Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Monday, December 19, 2022
Office at Night
image: Edward Hopper's painting "Office at Night," 1940
It's 1940, and Pearl Harbor
has yet to wake Americans up
to historical catastrophe. City lights
illuminate her, voluptuous in blue
but ignored by the pale manager
droning out his own letter, which
she typed perfectly. It's Friday,
after five. Her desk is cleared,
she's ready to slam the black
steel drawer on another week
and meet the gals for a drink,
go home, kick her black heels
off, free her body from fashion
unclip the hose and roll them
off, strip the rest, and
sink nude into hot suds.
She stares down her olive
drab boss, whose wife's holding
his dinner at home and wobbling
under a headache. The office
is running out of air.
hans ostrom 2022
Sunday, December 18, 2022
For Those Who Sleep With Pain
I'd like to break things off.
Between my not-quite sleeping
and not-exactly waking,
I'll stumble down an alley
in my mind to get way
from pain. I'll ask a diner line-cook
"Where's the moon tonight?"
She'll crush her smoke out
then say, "Where it's always been,
my friend, trying to get the the Earth's
attention.
At alley's end,
I'll walk out to a loud and crashing
avenue, a city's slamming noise.
The Lady from the Fog will walk
up--say, "Time for you to go to bed?"
And there I'll be, pain kissing me,
and hugging me, throbbing, throbbing.
I'll take some meds, which don't do much.
I have to sleep with pain tonight.
I know I'm not alone. Around the world,
millions, millions, have to sleep with pain.
We have to sleep with pain.
Friday, December 16, 2022
Galleries of Grit
Desert winds compulsively
sculpt sand. Abstract shapes
rise up, find edges, façades,
contours--then serve up all
they are unto the sculpting force.
The cosmic tourists--sun and stars
and moon--oversee these galleries
of grit, where place is art.
air's genius, and illusion
of form never tires ore expires.
hans ostrom 2022
Thursday, December 15, 2022
A Real Mess
brown: dirt, shoe, shit, hair, nipple, chair
red: blood, light, rose, lipstick, sign, ember
yellow: beach, hair, flame, rose, peach, corn
green: eyes, scarf, valley, mold, tree, broccoli
white: phantom-race, chalk, panties, smoke, paper, cream
black: eyeshade, ink, shoe shadow, hair, cavern
hurl it all, hurl it all I say at a canvas &
make a real mess: the world
Pollock
& then thought no, not about
chaos but primal ordering
forces. Sky-blue is pretty
but red pulls eyes away from it
then black pulls red away &
I was satisfied. My gaze
made its way through undergrowth
in a wood, no one there to chop it down.
She's Rising
of what they say It Takes.
Rising in politics,
for what purpose, she
doesn't know (though she
pretends to), except that
she likes being lifted
by the lifters, placed
by the placers.
She's rising in politics
toward higher office, well
above the People, whatever
they are. She speaks, she
greets, she gestures. Agrees
with certain persons, word-cuts
others. She's rising
with her husband and children,
who are photographed.
She became a politician,
a creature of seems, a
player of positions, dull
drama with consequences.
She falls in line, meets-with,
speaks--providing a mouth
for the ventriloquists. She flies
and of course, lies.
She rises, a balloon above
the people, who get smaller
and smaller.
The Ornaments Convene
made of a toilet paper cylinder,
child's cardboard craft. Ornaments
made of beer-can aluminum,
glass ornaments from Aunt Nevada,
who loaded the mincemeat pie
with whiskey every year. A blue
sphere or two, survivors
from Christmases way-past
when Ma insisted on her blue tree
every year. A pink motorcycle,
a wooden elf who jumps
like a Cossack dancer
when you pull a string. A horse,
a cat, a crystal icicle. Red bird,
yellow bird, peacock. . . . This
is an annual reunion of ornaments,
who approve the minutes
from last year, chat while we're asleep,
stay cool with the LED lights
on an artificial tree;
who serve as metonyms
for clusters of nostalgia, loss,
and tattered joy. What about Jesus?
Well, he's there implicitly in
the eclectic hospitality.
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Friday, December 2, 2022
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Newborn
old person's seaweed hair
fingers thin as tendrils
accepts odors, sounds, dry-
warmth. hears its own gurgling
cry. does it yet ask why?