Plausible

Wind so hard the lake-surface bristles, and because the word
Saturday appears above a box representing a date, the person,
categorized as a man, is not somewhere else but here, for
even in so called off hours everyone is regulated. He's

hunched inside a coat, hearing wind so hard it whistles
through reed stalks and he notes he can't distinguish
between a vaguely recalled sadness and this day's
specific one, as if all pumice-gray clouds were one smear

across one sky he's lived under, wind so hard his ears
ache, and he knows eventually he'll do something called
"the sensible thing," and his legs will move him toward
something called a "house," but he like standing in muck

near the whipped up lake because standing here seems
like the one thing that hasn't been arbitrarily labeled,
wind so hard now his nose runs, and he mutters,
"whatever you say," which encapsulates what he's felt

like saying to everything from STOP-signs to tweets
to good-mornings to cityscapes and his own name
and all the names for things, including life--life?
Whatever you say, wind so hard it blows a bird

sideways and the man's chilled deep and grateful
for that and walks buffeted back toward sensible
things, wind so hard it's almost but not quite
made life plausible today.


hans ostrom 2016

The Advertisers

They went to a lot of trouble
because they didn't know any better.
We speak of advertisers, decades
ago.  They crafted heavy metal
signs in the shape of a flying
horse (petrol). They made radio
and TV commercials as subtle
as pile-drivers. They showed
stag films to unsavory clients,
lots of smoke and leg. A steak,
potatoes, beans, martinis, and
pie a la mode every night:
deserving of a medal, maybe.
In retro-spectro-vision, I guess
the marketeers were as obvious,
naive, and simple as us, their
targets. Because they were targets, too.



hans ostrom 2016

Wish Lists for the Dead

You know there's these online wish-lists
for people about to get married.
Toaster (1). Champagne glasses (12).
That sort of thing. A lot of pre-newlyweds
just want cash. Why did I just write "just"?

Anyway, I think there should be wish-lists
for people who've just died. Some things
with far more granularity than a will
or a trust or a box of photos. Bouquet
for Giselle (1). Fuck-you to cousin
Rexx (3). Trees planted (1,345,238).
Bourbon-and-branch-water for
Dolores (3). Kind word (1).


hans ostrom 2016

I Demand to Know

A dragonfly, wearing standard-issue
lead goggles, downshifts its wings,
which when still look like foggy
cracked windows. Resting,

this dragonfly pulses. Its curved
blue tail befriended a scorpion
once during a vacation in Mexico.

I demand to know
what this dragonfly thinks.


hans ostrom 2016

The Fiddler's Response

The absorption of music operates
individualistically, in spite of
communal structures, hitocracies,
group performance, and ubiquitous
corporate dispensers. Thus

was the violin-player in a four-
person acoustic jazz band induced
by the present music and her
personal compunctions to play
with her hair, twisting it with
one finger, then looking at it

as if it were a clue; this, as
she waited (was she waiting?)
for a guitarist to complete
his wailing interval.


* "wailing interval"--sometimes
used by Duke Ellington to refer to
an instrumental solo


hans ostrom 2016

Mutant Pop Song

I don't want to see you tonight.
Baby. I want to see you sometime
today. Let's say between 1:00 and
2:40 in the afternoon. I want
to sniff your abdomen.  Baby.

I would walk many kilometers
to be with you. Just not all at once.
Plus you're the one with the car.
Oh, oh Baby. 

Cool Reaper

We who will be harvested
are understandably grim
about the prospect. That
doesn't mean the reaper--
constant change--is grim.

The reaper's merely
impersonal, although our
misery is not. That
coolness chills the blade
and menaces the hopeful,
who are hopeless.


hans ostrom 2016

Nevada

A human view has it that
a city of casinos and libertines
will be the center of sin
while piety flourishes on
the sagebrush plateau. God
probably thinks otherwise,
not being human. Not
opposite, just otherwise.


hans ostrom 2016

Faith Is Bulbs

Faith? Don't speak to me of Allah, Yahweh,
Jahova, Christ, Moses, da Buddha-man, Zeus,
Sky Papa, Earth Mama--or any of it.

I'm no atheist. I'm a modest gardener,
vegetables and flowers, who in Spring
is online-ordering tulip bulbs to plant

in October and to witness the following
Spring. That is faith.


hans ostrom 2016

Mutant Country-Song

When it all falls apart
and I'm lying on my deathbed,
I hope the Lord'll forgive me for
what flashes through my head.

"I hope someone's getting laid,"
for example. Or "I hate Nashville
worse than bosses." Or "I don't
think God gives two shits about
your politics--or your religion."
And, of course, "Ouch, that hurts
like a motherfu--."

[Docking complete: begin transfer
of pickup truck (old), farm, train,
mama, daddy, pretty girl, "darlin'", 
we, they, goodbye, dancin', 
hungover, fishin', gospel.]

I hope the Lord'll forgive me
for what may flash through my head
when everything falls apart and
I'm lying on my deathbed--or

on a couch, a highway, grass,
the crapper (Elvis!), a stretcher,
or a woman (darlin').


hans ostrom 2016

The Director of the Center

He's the Director of the Center for Let's
Wait and See. He's been worn down by
urgency. His social network includes a few
remaining pragmatic empiricists, resigned
skeptics, and anti-dualists. the CLWS
believes culture's terribly noisy, even
for the deaf, and maliciously distracting.
CLWS does all it can, which isn't a lot,

to promote counter-measures.
For there's so much drama
and so little repair,
not to mention
thoughtful original design. The
Director chooses not to whine.


hans ostrom 2016

Curve of Life

Hello, curve of life.
Darling, you bend me.
You give me the blues.
So generous.

From all directions
(he whined and over-stated),
comes the onslaught of aging.
I'm too tired to list them.

Mitosis and meiosis. Oh,
how fresh my cells were
when I first studied cells.
La-dee-dah. Curve of life,

where will you take me? Over
a dark ridge--and then soaring
over vast landscapes under stars?
Perhaps something a bit less fancy.


hans ostrom 2016

Our Days to Get Through

Everybody has a day to get through.
It may look like other people's days
to other people, but no: each person's
particulars make the day unique. Many
days I don't feel like I've known anyone,
and each time I feel that differently.


hans ostrom 2016