Cigar Smoke is Thick and Blue

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

--psychiatrist Allen Wheelis (1950), who credited the statement to Freud


Sometimes a cigar
isn't a cigar, such as after
it's been smoked
and the remaining brown wad
has gone away.

Then the cigar
becomes particles
as well as neural bits
of cigar-likenesses,
or a word in a story
about that one night
and its cigars.



hans ostrom 2018

Concerning Cricket

A Cubist concoction of layered planes,
seems cricket. A match progresses
in a stiff-legged imperial ballet
with yachting costumes. Scoring

is prolific, as with stock markets.
There are slap-bats and wee wooden
sticks--quite droll. Cricket is so
very, very something, far afield

from clarity but highly ordered,
bright and secretive. Sedate, surreal.




hans ostrom 2018

Eye Doctor

Asked to read lines of letters and numbers projected
on a wall, my eyes confuse G with O and 2 with Z.

The doctor puts large drops of rain in my eyes,
and my eyes get stoned.

He puts a contraption on his head. To my eyes,
it makes him look like a cyborg ant-eater.

A gentle torturer, he shines bright light behind
my eyeballs, and I feel like I'm in a movie from 1971.

He tells me I have "divergence inconsistency"--one
eyeball's a lazy focuser, or is on a work slow-down.

When the doctor giggles, he sounds like Jim Backus
as Mr. Magoo. My ears see the humor in this.


hans ostrom 2018

Angel with a Punch

I met a counter-punching angel.
She didn't strike with fists and kicks.

Glances delivered her rebukes.
So too did words full of biting angel wit.

Her effect on her targets is conclusive.
I myself felt like giving up on petty

pretense and posing pride, and at
that instant the angel's smile spread wide.


hans ostrom 2018

Semi-Descript Suburb Somewhere

In a semi-descript suburb somewhere,
people believe in Counting Your Blessings
and First World Problems. Some
even get the idea of privilege.

But hedges there become overstuffed
couches. Rain hardens into visual
static. Before people go to work
elsewhere each day, they lie down

on lawns and gnash their teeth
and lash their consciences with
shaming pep-talks. The contents
of one house there rarely

interacts with those of another
house, and this include people.
Everyone's regrets pile up, become
invisible drifts that never melt.


hans ostrom 2018

Another Last Page

Here we are at another
last page. No need

to revisit what's
previous. It's just a

last page, not the end
of books. Open

the drapes. See what's up
out there with light.


hans ostrom 2018

Terms and Conditions

"not because blue pill"

      --fragment from the old online deluge


Not because blue pill
have I seen shards of epic
gibberish & websites blocked
error 404 forbidden you do not
have access, note that you

is neither formal nor familiar
in algorithmese. Search,
surf, just-type-in, click
to download, take a trip
on a keyboarding ship,
reach your destination in
the slink, on the sly.

Ultimately every download
loaded down must become
a disappointment & you feel
as if you're clerking on a volunteer
basis for authoritarian bots. All

manner of things shall be well
when you use two-step verifcation
and, well, have your credit
card info including security
ready. You must fill in required
fields, approve terms and conditions.


hans ostrom 2018

Dream Snow Leopard

I haven't seen
the snow leopard
in dreams. I know
it's there behind
mind's mist or
inside subconscious
caves. The psychic

snow leopard
is meant to be
absently present.
It represents something,
I can't know what,
perhaps just itself.

It is a messenger
sent from forever
and never quite
arrives. Its eyes
follow me now,
is my surmise.


hans ostrom 2018

Dutiful Blues

He saw that she,
like him, was locked
into an acceptable life
that held no interest
anymore. They

exchanged polite
comments, maybe
at a cafe or on the job.
The glances they
shared never found

words because words
can involve truth
and risk. Each had
decided to plod
along their separate,

acceptable paths.
Both were made sluggish
by the weight of
boredom and
frustration. Their

existential crisis remained
bland--never boiled over.
Poignant that both
saw in the other a case
of the dutiful blues.


hans ostrom 2018

No Crisis, No Crescendo

On a night-train to Athens,
I met a woman from Gunnison,
Colorado.  She had blond hair
and seemed self-contained.
I could tell she traveled well.

Together we counted the stops
until the stop we wanted.
There'd been an earthquake.
Greeks out late at night had
much to say, much to smoke.

We walked to her hotel. She
kissed me thanks on my cheek.
Her perspiration smelled
sweetly metallic. I walked to my hotel,
knew no one in the city. An exhausted
desk-clerk looked like she hoped
I wasn't an overbearing American.

I complied. In the cheap room I
wanted to see the woman
from Colorado again and knew
I wouldn't. On with the flow.
These stories that aren't stories
are more important to me than
ones with crises or crescendi.
They are the life.


hans ostrom 2018

He Finds It Very Unsatisfying

He tells me the same fantasy
visits him often, coming around
like a city bus. A woman takes
him in: the main plot. She sorts out
his confusions. Comprehends.

She is bemused. Of course
there is sex. The genre's fantasy,
after all. It's the understanding
occurring before sated lust
that appeals, he claims.

He doesn't need to figure out
what the woman wants. She
tells him what. He's enough
and amuses her.  Triangulations
of pretense and wasted effort

disappear. Her perfume smells
great. So does she. Her sense
of irony, her management
of him and desire, create a
palace of satiety.  She's not

put off by words like satiety.
But it's just a fantasy, he says.
A real bus never comes round.
Where is she? Is she? She reclines
in an oasis. He thirsts.


hans ostrom 2018

So It Goes

The scene's a blue barge
on a green river. Twilight.
Many lights on land: a
society, a world. The illusion

of a fixed place moves
away from me like a barge.
I am a point of view, a wry
observer on a river dock.

Then I am of the darkness
falling. Then I'm the
darkness itself, then
nothing, & I am not.


hans ostrom 2018

Hawks Don't Often Perch That Low

A hawk, bedecked in variegated
brown feathers, had parked on a low,
thick fence post. I walked by on
a muddy road. The hawk ignored

me, also two horses grazing in rain.
What did domestication and the
privileges of an American horse
farm have to do with his carved

beak and mythic talons? Just before
the bird leaned forward, pre-flight,
I squinted to see through rain
and wondered what a hawk's

thought looks like. The gone
hawk left that topic open,
and I went on plodding
down the sodden road.


hans ostrom 2018