Attempts Become Gestures

[second version]

the man wearing a thin sweatshirt

and no hat stands at an uncovered

bus stop in freezing rain. he isn't me.

he's trying to light a cigarette. his

attempt becomes a gesture--

ludicrous but noble, less than

tragic but not bad at all.

he's inside whatever being alive

is for him, and i'm inside what

being alive is to me. i see him

from a warm place out of the weather.

if i were like jesus i'd go to the

man and perform a miracle--

like getting that cigarette lit,

or giving him money,

or giving him my parka, or

embracing him. he might

like all of that. except for

the embrace. he might

bite my nose off for that.

i don't do any of these things,

because it's easier not to,

and it's acceptable that i

think i'm not his keeper.

at moments like these, i

think of Bukowski,

who--i gather from his

words, i never knew

the man--thought like

jesus sometimes, i mean

with a similar toughness.

tough on everybody--

including, let's say especially,

the reflective, ignoble fuckers in

warm parkas out of the

weather.

Cinema Complex

 [second version]

This complex isn't simple: boxes

within boxes within boxes. Figures

stroll across a neon-glossy floor

toward dark 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And we've been replaced by others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, at least fatalistic,

and feels for a moment that time

has already departed, leaving

behind only ribbons of  light

that spool images 

flickering imperceptibly

on screens

and kernels of corn explode

into tiny thunderheads. Before

going into the movie, I think

this scene I've been in

may have been the better movie.

Toes

 [second version]

They're pudgy, failed claws,

private nubs that often

go public. We encase them

like jewels, divas, or prisoners, 

let them out for fresh air

only sometimes. The curling

of toes, one knows, is 

a practice that migrated

from branched peoples

hanging around long ago.

When people say, "Kick up

your heels," they seem

to mean nothing.

Heel/toes, heel toes:

onward the masses walk hard

on hard urban surfaces.

It's the economy, stupid.

Our dogs is tired,

our gods are remote,

this is the greatest age

of toenail paint, 

and I am the owner 

of a hammer toe,

a hard name for a

soft undertow. 

hans ostrom 2015/2021

Aristotle on Euboea

an old man,

interested in the world.

a teacher. 

kicked out of Athens

by Alexander:

not so great. oh, well.

ignorance drags

tyrants to Hell.

a fine island.

water. light on water.

dry hills, birds in air,

students who care.

who cared enough to

follow an old man here.

good memories of quibbles

with Plato,

whom the con of idealism

hustled. like Socrates,

he looked too often

for reasons not to know. 

drink the hemlock?

highly impractical. 

death's efficient enough

as it is. better to live,

if only a year more.

living is learning,

a chance to know more

until you know death.

Chalcis is a fine town

on this island named

after a nymph. 

it smells better than Athens.

round and round goes

the dance of perception,

the music of the spheres.

heartbeats in ears. 

It's Up to Us

it's up to us,

people who in this age

are seen as "white,"

although in truth

we're all just a mix like everyone

of human genetic soup; 

it's up to us

to erode White Supremacy,

the great World Lie,

the longest American 

evil, until it 

breaks, dissolves

into dust

and final impotence. 

it's up to us, 

you know. why?

because we have the influence,

each

in our own small spheres;

because we can,

we must. 

oh, yes, I know,

most of us must serve

so many duties.

most of us are weary.

that's all right. 

don't let 

the distractions,

excuses, 

rationalizations,

confuse you til you

do nothing. 

just

do what you can

to advance the erosion.

use your influence

if you can,

when you can,

how you can.

and you can. 

it's up to us, you know. 

How Are You Enjoying the Dictatorship?

 (first posted January 27, 2017)

Oh look America

at what White Supremacy

made you do again.

Fear of change, fear

of knowledge, too. Oh,

look, White men at what

never growing up

has set loose like a

plague. Oh, look,

women, at what

White men want to to

to your body

citing some whacked-

out version of some

scripture. 

Still flying that

Confederate flag

and hanging nooses?

Still really proud

of slavery and Jim Crow? 

Nice way to show

you don't know 

right from wrong. 

Oh, look America

at what snorting

celebrity will get you. 

A bloated faux billionaire

racist on top means

you've hit bottom. Again. 

Where the dictator's 

people will stomp you,

just their way of thanking

you for your support. 

Idiosynchronized

People we see once: flood of faces, coats,

collars--on avenues and plazas,  in markets, 

theatres, bars, banks, hospitals.  A bent

shape hoeing weeds: one of us saw it once

one place from a train: This

is an example but only of itself.  Its

singularity can’t be transposed.  Imagine

you remember the person who interested you

terribly in that café that morning that city.

Sure it happened, but you don’t remember

because once was not enough.  People we

see once compose our lives.  Forgetting

them (we must), we lose wide arenas

of the lived.   Even ghosts return, but not

the vast mass of once-only-noticed

who compose medium and matrix

of our one time here.  We are adjacent and

circumstantial to strangers, one jostle

of flux away from knowing next to everything

about their lives.  The river of moments takes

a different channel; the one moment becomes nothing now.

The once-only appear, then appear to go 

to an Elsewhere that defines us.  They go on

to get to know who they get to know.

Their lives are theoretically real to us, like

subatomic particles.  To them their lives

are practically real to them.   From their

view, ours are not.  We know they were there,

vivid strangers, because they always are, 

every day.  Like a wreath floating 

 on the ocean, memory marks a space 

abandoned.   In large measure life is

recall of spaces occupied.  History

consists of someone who insists on being

remembered, someone who insists on 

remembering, combinations of both.  Familiarity 

and routine join to vie methodically; they

capture places in recall.  Vivid strangers are

incidentally crucial, indigenous to a

present moment that is like a mist

over a meadow, rising, evaporating 

just when we arrive, past as we are present.

at the mansion

my candelabras are clandestine.

they hang from whining beams

in this derelict mansion, ready

for their close-ups, Mr. DeMille.

sometime you must visit.

we’ll waltz a bit like half-

cracked aristocrats, apres

Revolution, sans portfolio.

sagging splendor. tawdry times.

we'll alert the neighbors

about a  shotgun marriage

of sweat and perfume, the

pretensions and the practicality

of self-taught lunacy, all decked

out in tuxedos and gowns bought

at  flea markets.  RSVP, or not. 

circa 1994/2021

"August 1968," by W.H. Auden

 Reading/video of Auden's short reaction to the USSR's/Warsaw Pact's invasion of Czechoslovakia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCH-jfL5oMs

Closing Time

tonight my cabaret of fears

glowed and hummed.

a band played anxiously in

sharp keys.  the bartender

claimed not to have seen

Death around lately. but

she spoke she turned away

to polish a glass.

hans ostrom 

circa 1994/2021

Pulp Mill, Commencement Bay

  (Tacoma, Washington)

 the mill on the bay

processes night.

 

an engineered

beast, it never inhales.

 

its smoke-steam is white

and slow like dream clouds.

 

its mansion of pipes

is lit up like a festival.

 

the mill manufactures

livings and my sleep.

circa 2005/2021

hans ostrom

 

The Son She Never Had

 

The son she never had visits her

one night.  He’s grown, a man

with stories to tell and scars,

 big knuckles.  At the table under

yellow light, she asks what it was

like to be a son without a mother.

 “Oh, I had a mother,” he says.

The lines on his face are rivers

of her dreams.  “She just wasn’t you.”

 He takes her hand and leads her

past fact to worn brown carpet

of the “family” room.  They dance.

 She lays her head on his chest.

Above her is the ceiling where

her husband’s cigar-smoke settled.

 Later they sit in the two big chairs.

“Do me a favor,” she asks, “and walk out

the door.  I want to know

 your manner of leaving.”  He

obliges, a good son.  Silence rushes back

into the house like winter air.

 On the porch she tells herself

he would have had such knuckles

and danced with her that way.

 He would have traveled far but come back.

In a factory he would have paused some

days in machinery roar and thought of her.

circa 1989/2021

 

The Leopard and the City

 “A leopard shall watch over their cities.”

 --Jeremiah 5:6

Rain fell out of the cloud of time.

It made no argument.  Droplets

blotched a blond meadow.  Out

of the pattern a leopard arose.

Its eyes reflected the cloud of time.

An old small city is my soul,

such as it is.  The leopard watches

over it, her breathing and her heartbeat

syncopated.  I do not visit there as often

as I should: Work is elsewhere

in factory-towns of will.  When

the small city seems to call, I take

a road curved round a cliff.  Up there

sits the leopard.  The ledge is blue.

Arrived, I seek a sanguine plaza.  People

I have tried to be loiter there.  They slouch

and lean and gab.  They know me well.

Out of the rain in a baked café,

we share a meal.  We speak of the leopard,

become one person in the cloud of time.

hans ostrom circa 1990/2021