THIS TRAIN - ROY ORBISON, JOHNNY CASH, CARL PERKINS, JERRY LEE LEWIS (FR...

Stax Volt Tour 1967 feat. Otis Redding, Booker T. & The MGs, Sam & Dave

"love is more thicker than forget," by e.e. cummings

Staring Becomes the Fourth Line

A corner of a ceiling:

could be in any squarish
building anywhere on Earth.

Three lines intersect, dissolve
into a point. Maybe where you
are now, you find a corner to see.

Seeing, you might get transfixed,
the familiar becoming strange.
Shade versus light. Axioms

versus wood, plaster, stone,
paint,,,, Or: just that thing
which staring or even

imaginging in darkness
can do: hold your mind, bind
it; tug, coax, seduce it. Staring,
sight becomes the fourth line.

hans ostrom 2025

Preposterous

This planet onto which women

birth us: it's lit by an explosion

we call Sun. I think about

how that statement's parts

are all unlikely. Preposterious.

As is the visual, aural sign,

"preposterous" & the systems

it belongs to. Ask why any 

of this, any of us, occurred,

and I think if we're honest,

we must confess, "We cannot

know--not ever fully, all the way."

hans ostrom 2025

"An April Day," by Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.

Cats of Few Words

 "'The Meow Talk' app analyzes cat sounds against some 40 million 'meows'

in its database to suss out the meaning.'" --Emily Joshou, The Paw Print,
2025, p. 50

Minor meow: compact complaint, faint inquiry, note of ennui--
or all three. Brief

throated grumble: not urgent, it's just that things
could be a bit better.

Bared-teeth MEOW: Now! Hungry! Angry! Fusion
of sign- and sound-language. Wild,

whiplash yowl: Fight. Claws out. Neck-hair up.
Alarm. Alert the press! Call my lawyer!

Constricted throat-hiss. Sepentine. Next, claws
will rake. Meat and blood. Tactical sound-spear.

The yawn-meow, perhaps finished with groan-and
sigh. That cat's got those low-down napping blues.

For milennia, with such few sounds, this terse
lingo, cats have domesticated us.
Trained and bossed us. Been equal
if not superior to us. In each feline-infused
abode, cats sustain a coup d'etat,
lay down Cat Law.

hans ostrom 2025

'The most economically illiterate speech I have ever heard', analyst say...

"Late Plane," by Roger Ilsley

"Considering It All," by Roger Illsley

Simple Tools

A hefty stone--maybe blue,

gray, or tan--that fits in one
hand. Used to pound into the ground
a stake, or to hurl at a child-
threatening snake.

A stick, sturdy, with which
to pry up a stone or dig a root.
Or to knock fruit
off high branches. Or to jab
at a fish (oh, hungry, you wish
it would work.). Or to lean
on lightly as you walk; and walk.

Dried grass or vine
to use to entwine and braid
as you craft a basket
to be laid, laden, at the feet
of someone hungry.

hans ostrom 2025

"Old Padre," by Roger Illsley

The Girl Nicknamed Mouse

Yeah, you were 20, sitting on a bench

on a balmy Central Valley evening, breezes
puffing in from the Sacramento Delta.

You tell the girl nicknamed "Mouse"
"I love you" and she responds, "I like you."
She will go on to marry the guy

you work with in the dorm's cafeteria--he'll
become a surgeon. It's the way it works,
you realize. Have to move on.

She went to boarding school
with the daughter of the Philipinnes
dictator. You didn't. Anyway,

after the love-like exchange, she lights up
a Marlboro, you two have a nice chat, &
then you leave for your pot-washing shift.

hans ostrom 2025