Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Some Fable-Days
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Some Fable-Days
For ten minutes one afternoon, I became
an elephant. I walked heavily away from
where I work, wagging my heavy head.
Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
sad ass. On another day, I became a cat:
Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.
But I'd lost the topic, and word-like noises
from her mouth might as well have been
red jello for all the sense they made to me.
So I stared. I was Cat--there and not there,
dozing in the pride of my mind, not hungry
and therefore supremely disinterested.
I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a lovely mess of my underground
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Some fable-days, I tell you, are often
just what a human being needs--to stay human.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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Some Fable-Days
For ten minutes one afternoon, I became
an elephant. I walked heavily away from
where I work, wagging my heavy head.
Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
sad ass. On another day, I became a cat:
Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.
But I'd lost the topic, and word-like noises
from her mouth might as well have been
red jello for all the sense they made to me.
So I stared. I was Cat--there and not there,
dozing in the pride of my mind, not hungry
and therefore supremely disinterested.
I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a lovely mess of my underground
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Some fable-days, I tell you, are often
just what a human being needs--to stay human.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
No God/Yes God
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No God/Yes God
No God. Physics is all. Yes
God. Yes fathom God. God
is no dice-player. Pascal will
take your wager. No God,
they say, they say atheism is
the good news, if so: yikes.
Despair, respond, no God.
Yes God, repair, despair, Oh
God? Flawed God, no God.
God fails the test, their test,
they say, no intervention into
bad. Yes God, who knows--
who knows? If no God, then
know No. If yes God, then
never the when, yes to an
infinite go, and faith in yes--
which is often a faith in I-do-
not now know, you know?
Copyright 2011
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No God/Yes God
No God. Physics is all. Yes
God. Yes fathom God. God
is no dice-player. Pascal will
take your wager. No God,
they say, they say atheism is
the good news, if so: yikes.
Despair, respond, no God.
Yes God, repair, despair, Oh
God? Flawed God, no God.
God fails the test, their test,
they say, no intervention into
bad. Yes God, who knows--
who knows? If no God, then
know No. If yes God, then
never the when, yes to an
infinite go, and faith in yes--
which is often a faith in I-do-
not now know, you know?
Copyright 2011
Future-Perfect Sighing
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Future-Perfect Sighing
Name it rain again.
Then sigh. Love your life
if you can. Pain, worry, fear,
and want make that hard to do
sometimes. Obviously.
Everywhere people are learning
the expression for "rain" in a
language or two different from
their native one. They are repeating
and repeating the expression like rain.
Sometimes these people are loving
their lives. Sometimes they will have sighed.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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Future-Perfect Sighing
Name it rain again.
Then sigh. Love your life
if you can. Pain, worry, fear,
and want make that hard to do
sometimes. Obviously.
Everywhere people are learning
the expression for "rain" in a
language or two different from
their native one. They are repeating
and repeating the expression like rain.
Sometimes these people are loving
their lives. Sometimes they will have sighed.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Monday, April 25, 2011
Concerning Mischief
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Concerning Mischief
Once my wife invited a friend over
to our place, which had a narrow back yard
full of tall laurels. She was showing
the friend the yard through the large
kitchen window. I was in the yard
with a baseball bat, looking at
a hornets' nest in one of the laurels.
The nest: that beautiful gray menacing
mache mansion. I hit the nest with
the bat, I'm not sure why, and
the hornets poured out, a squadron
going after me. They hammered
my neck and head. Now a figure
in an animated cartoon, I ran toward
the house and, desperate, got in there.
The two women looked at me. I put
down the bat and panted. The women
didn't say anything. Hornets were hitting
the kitchen window. Later, my wife
asked, "Why do you do such things?"
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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Concerning Mischief
Once my wife invited a friend over
to our place, which had a narrow back yard
full of tall laurels. She was showing
the friend the yard through the large
kitchen window. I was in the yard
with a baseball bat, looking at
a hornets' nest in one of the laurels.
The nest: that beautiful gray menacing
mache mansion. I hit the nest with
the bat, I'm not sure why, and
the hornets poured out, a squadron
going after me. They hammered
my neck and head. Now a figure
in an animated cartoon, I ran toward
the house and, desperate, got in there.
The two women looked at me. I put
down the bat and panted. The women
didn't say anything. Hornets were hitting
the kitchen window. Later, my wife
asked, "Why do you do such things?"
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Sympathy: A Rant
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Sympathy: A Rant
So there's this video out there of a dog
in Chile that gets hit by a car on a freeway
and is lying on the asphalt, traffic coming on, tons
of rolling steel, and another dog on the
other side of the freeway sees what's going
on, makes its way across traffic to the median,
gets over that, and with its teeth and paws,
pulls to safety the other dog, which survives.
So where we are now in this stupid muddy
pit of greed, the U.S., is that we can't even agree
to maintain social serves that are so basic--
are forms of prudent, active sympathy--
that at least one dog in South America can
instinctively master the concept and act accordingly
better than we can. Pooling resources so that
everyone's all right--fed, clothed, sheltered, doctored--
is not conservative, socialist, or liberal: it is really
so basic it is canine. A question is can the citizens
of the wealthiest large nation (and their so-called
representatives) be at least as smart,
sympathetic, and effective as a Chilean dog?
If the answer is yes, then get this American house
in order. If the answer is no, then the nation
is lying on a freeway, tons of steel onrushing.
So ends the sympathetic rant. Bowww-wowwww.
Copyright 2011
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Sympathy: A Rant
So there's this video out there of a dog
in Chile that gets hit by a car on a freeway
and is lying on the asphalt, traffic coming on, tons
of rolling steel, and another dog on the
other side of the freeway sees what's going
on, makes its way across traffic to the median,
gets over that, and with its teeth and paws,
pulls to safety the other dog, which survives.
So where we are now in this stupid muddy
pit of greed, the U.S., is that we can't even agree
to maintain social serves that are so basic--
are forms of prudent, active sympathy--
that at least one dog in South America can
instinctively master the concept and act accordingly
better than we can. Pooling resources so that
everyone's all right--fed, clothed, sheltered, doctored--
is not conservative, socialist, or liberal: it is really
so basic it is canine. A question is can the citizens
of the wealthiest large nation (and their so-called
representatives) be at least as smart,
sympathetic, and effective as a Chilean dog?
If the answer is yes, then get this American house
in order. If the answer is no, then the nation
is lying on a freeway, tons of steel onrushing.
So ends the sympathetic rant. Bowww-wowwww.
Copyright 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
The Idea of Aging
The Idea of Aging
We're very young when
we first know what
getting old is to mean:
that moment in childhood
when we learn not by choice
the difference between
what we just do and what
we must do.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
We're very young when
we first know what
getting old is to mean:
that moment in childhood
when we learn not by choice
the difference between
what we just do and what
we must do.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Bold Talk
Bold Talk
Bold talk is the best kind. It
may be why talk came to mind.
Once fitted with it, talk I mean,
we could just sit and make stuff
up, say dark is sun, sky is heaven,
lie like the skin of a chameleon--
a way to feel safer, blend in when
we seemed to ourselves to be
different from all other creatures.
Bold talk remains one of the main
features of fear, confusion, despair.
There is no end to these, and no end
to talking boldly, which represents
much but not boldness. Incrementally
grows the force of talk in all its
forms, the Earth now wrapped in
electrons saturated with our telling
and our selling: endless
effluvium of conversation.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Bold talk is the best kind. It
may be why talk came to mind.
Once fitted with it, talk I mean,
we could just sit and make stuff
up, say dark is sun, sky is heaven,
lie like the skin of a chameleon--
a way to feel safer, blend in when
we seemed to ourselves to be
different from all other creatures.
Bold talk remains one of the main
features of fear, confusion, despair.
There is no end to these, and no end
to talking boldly, which represents
much but not boldness. Incrementally
grows the force of talk in all its
forms, the Earth now wrapped in
electrons saturated with our telling
and our selling: endless
effluvium of conversation.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Thursday, April 14, 2011
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