Friday, November 8, 2024
Thursday, November 7, 2024
The Limits of Anxiety
Anxiety feel like breathless
pressure in the chest,a fluttering suddely of crazed
birds. Anxiety morphs
into dread, shakes the bars
of its cell for help.
Low charcoal clouds
move in, park just above
the head, which wants
to love hope but can't.
Anxiety's gaze wants
to weld itself to a dark pit,
a kind of sick security.
But it is nothing, anxiety
is nothing compared to what
the tortured imprisoned,
the constantly bombed and
displaced, must feel always,
even as they sleep, if they sleep.
hans ostrom 2024
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
From Time to Time
The phrase "from time to time"
makes my mind see stepping stones
set wide-apart. Circles of light
on stages. Old pulpy catalogues
and sports newsprint pages,
imploded miners' shacks,
and burial mounds, retired profs
(strangers now on what they'd thought
of as "their" campuses) taking
hard steps into a library. "From
time to time" makes me sad,
forlorn, and blue--but glad
to be alive today though feeling still
a chill on back and shoulders as Earth
spins me toward my personal last time.
hans ostrom 2024
Saturday, November 2, 2024
Without Shadow
My shadow left me for a day.
It joined a general shade.In sun I looked down on the walk
In vain to find a silouette made.
Without my shadow, I felt sad
And wondered did I still exist?
Did light sail through my body now?
Was I insubstantial as a mist?
My shadow, it returned at last
And soldered itself to me.
My shadow proves my substance, yes--
It places and displaces--see?
hans ostrom 2024
Northern Hemispheric November
Oh, November--
my bĂȘte noire,cabinet of cold rain,
sinister capitan of snow,
avant garde of Winter,
tree-stripper, soil-sealer,
gloom-injector, glum puritan.
Oh, November, neither
enemy nor friend, just a
doom-inducer, a sour neighbor,
a moldy blanket, a day-cutter,
a sun-shrouder: you
are a head-cold kind of month.
hans ostrom 2024
Friday, November 1, 2024
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