"Tenorman," by Jack Kerouac

Dancing Freely Away From the Fire

Phone-videos show

women waving hijabs
in the air as they dance
toward a fire, throw
the cloth in, dance away,
lifting their arms freely,
their black hair whirling.

Apparently these adult women
don't want to wear the hijabs.
In which case I would not want
them to wear them
and would feel like a combo
of bully and clown presuming
to tell them what to wear. Me,

I'm an American, looking on,
knowing the Iranian-American
history and thus not eager
to shove swaggering opinions around.

I'm an American married
to a woman with deep Sicilian roots,
so I've had refresher-courses
on not telling women what
to do. And I'm a human being

who knows what exhilarating
freedom looks like when I
see it on a phone-video:
that's enough for me. Naively,
a spectator with no effect,
I hope this is the start of
something big for Persian women.

My Father Wading Toward Me

My father was from that generation of men

who always wore a hat outside.

After he died, I dreamt repeatedly
that he was wading up a small river
toward me, looking to me for help.

We didn't speak. I feared I was
failing him. He wasn't wearing a hat.

Where was his hat?

hans ostrom 2022

"All Hallows," by Louise Elisabeth Glück

"The Waning Moon," by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"True," by Charles Bukowski

"Love is a Fire that Burns Unseen," by Luís Vaz de Camões

"I, Too," Beneath Your Moon, Almighty Sex," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 Brief reading/video of poem:

Millay poem/video

Some Fable Days

 Sometimes I fall into a fable state,

human-into-animal. Once I walked heavily
away from my job, wagging my heavy head:
elephant. Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
wrinkled buttocks. I could have turned
and run over them. Didn't. Another day--this:

Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.

But I'd lost the topic. Wordish noises
from her mouth might as well have been
wind. I was Cat--dozing in the pride
of my mind, not hungry, a little
sleepy, there and not there. Someone
elbowed me when I started to purr--
and before I hissed.

I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a worried mess of my mental
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Dog, snake, the classic fox....

I tell you, friend, some fable days are sometimes
what I need--to stay human.

(revision) Hans Ostrom 2022

More Popular Than the Beatles

When you visit an abbey,

remember to ask to meet
the Abbess, not the Abyss.

Maybe Hell is the Abyss Mall:
Over a trillion shops, all of them empty.
Hey, they say Jesus, he came back

from the Abyss. I guess he did.
The Comeback Kid--
more popular than the Beatles, for sure.

hans ostrom 2022

Well, Languages?

well, languages, you surround

the world as seas and oceans do,

so where will you take your poets today,
as they get into their homemade boats,

each anchored in a private bay? they will
sail and row into  your currents, tides, and storms.

languages, let them find the words they need
before they go back to their shores and take

what words they found, arrange and rearrange
them to compose the poems made out of them,
                                                  made out of you.

hans ostrom 2022

Her

slightly crooked grin

bright eyes wise

radar for lies
a way of
moving with/under
well chosen clothes

hans ostrom 2022

Entrepreneur

Think of this poem as a new business.

Welcome! How may I help you?

We're running a special sale
on images, including a swollen
big toe, the variegated fur of a
domestic cat, and a freckle
on a woman's lower back. Will
that be cash or credit?

Alas, this business fails
to turn a profit. Isn't that
just like poetry? --Always
thinking of itself and not
the bottom line. What

was Andrew Carnegie's
favorite poem?... Oh, dear:
Thugs sent by this poem's
venture-capital investors
have arrived. (I lied to them,
like a poet.) They want
their money back, plus
the vig. We must escape.
Thank you for your business!
Let's meet up later in a bar--

a bar. Now there's a real
business: trading vessels
of distilled and brewed liquids
for cash, listening to failed
entrepreneurs--and poets
of every kind--tell their woebegotten
tales, wiping the gleaming
dark bar clean. "Last call!"

hans ostrom 2022