Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Dancing Freely Away From the Fire
Phone-videos show
women waving hijabsin 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
Monday, September 26, 2022
Monday, September 19, 2022
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Some Fable Days
Sometimes I fall into a fable state,
human-into-animal. Once I walked heavilyaway 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
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
More Popular Than the Beatles
When you visit an abbey,
remember to ask to meetthe 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 liesa way of
moving with/under
well chosen clothes
hans ostrom 2022
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