"Mademoiselle, Where Are Your Clothes?" by Roger Illsley

Hey, Grace, Say Grace

May I have your cursory

attention, please. Green peas,
brown beans, and golden corn
attend our blue plates. All
we have is today: grace.
Bon appetit. Let's eat!

hans ostrom 2025

Watercolor

The painter sharpened blurs,

smudged lines, herded blends,
let pigment and water dance
in cosutme to visual elliptical
tunes. That is not a poplar,
that is not a house, nor is
that a field! Yet, once wetly,
now dried, they seem so very well.

hans ostrom 2025

Hot Day, Cold Watermelon

   Pink tongue (the center)

tastes. Sweet. Around it the mouth
  praises water: cold!

hans ostrom 2025

Homage to e.e. cummings

 (1894-1962)

in rightnow
     our cummings and go-wings
buzz with fuzz
                 of 'lektric nerves,
   shocking swerves.

one and all ta-morrows
   are notyet, & egret
& sunset know that
        to-be is the tiny now-here
in which we're alive. whobody
            knows
when we-you-&-I
                    may vanish-go,,,
ya know?

hans ostrom 2025

Anthem for a Nation That Doesn't Exist

 Our home is Earth.

We know its worth

is more than we

can say.

We know we're small,

a speck in All.

Let modesty

hold sway.

Humanity--

that is our We.

May we be good

today.

May we live right

today. 

hans ostrom 2025

Triolet for a Cold Spring Day

It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.

We felt that we had earned some easy balm.
I hunch inside my coat beside the bay.
It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.
The wind slaps boats and outlaws calm.
Whether the Lord's our shepherd, I can't sy.
It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.
We felt that we had earned some easy balm.

hans ostrom 2025

RFK Jr. Is Dumb | Lewis Black's Rantcast clips

A Tale of Two Farmers!

The Manhattan Transfer - How High The Moon w/ Ella Fitzgerald - The Grammys

The Six-Drawer Bureau

In a room of this rented,

creaky, tired house, a thick
brown six-drawer bureau
stoutly stares at me. Although
made mostly of empty space
(modern physics claims), it

convinces me of its reality.
One drawer contains my socks
and T-shirts: thus have I put
my faith in illusion. Reality

takes me seriously: a bus
will crush if I get in its way.
The weather's cold today.

I retreated to this room to rest,
to read, to think, to scribble.
I think I'm probably a real
illusion to myself. I think I'll nap.

hans ostrom 2025

World's Worst Spy

I would have been the worst of spies:

undisciplined, distracted--staring at a lovely
woman while I was s'posed to follow
another nation's spook. Forgetting codes
and passwords, and reading poetry
instead of pilfered documents.

I prob'ly would be tempted
to offer an exchange of knowledge
with the enemy, so that each side
would know exactly what the other
knew, and knew about the other.

This would cut down on expenses
And maybe make the world safer: Do
you scoff at this? I scoff. It's not the way
the agnonistic world works.

Too often I ask of ways
the agonistic world works: is
this trouble really called for?
Aren't there simpler ways?
I would have been the worst
of spies. I fear if I had been a spy,
my own side would have had me
shot.

hans ostrom 2025

Triolet for a Cold Spring Day

It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.

We felt that we had earned some easy balm.
I hunch inside my coat beside the bay.
It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.
The wind slaps boats and outlaws calm.
Whether the Lord's our shepherd, I can't sy.
It's such a brusque and chilly late-Spring day.
We felt that we had earned some easy balm.

hans ostrom 2025