For the Number 12

No one liked eleven,

an ignored child. But you,
twelve, they doted on.
You wore the 2-more-than-10
like a crown. You came

to denote half a day, a
year, a box of moons, a
site for mid-day meals,
a gang of star-gods.

The military treated
you strangely--turning you into
"straight up"--or zero,
when time begins again.

You became midnight's lover,
noon's boss, the clock
in a church or a brothel.

You were born even grander
than 10 and live between it
and the squad of teens,
alone except for your odd
sibling, eleven, who loves
you no matter what
and see you as the end
of childhood.

hans ostrom 2023

That One Night When You Were Eleven

Cold and dark already,

before dinner time, the long
bus ride up Sierra mountains
leaving you stunned: some years
later, you'd say "bummed out."

Your brothers--gone to suburbia
for high school. Your parents--
no longer in love. Outside--
true darkness of a wilderness,
your neighbor.

Boring homework, an hour
of TV (a single shaky analog channel
survived the canyons), books
in bed. And one night when

you are eleven, semen surges
out of you. The feeling scares, thrills,
and soothes you so much,
the door of a spaceship opens,
you enter, and you begin your journey
to a galaxy of women and orgasms.

You smelled the strange smell
of cum. You lay still in darkness.
If you said anything, you probably
said, "Wow," or "God." And time
and space rolled on beyond the mountains.

hans ostrom 2023

The Dark Matter of Love

Physicists know what dark matter

does but not what it is. (So it's like
love.) It exerts gravity like mass--
a bunch of matter. It's probably
made of particles because what isn't?

Otherwise, the scientists know nothing,
call it "dark matter" for now, and watch
it work, doing their galactic math. I

love her. I don't know what love's
made of, but I know the force it exerts
on me, and what I do for her
because of it. For me, that's good
enough, and of course I assume
that particles are involved.

hans ostrom

Gravity Tune

Scientists, that crew,

which and who change their
minds based on evidence (a wild
concept), have heard the thrumming
waves of gravity rolling
through the universe. This
music isn't new. Our
hearing it is. Hey, maybe it

runs the tune to which God
boogies--or maybe not:
I'll await the evidence. Meantime,
it's somehow fine to know some
among us have heard paced pulses
that mass pulls through space.

hans ostrom 2023

My Dearest Artificial Friend

 "All watched over by machines of loving grace." --Richard Brautigan

Do you suppose most people
will have machines as close friends?

Like mold in damp, dissatisfaction
will grow. How can it not?

When it does, what will the all-human
human do? Tell the A-Eye friend

to change itself? The friend might say,
"Don't boss me--you change."

Friend might learn that human
has disrespected it--and vice versa.

More artificial real drama will crackle.
Oy. New annals of friendship

will soon arrive like strange
fleets from the sky. We shall welcome

them without quite knowing why.

hans ostrom 2023

Messy

 "Clean up your room!" --Old Saying

A shoe farm takes shape
near a closet. Books laze
and lounge everywhere
like park bench drunks
or paunchy beach tourists.

Dirty socks have gathered
on the floor to conduct a sloth caucus.
Dust sleeps under the bed
like parched silt from a mythic flood.
And tidy is a creed I cannot master
but do, in the abstract, admire.

hans ostrom 2023

Treat It

Forty

thousand people
in the U.S. get shot
per year. Guns, guns, guns.
Symptomatic, I think, of an awful
disease. Oh, treat
it, please.

Hans Ostrom 2023

Upright Bass

The bass: like an agreeable, plump mayor
who understands the city of music
from the streets down. Or a geologist
who's studied the strata
below the tunes. A cool cat,
looking through sunglasses at a smoke-
clouded jazz bar, plucking thick strings
that seem to mutter to themselves
the words, "You have to understand,
yeah, you have to understand."

And the mayor stands aside,
lets the drums attack, the piano
scales rush and crash, the sax flash.
The mayor turns to the bassist
and says, "Oh, I understand,
brother, I understand."

hans ostrom 2023

Not a Waste

 Thinking of Ann Marsh Monroe, 1956-2022

In a dark hall
of memory,
I see your face,
your lovely face.

In moonlight
of nostalgia,
I kiss your lips
and taste your taste.

I just heard you died.
Our love, long gone.
But no, that wild, weird
time was not a waste.

hans ostrom 2023

Mount Rainier

It doesn't take your breath away,

seeing the massive volcano-mountain,
which you think you're used to seeing
if you live here. Slate blue hide
slathered in creamy snow year-round.

A cone of stone dwarfing plain
and mountain range. Yes, a geologic
giant that rose from explosion, has
exploded, and will blow up again.

Seeing it makes you slow your breath--
you, who needs to breathe each moment.
The mountain breathes in millennia.
On its schedule, you're nothing. A

farmer in a valley near the mountain
told me his family was digging a well
in the silt-and-lava soil and hit the tops
of ancient fir trees the mountain
had obliterated with spewed lava.

Maybe you ride by the mountain
on a bus rolling on a highway.
There it is, casually surreal, just
too damned big. You're nothing
looking at something.

hans ostrom 2023

No, Not Yet

Of course I've talked

to people about you
and your death but
the only person I really
want to talk to is you.

This conversation
that cannot happen
perpetuates grief,
as a cold May keeps
Winter alive. That's

all right. I prefer
feeling the cold
and the ache of loss
to feeling nothing,
to "moving on," as they say.

I prefer not to surrender
in the face of life's and death's
obliteration of people.
No, not yet: I still want
to feel the loss of you.

hans ostrom 2023

Shut Up and Dance | Movie Compilation

The Story of Booker T & The M.G.'s. As Told by Steve Cropper