The Mouse of Contrition

The mouse of contrition
withdraws to its nest.
I am sorry, I am sorry, says
the mouse. For what, I can't
remember, but I do apologize. 

Wise, the mouse enjoys sleep
more than guilt, and so
in the warm embrace of old
newsprint chewed, it dozes
but doesn't stop the quivering
of its nose, which is agnostic.


hans ostrom 2018

Lizard and Person

A lizard springs out of always and scurries
perpendicular to level across a hot face
of tan granite. Stops. Stares at a person
who stares back with perception larded
with knowledge, free association,
and mind's always frenzied business.

The lizard focuses, grins thinly, sprints
into a crack between boulders, and settles
into shadow to digest a fly. The person's
mind is beset by why.


hans ostrom 2018

Swatting the Rumor

A rumor made the rounds,
gliding slowly like a fat skurzing
fly. Before peaking, my attention
got briefly piqued. I lost interest
and swatted down the rumor.
After wiggling its dirty legs,
it died on its back.


hans ostrom 2018

The Thin Thick of It

Well here we are in the moment's
techno-trend, alone in groups with our phones,
semi-ignoring the quasi-friends
sitting next to us. With our thumbs,
we hammer at glass like chickens
trained to play beak-bingo.

We swim in a river of gerunds--
posting, texting, liking, blocking,
attacking, retweeting, de-friending,
muting, sharing . . . We belong

to fractured unaccredited schools of fish,
unspooling into fractal clouds
of selfies. Masses mediated
mediate masses, sniffing fumes
of toxic gasses. It's all very real
and revolutionary, as well as false plus
reactionary. It's headed toward the only
destination left to us on the map: More.


hans ostrom 2018

This Is Not Just to Say

A plum's uninhibited purple
epidermis entertains a faint
silver mist, you noticed.

Even as you chomped
through the fruit
to eat what you expected,

your abstracted mind
nibbled on a
nebula of thought.


hans ostrom 2018

("This Is Just to Say," William Carlos Williams)

Haiku Flu

too sad, haiku, you
have the flu & your
fevered syllables shiver



hans ostrom 2018

Peckish Muse

Should Muse want to munch,
pre-lunch, on a haiku,
fix a syllable-snack


hans ostrom 2018

I Thought Broth

I'm trying to understand
why I'm writing about broth.
Was it your idea?

I thought broth, and then--
here I am, wrangling
words about it.

Broth is good, right?
It's basic and pays
due respect to water.

The word itself, Broth--
excellent. Could even
represent a Nordic figure--

Broth, son of Erik the
Ambivalent. You know,
I think I'll leave it there,

bring this broth boat
back to port beside a warm
and salty sea.


hans ostrom 2018

Good News: You're Out of Touch

Because now it's all connected,
because now it's all infected
with connectivity, parasiting itself,
surveilling every person, place, and thing, you

don't feel connected, nor do you
especially want to. Your data's connected
very well indeed, not you. There
goes human culture, rocketing

off, and you're staying behind
in your material here, although you fake
living virtually very well. You feel
solitary but not sad. It's a relief

to be not interested in what it's all
coming to, whatever it's coming to,
and who would know, given the fact
and farce that human culture hurtles

with indifference to consequences.
It's virtually like standing in an empty town,
which the residents abandoned. Your
data's off partying with them. Sometimes

it reports back. The town, an existential
cocoon, does this thing that no one and
no thing does anymore. It leaves you
alone. Not heavenly, but nice.


hans ostrom 2018

Betty's Version of Time

Every death shatters time. For instance,
Betty, 92 years old, died, eased (we tell
ourselves) out on a morphine drip. Her
consciousness housed a vast museum

of time with complex installations composed
of fantastic materials perception had gathered
and memory had refined into alloys. There
were fabrics woven of intimacies, light,

fear, houseplants, brooms, secret beliefs,
desires, cooking, laughing, parenting, and
itching. Neuro-video loops played on angled
surfaces. Betty's sense of Betty

powered the place, a generator deep
in the basement. It all collapsed in an instant
just after 3:00 p.m. one day. Betty's magnificent
version of time, gone.


hans ostrom 2018

What Would Bukowski Write?

I wonder what Bukowski would be writing
now. More Bukowski poems, of course.
Rooted in his life, some stuff made up,
who cares, and then, in a line anywhere
in the poem, a statement strikes like a snake.
You get an insight not offered up as one.
It tears into you. His poems usually ignore

the wider world beyond San Pedro
and other Hank haunts, as if the world,
because it was so stupid and mean,
wasn't worth his time, and it isn't,
and it's getting worse. Maybe he would

have said something about Trump, though--
how low down, dirty, and mean he is.
A pimp. A psychopath--the kind that kicks
a sleeping drunk on The Row to show off
to his friends, other rich boys. Kick and laugh.
The kind that deserves to end up
on the losing side of a brawl one night,
knocked out, beaten, bloody, and down,
nobody gleeful about it but lots of people
feeling like it was an exorcism.


hans ostrom 2018

Recovering Vikings

Me and my friends rowed and sailed
from Scandinavia to Newfoundland
(your names for these places) without
a proper compass, adequate outerwear,
good hygiene, enough jokes, and
sufficient nutrition. We fought off
parasites, boils, and madness. This
happened in the 10th century or so--
your system of time. We're still trying
to recover. At an undisclosed location.


hans ostrom 2018

Of Time and the Chickering

I like to give jazz standards
a good bruising on the old Chickering
parlor grand piano, which long ago
was rescued from the Buckhorn Lodge,
a bar in the High Sierra where whiskey
had been sloshed on some of the hammers.
Good times. I really can count
beats and measures, honest. But

I get distracted. I dawdle or rush,
freeze or trip. My fingers suddenly
turn into bear paws, then shrink
again back to size. Much depends
upon the weather, the atmospheric
pressure, the presence or absence
of crows in the area.  Anything
Ellington can mesmerize me,
and I start thinking about how
in the harlem he ever came up
with that chord or phrase. Sometimes

I just look into the deep brown
varnish of the Chickering, or stare
at the decal, Johnson Piano Company,
Portland, Oregon, and I wonder
what the route was from Boston
to Portland to Sierra City and finally
for a while, Tacoma, where the piano
had earned a restoration, where
it sat beside Cher's white piano,
which had also entered rehab.

I salve the blond
nicks with linseed oil
and always throw away
the rag. A tuner comes in
regularly, praises the tone,
rich and seasoned, whiskey-
tempered, long suffering
with regard to my drifts
into alternate space-time keyboards.


hans ostrom 2018