Centri-Fugue

Mind's centrifuge spins in self-defense.
Attempts to spare the core from engulfment
by noise   shocks   sales   extortions  hate;
and drowning by social media. Centrifuge

plays a centrifugue, its own idio-
synchronized music, which insulates,
and which also helps mind evade ego,
culture's target.  A not-you seems

to glide in the fugue. Glowing
multi-colored rain falls. "Starwater,"
it's called by locals, although
there is no locality.  The fogged

not-you folds itself into an unbounded
flow of other disengaged personas.
Soon sadly your non-self hears a noise,
recognizes it as name, and everything's

recalled, ego re-established.  The
spinning and its spun music cease.
Your tense sense of the world resumes.
Out of digital Hades comes the flood again.



hans ostrom 2017

"Dreams," by Amy Lowell

"The Winter Pear," by William Allingham

Creature Brains

Creature brains feature
lanes nature grooved
as species moved into
spaces over time with
their accidental
                adaptations.




Hans Ostrom 2017

Phantom Blues

I have the phantom blues.
I'm too tired to be blue.
This is what phantoms do.
They only almost have the blues.

Maybe I'll get some rest
so I can get  depressed.
Yes, that's it. I need to
feel better to feel worse.

Maybe I am a phantom.
I hadn't thought of that.
Just an old weary ghost
with an invisible hat.



Hans Ostrom 2017

Let the Maul Fall

In Fall always
use a splitting maul or an ax,
never a hatchet,
to split cut wood into kindling.

As you split and sweat, don't forget
to find the smell of sap in air.
Find a rhythm to body plus wood
plus chop; and air.
Let the maul fall,
no need to swing it. It's splitting
not chopping, after all.

Would anybody find you
if you walked back into
woods to apologize to trees?
Thoughts like this come from air
as your mind moves away
from the fall of the maul's
heavy head and blade.
Hitting a knot calls your mind back.

Find yourself done with splitting
wood, two boxes of kindling,
let's say. Wood stoves are disappearing,
they must. Culture always
chops away old days, splits
custom, finds other ways to warm itself,
finds other work to get that done.



Hans Ostrom 2017

"To a Lady Playing the Harp," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Att Älska" by Gunnar Ekelöf

"On Inhabiting and Orange," by Josephine Miles

Jambing Jam Jive

Jam of the berries, plums,
and sums of water, sweetness,
concoction. Jamb of a door,

a line, or a vine propelling
itself gradually toward
a window sill: vegetative

will. Jamb of the saying
when English meets French,
leaving you singing

the time-and-place blues
on a bench. Jam of aggression,
reckless and crude, forcing

parts to fit into
what's falsely trued.


hans ostrom 2017

The Vast Hall

Another group has rented
the vast hall here. We must leave.

We didn't know this day would come.
We knew a day would.

Yes, of course I'm confused
and afraid, as if I'd been hollowed

out and panic had been poured in.
I'm also greedy for more time

in this grand space. That's so small
of me.  A door will open,

and a door will close. The simplicity
of it is appalling.



hans ostrom2017

"Everything Passes and Vanishes," by William Allingham

"Hölderlin's Old Age," by Stephen Spender

"The Mystery Poem," by Sara Teasdale

"The Mystery Poem," by Sara Teasdale

"For a Poet," by Countee Cullen

"Dusk in Autumn," by Sara Teasdale

Becausing

because we say because
   we try to know why,
to isolate a correlate,
   shun ones we see
to be against our picture
   frame of the world,
the notion of the world
   itself a frame,
an abstracted concrete
   rain-blur in the brain,
neurologically produced.

                        loosed,
we speculate, and early we
   decide before
we know because we need
   to say because.


hans ostrom

Smug Shadow

When I was young, I didn't take
my shadow for granted much.
I looked for and at it. My preference
was that version roughly
proportional to my body. I felt

ludicrous when I saw the one
where my torso disappeared
and my legs grew to meet
my neck.  I hardly ever look
at my shadow now.  It just

never seemed to develop
into a major innovative
displacement of light. And
honestly, I'm tired of carrying
it around.  At the same time:

no shadow, no me.  It is
a kind of proof. Believe me,
my shadow's quite aware
that it's indispensable to my being.
It's a smug, insubstantial thing.



hans ostrom 2017

The Specials - Racist Friend