Names and Us

All of it seemed to have been named before

we arrived—everything from

milk to mountains, trowels

to trapezoids, angst to alliteration;
also blue-bottle flies, faith,
obsidian, and warts.

We did what we could.  We
morphed words so they labeled
nothing except pleasure our mouths
and minds felt saying, hearing:
Bibble the lubble, Mr. Nubble.

We named imaginary friends,
including Princess Her and Eddie.
What was not a fort (a collapsed
shack) we called Fort, what was
not food (mud), Pie. 

They sent us to school to study names
systematically.  They told
stories about their lives.  Names
recurred in these tales.  We listened.
Invisible emotional currents began
to buzz our psyches.  Later we
might name such currents Fear or
Loneliness, knowing such naming to be
not enough. We began to know
and respect the Unnamable, which
seemed to be where all the action was.

Society manufactured alps
of new things & advertising
name them--pills, cars, gadgets,
political cults, on and on. We
learned and bought.

We grew malevolently bored with names
we’d known a long time, with things
to which these names were attached.  Our
world seemed choked by names.
We named our condition Life.  That
was a mistake.

ostrom 2022

Billiards

 

Or pool, as we called it:

sticks and stones. A scrum
of spheres explodes on a
Victorian green. Then all settles
into chalking the rapier,
surveying the solar system,
and hiring geometry to send
numbered balls to Hell.

Kisses and rails and playing it
safe. Running the table til the 8
of noir sits alone in bright light
like the planet Pluto. The loser-
to-be stands stoically. After

the stirring crack
of the break, my interest
always waned. Women
at the bar drew my focus
from English draw, banking,
and the sour spirit of incompetent
competition. A game for
aristocrats, with their cigars
and brandy, for me occurred
on warped tables in obscure
side-pockets of the American West.

I can't recall the best shot I ever
made, but I know it came from luck,
not skill. Years later, teaching
a class on the Harlem Renaissance,
I found Jacob Lawrence's rendering
of a pool room. More luck.

hans ostrom 2022

Elegy for Robert Bly (1926-2021)

Flying white hair, cravats, vests,

panchos. Sing-speaking your poems
as you played the lute. Sixties protest
poems, great leaps to Spanish and French
surrealism, a carom north to Friends, You Drank
Some Darkness Swedes. A farm-boy
Norwegian who went to Harvard (and
dated Adrienne Rich once), a troubadour
who hustled a living on the college tour
but would never get stuck in Swamp Tenure.

Once when I saw you read, a student got
up and left, and you said, "Where are you
going--to masturbate?" You were like

one of those friends I hated to go to bars
with--you liked to start fights (without fists.)

Bless you for trying to unharden the arteries
of American poetry, for riffing like a standup
comedian, for making poems explode
and burying Modernists. Then came
your "Men's Movement," well meant
but tin-eared, and Iron John, a Cinderella
for men. After I became a prof,

you came to campus and got the Methodists
dancing to a Brazilian chant. We walked
across campus and you couldn't help but
skewer other poets. When we parted,
you asked, "Are you fond of me, Hans?"
"Yes," I said, "I'm fond of you, Robert." Needy,
like a three-year old. Brilliant, like a mad
scientist. Big hearted--in defiance of cold
fathers everywhere. Well done and--
literally--good show, Robert. I see you
there, dancing on the moon.

Buttons

Click on the Submit button.

*

Button up.
Leave the top button unbuttoned.
Never button the bottom button.

*

He has his finger on the button.
The red button.

*
She hit the return right on the button.

*

If you could just, if you could just
unbutton it a little bit and oh
a little bit more.

*

Yes, right there. That's
it right there. Oh. Oh yes.

*

I never thought I'd miss
the metal buttons on Levi
jeans. I don't. Except now
that I made myself think
of them, I do. I see myself
buttoning up. The first
button down there, not easy.
And if a woman were
to unbutton those jeans
buttons, well . . . .

*

Under the trees, yes,
the button mushrooms arose
like blobs of ghostly paint.

*

Many dolls and sociopaths
have buttons for eyes.

*

For some reason, as she waited
for the bus, she thought
of all the lost buttons
in the world, sinking
into soil or stuck
in cracks of pavement,
wood, and concrete.

*

The extra buttons
sewn on a garment wait
like tiny moons in reserve
for a sky that might need them.

*

When I am invited
to unbutton a woman's blouse
or dress, I feel like a primate,
and I wait for the inevitable
giggle. Eventually, we get there.

Politics at the Carnival

A political scientist once recommended the book, Constructing the Political Spectacle, by Murray Edelman (1988). It seems to be a book that constantly applies. 

Oh, the problems

over there in that city

where buildings sag

and people collide,

stuporous from toil

and streaming their lives. 

Here at the carnival,

all lights and salt and sugar,

our leaders and those who

would replace them

have slathered on

the clown makeup.

They ride the wheels

and loops above. They

shout, "We'll save the city!"

We don't believe them

but we cheer.

hans ostrom 2022

One by Neruda

 "Leaning Into the Afternoon," by Pablo Neruda, master of the surrealist love poem--reading and video, short poem:

"Leaning into the Afternoon"

Annie Moon

 Song--Roger Illsley composed the music for some lyrics I wrote & performed & recorded the song for youtube. Kind of a throw-back, first-love ballad. We had fun with it. 

Annie Moon

Quotation from "A Man For All Seasons," a play by Robert Bolt

 “If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we'd live like animals or angels in the happy land that /needs/ no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all... why then perhaps we /must/ stand fast a little --even at the risk of being heroes.”

― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

Richard Eberhart's "The Eclipse"

 Fine six-line poem from Richard Eberhart--"The Eclipse." Recorded reading and video:

"The Eclipse"

A Poem About House Guests

 It's by Marianne Moore and conveys her father's philosophy toward visitors to his home.  Short--reading and video:

Marianne Moore poem

Garbage Mountain

 A man drives a long yellow tractor

across a mountain of garbage,

kneading the sickly sweet heap

all day. White gulls fall upon the feast

in shifts. What things have shown

themselves from the churning dream

& surprised the driver over the years

of riding the groaning diesel dinosaur?

Since we throw everything away,

anything could be inside

the writhing, slippery loaf

that cooks in sun heat and cools

in rain. Anything.

A Fine Poem by James Wright

 A short mystical poem by James Wright (1927-1980). One of those poems just to enjoy without pressing too hard for an explication. Text from allpoetry.com. Short video + reading:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_SeCuSrtmA

"You're in Wichita (And I Am Not),"

 I always wanted to write an old-fashioned "country" song with spare lyrics, so I gave it a go and came up with "You're in Wichita (And I Am Not)." with assistance from Roger Illsley, who wrote some music for it and performed and recorded it for Youtube:

"You're in Wichita"