall we do, then, what shall
we say? he said to her. Excellent
questions, she said to him.
He was confused.  She
was bemused.


hans ostrom 2016

A Little Molecular Traveling Music

A handful of molecules moved around
the universe this one time. Long story
shrunk, they became "me."  (In
photographs the quotation marks
are invisible.) Lots of them get

replaced in the usual organismic
way, plus haircuts, etc. Soon and
very soon, all molecules that account
for "me" will be released back to
the universe at large, and what

a large it is. They'll keep on
moving, as if they'd merely
paused at a roadside diner.
A little molecular traveling
music, if you please, maestro.



hans ostrom 2016

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Are you thinking what I'm
thinking? I hope not. It makes
more sense to divide the thinking
labor. I'll think about clean water
while you think about recordings
by Gil Scott Heron. You'll
think about the struggle against
racism in your community,
and I'll think about a feather.
You: rotten fruit. Me: nuclear
holocaust.  (These are just
examples, not directives.)
Of course, we're both free
(we hope) to attend think-the-
same-thoughts-party later,
although it seems those can
get a little cultish. Whatever
you do, don't think about
a red onion. Oops, oh no!


hans ostrom 2016

In a Lobby of a Cinema Complex

This complex isn't simple. Figures
strolling across a neon-glossy floor
toward theater-caves, bathrooms, or
sugar and salt: they and I
are already dead--like people
photographed by cinema in 1939.
And we've been replaced by others
who move about here just as we do,
we did. Maybe one of them

is morbid, or at least fatalistic,
and feels for a moment as if time
has already departed, leaving
behind only light on a screen
flickering imperceptibly
and kernels of corn exploded
into tiny thunderheads. Before
going into the movie, I think
this scene may be the better movie.


hans ostrom 2016

Elegy for Richard Hugo

Elegy for Richard Hugo

(1923-1982)

You said to wait ten years before

trying to write an elegy about someone

who just died. I waited more than three times

that. No doubt it's not enough.

So, something here about a lake's face

changing--ripple, riffle, wrinkle; you

said never use semicolons. (I’m kidding

a kidder.) "Be glad to fish

with you sometime," you wrote in

in the one letter to me, "but I warn you,

I'm strictly a bait fisherman.” If that

were on Twitter now, I'd favorite (a verb, sir)

it and tweet back, No worries. You

haven't missed much. Let's say

a man sits on a rock. He's connected

to a lake, call it Saw Lake, by a fishing

line. He's not really waiting for anything.

He’s drinking beer. A hit, a strike, would be fine,

a rousing thing. Just over the ridge

doesn't lie a town. That's why

nobody's heard of it. I will say

women and men who work at the factory

there return from a women's softball

game, someone won, who cares. Now

everybody will wash their hair, their bodies,

put on clean jeans, heave on the nice

boots, and go out and dance and drink

and kiss and hug and fight. The

man on the rock has seen the rusted

iron roofs of just that town. He

wonders if he should call them rooves.

The lake tugs him away from words

but not for long. "There you go," he says.

Hans Ostrom copyright 2016

Commercials

Commercials: adjectives packaged
as nouns, petty crimes committed
against ears and eyes, sometimes
full-on felony assaults paid for
by deepest vaults.

The White Supremacist cable
not-news shows raise volume
high, highest for commercials,
concussing brains to soften them up
for propaganda. Don't buy. Don't buy.


hans ostrom 2016

You Haven't Earned a Prize

When you're White, and you learn
things and as they say get your
consciousness raised enough
by the jack called the-way-things-are-
and-have-always-been, you end up
losing friends and not really wanting
to hang around many White folks
much because disgust and rage
are exhausting.

If your view gets raised a little more,
you won't feel sorry for yourself,
you'll understand, why Black folks
really don't want to hang around you,
whether it's personal or not.

It's not like you're awareness
is anything more than the minimal
thing to achieve, and it's not like
you've somehow earned the prize
of their company.  Solitude

and isolation, boo-hoo, tough shit.
Your modest discomfort doesn't
even register on the scale of pain
to which the colonies and the United States
dedicated and still dedicate themselves.
You've probably heard the saying:
Many White people fear a race war;
most Black people, like their forebears,
continue to try to survive in one.


hans ostrom 2016

Adam's Song

I'm eating dried figs,
am very depressed.
I'm totally naked but
feel like I'm dressed.

There's no one to compare
Eve to. She's nice.
Today I named some little
creatures "mice."

Sometimes my body changes
when I see Eve.
When she touches the change
I never want to leave.

I have this feeling something
bad will happen soon.
I don't know why.
I asked the moon.

The moon talks to me in ways
the sun will not.
The moon is very cool and
the color of my snot.

The moon said, "Things happen,
things change.
And God may disarrange what
God arranged."

I am Adam. This is
my own weird song.
If you're passing through
Eden, sing along.



hans ostrom 2016

I Was Asked to Pass This Along

Poetry's using language
in unofficial ways, including
re-purposing official language.

Sometimes poetry bosses
and poetics conglomerates
make their poetry way official.

They try, anyway. When this
happens, it should signal to poets
to write otherwise. Poetry

is otherwise. It's an attitude
toward language and authority
as much as anything else.

Anyway, someone asked me
to pass these notes along. To
whom? Not sure. Goodbye.



hans ostrom 2016

New Day 3.0

Reset the day. Use the control panel
Or download a new day. Run as
administrator. Scan for viruses--
narcissism, bigotry, willful ignorance.
You can probably get a free night
with any day you download.
Check your memory. Can it handle
a new day? Having problems with
the day software? Eh, we don't
handle that. Try contacting other users.



hans ostrom 2016

The Castle

I built you a castle, using a castle kit. I
staffed it with people who'd worked
in a castle before, castlexperts.

I lived there a while to see what it
was like. The staff were rude. The
British use the plural "were" with "staff."

Anyway, I let the staff go, which is
castle-speak for firing them. I live
alone in the castle now.

I like doing so rather excessively.
I couldn't bear to live in it with
someone else, even you.

So I'm going to move out
and give you the castle. Americans
use "gift" as a verb. Life is a process.


hans ostrom 2016

Four Questions About the Future

How sophisticated does any
creature's mind have to be
to conceive of Future? Was
there an evolutionary ad-
vantage to imagining Future
and oneself in it? When
they were hiding from God
in the brush after complications
arose, how did Eve and Adam
discuss Future? What are you
going to do tomorrow?


hans ostrom 2016