Like People, We Converse

 We're conversing like people

who converse. A walking
commentary. Opinions
flourish like weeds.

"The way things should be"
and "the way things used to be"
become the engines
that drive our words. What if we
spoke of things we never speak of?--

And grandma said, "I'd like crows
to turn lake blue one year." To which
grandpa said, "I was never eager
to fall in love because I thought of
it as just another chore."

Instead we keep familiar packages
of words moving down
conversational conveyor belts.
Because we're tired. Because
we're accustomed. Because
we get together only a couple
times a year and just want
to get through the occasions safely.

Nightmare, My Visitor

 At age 4, then lasting for years,

a short nightmare came to live with me.
(Sometimes it struck just as I nodded off.)

Me, in a dark oval space--
like a hollowed out eggplant.
I touched the pliant walls & then

a dark shape like a train engine
ran over me, erased me & I
startled myself awake to stay alive.

It visited less often down the years
& finally retired. Somewhere deep
in the mind's damp stone workshop,

a laborer toils to work through
something kept secret from me.
The translation of that bedeviling

dream lies in a vault down there.
I don't miss the nightmare. But if
it came back, I'd think, "Oh, it's you."

Holding on to Warmth

(nonet form: one less syllable per line)

Wind moaned so loud I thought it was you

on your side of our bed island.
Got up--temp was way below
freezing--freezing rain on
the way. Got back in bed.
Held on to you.
on to warmth,
our warmth,
love.

hans ostrom, 2022

"A Winter Twilight," by Angelina Weld Grimké

"Christmas Eve, Nearing Midnight--New York," by Langston Hughes

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

For Those Who Sleep With Pain

I have to sleep with pain tonight.

It seems to love me so.
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. 

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

A Real Mess

pink: wound, blossom, blouse, nipple, meat, cat-tongue

blue: jeans, eyes, ink, tattoo, smoke, bruise

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

hans ostrom 2022

Pollock

I saw an image of a Pollock

painting & thought well this is fun
& 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.

hans ostrom

She's Rising

She's rising in politics.

Filled with the yeast
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.

Hans Ostrom 2022

The Ornaments Convene

 A white angel, a black angel,

three black Santa Clauses. An angel
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.

hans ostrom 2022

"What Survives," by Rainer Maria Rilke