Me and Satie

For me, trying to play
one of Erik Satie's Gnossiennes
on the old scarred Chickering
is like trying to catch trout
minnows with my hands
in a river at dusk: I give up
and just admire the mercurial
flashing school of motion
in last light.


hans ostrom 2019

You Are Not My Phone

You are not my phone, she said. I
like you, yes. I love my phone. I
like you better when you're filtered
through my phone because then
you become a pleasurable meme.

She said, I live with, in, and through
my phone. Okay, he said, then, well,
maybe I'll text you sometime . . .
She replied, You mean never, not
sometime. You don't understand me
because you're not really into your
phone. Not all the way. You lack
commitment. Although he was standing

right in front of her, he texted her. She
looked at her phone, which told her
he'd written I agree--bye! She continued
to let her fingers peck at her phone
like chicken beaks. And did not look
up to see him going away.

hans ostrom 2019

The Ministry of Obvious Questions

At the Ministry of Obvious Questions,
we ask why America is still full of White Supremacists,
including a certain president. Why
can't we create shelter for homeless people
huddling in tents and doorways? Why
is medicine to expensive for working-class
people to buy? One of our favorites is
What's wrong with you people? We
believe, in other words, that it all starts
with asking the obvious questions. The
Ministry of Answers has been instructed
to remain silent. Why is that?


hans ostrom 2019

Important Reminder

It is important to remember
that at any given moment,
no one in the world (or any
world) is thinking about you.
And that is just fine.


hans ostrom 2019

Unfulfillment

unfulfillment

unfulfilament

unspool filament

unfunfillment

one full fill meant

one full fool mentor

fill fool emolument 

feel fray fragment

moonfullfilment

dune full film tent

soon full tilt sent

hollow, hollow, somewhat

almost always hollow,

do not wallow

in unfulfillment,

help is hopefully on the way

hope is helpfully on the way

hans ostrom 2019

Your Happy Day

(a spam poem)


Today is your happy
day, 1M has been giving
to you. Send me an email
for inquiries, kind
lady or sir.

hans ostrom 2019

Derelict

This place seems to be
falling apart, coming undone.
It's held together by buttons
and brackets, bolts
and rivets, screws, beliefs,
and clamps.  It's shored up
with shibboleths and superstitions.

Cracks, gaps, and rot
proliferate, plastered and painted
over with toxic residues
remaining from rabid denial
of fact, from swollen ignorance.
We get pounded from all sides
by images and sounds
of people talking and shouting
shit that makes no sense. The
general disintegration is monitored
and marketed carefully,
continuously. Now is the bright

summer of stupid authoritarians.
We who have no power or
influence fixate on fixes
that will never happen,
because they may require
evidence, discernment, and change.


hans ostrom 2019

My Song for You

Days and leeks
and mouths and years.
Ways and beams
and jaws and fears.

Wishes and misses,
fiends and trees.
Reins and stones
and cogs and bees.

This song is for you.
It's not going very well.
It's absent a message,
as you can tell.

Anyway: skunks,
aluminum, flowers.
Sadness and sneezing,
minnows and hours.


hans ostrom 2019

Briefly

Many molecules
briefly in circulation
so as to articulate
a body-plan, which is
embedded in the material
itself (which is like wood
turning itself into
a house): that's me,
temporarily.


hans ostrom 2019

Just Plain Hard

Rooted in Oklahoma's winter plains,
unleaved gray-grown trees
graduate from artery trunks
to capillary branches, final
twigs feathering into nothing.

Here people set hard faces
against hard work. At night
neon blooms, blazes--
a reward for getting through
or going to another shift.

Oklahoma, flat and difficult,
cast iron red ground:
look elsewhere for loam. This
is home if you need it to be.
Your choice, maybe.


hans ostrom 2019

Seagulls in Snow

Seagulls in snow step
with authority and bulk
like army officers
from the 18th century.

Their shrieks turn into
mad laughter that shreds
the insulated calm following
flurries. Sometimes

they sit on white
as swans float on water.
In search of food,
they chop at a drift

with heavy yellow
beaks: cutting tools.
The failure of snow
to surge, swirl, pulse,

pound, slap, and leap
like the sea soon bores
them. They jump into
wind then and glide

and fly forthrightly
back to a bay and cliffs
and the raucous, slow
riot of the shore.


hans ostrom 2019

A Number of Words

On the mulish bus
going to the conference,
a mathematics professor
said to a scholar of rhetoric,
"One day you'll
realize that everything
is about numbers."
The rhetorician replied,
"Thank you for telling
me that using words."


hans ostrom 2019

Resistant to Rain

Before I could fire the poem,
it quit. It had wanted it
to concern blackberries
in Fall (ugh), the labyrinth
of language (whatever), or
fatuous dictators--the deadly
clowns of drowning/frying
civilization (fair enough).

I had directed the poem
to be about,  into, and of
poets in the rain, down
through time, across
the planet. Conjurers,
troubadours, prophets,
lazy bastards, scribblers,
hermits, high-toned culture
bosses, seedy professors,
cowgirls, fierce warrior
queens, rappers, gadflies.

All of them with some
connection to the rain
in their hours amid language
alive. Something epic-ish.

The poem said No. I
offered a severance package--
some nice verbs, a packet
of metaphors, certain adequate
syncopations. The poem
resigned, saying something
ugly (but nicely phrased)
as it stalked off. I'm here

without it, listening
to the intricate tunes of
another rainstorm. (I
welcome all rainstorms
now.) I don't think I'll
ever see that poem again,
but I hope it's somewhere
inside staying warm, sipping
soup--and going to hell
(just kidding).


hans ostrom 2019