Thursday, February 21, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
The Next Big Thing: Interview
Writer C.E. Putnam has "tagged" me in the authorial game of "the next big thing," in which one answers questions about a project and then "tags" other writers. My self-interview appears below, and I am "tagging" Renee Simms, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Laurie Frankel, Suzanne Warren, Sandy Evans, Tamiko Nimura, and Carter Monroe.
What is the working title of the book?
Without One
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I was thinking about flesh-eating bacteria, and I wondered what would happen, socially, if there were a bacteria that destroyed men’s penises but otherwise left them physically healthy. –That is, an epidemic, like AIDS (when it first arose), with vast social and psychological implications.
What genre does your book fall under?
Social satire, based on a science-fiction premise, with lots of stuff about romance, sexuality, politics—and questions of masculinity and “manhood,” obviously.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
A friend in Hollywood thinks Seth Rogan would be perfect for one role. Peter Gallagher, maybe, for another role. Emilie De Ravin, Melissa Benoist. Steve Buscemi—maybe he could direct it--since we're fantasizing here.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Because of a bizarre new epidemic, something is happening to men: their penises are falling off.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
First draft—probably 18 months.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
As always, I inspired myself. I’m a one-person crew, for better or worse. You do what you can. I also wanted to see if I could write it. I’d say I’m a poet by nature, so novels are still quite daunting to me, even though I’ve written a few.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Implications of the penis-plague, which is known as Rapid Penile Degeneration Syndrome (RAPIDS), go all the way to . . .the White House!
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book is now available on Kindle, and two agents have asked to look at it.
What is the working title of the book?
Without One
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I was thinking about flesh-eating bacteria, and I wondered what would happen, socially, if there were a bacteria that destroyed men’s penises but otherwise left them physically healthy. –That is, an epidemic, like AIDS (when it first arose), with vast social and psychological implications.
What genre does your book fall under?
Social satire, based on a science-fiction premise, with lots of stuff about romance, sexuality, politics—and questions of masculinity and “manhood,” obviously.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
A friend in Hollywood thinks Seth Rogan would be perfect for one role. Peter Gallagher, maybe, for another role. Emilie De Ravin, Melissa Benoist. Steve Buscemi—maybe he could direct it--since we're fantasizing here.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Because of a bizarre new epidemic, something is happening to men: their penises are falling off.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
First draft—probably 18 months.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
As always, I inspired myself. I’m a one-person crew, for better or worse. You do what you can. I also wanted to see if I could write it. I’d say I’m a poet by nature, so novels are still quite daunting to me, even though I’ve written a few.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Implications of the penis-plague, which is known as Rapid Penile Degeneration Syndrome (RAPIDS), go all the way to . . .the White House!
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book is now available on Kindle, and two agents have asked to look at it.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
It's a Curious Thing
There are some people
(I’m one) who negotiate
their membership
in the family they’re
born into. They get by.
They continue to cope
and manage as they
move through other groups—
schools and jobs,
communities. But they
never belong. They’re
not exactly loners or
outcasts. In a way,
that would be easier–
the lines sharp.
They always feel
themselves to be
provisional members,
probationary,
forever trying to figure out
the rules and codes,
always and ultimately
awkward, no matter
how “successful.” This is no
complaint, only observation.
It is the shape of the path
for some of us—that’s all.
It is a curious thing, that’s all.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
(I’m one) who negotiate
their membership
in the family they’re
born into. They get by.
They continue to cope
and manage as they
move through other groups—
schools and jobs,
communities. But they
never belong. They’re
not exactly loners or
outcasts. In a way,
that would be easier–
the lines sharp.
They always feel
themselves to be
provisional members,
probationary,
forever trying to figure out
the rules and codes,
always and ultimately
awkward, no matter
how “successful.” This is no
complaint, only observation.
It is the shape of the path
for some of us—that’s all.
It is a curious thing, that’s all.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Planet's Disease
Industrial humanity's become
a bad disease the planet suffers from.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
a bad disease the planet suffers from.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Desire of the Keys
And the keys said,
"Let us off this metal ring.
We want to lead our
separate lives, travel
our chosen corridors,
try many locks,
and be seized
by an adventure of hands."
Hans Ostrom 2013
"Let us off this metal ring.
We want to lead our
separate lives, travel
our chosen corridors,
try many locks,
and be seized
by an adventure of hands."
Hans Ostrom 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Friday, February 8, 2013
No Answer to the Ocean
It's like this, maybe: A tide comes in.
It brings things you come to believe.
There they are, objects on glassy sand.
They're what's come of all your coping.
A stone, a crab-shell, a worn piece of
wood, a string of kelp. They're no answer
to the ocean. They don't add up to a code.
You keep walking on the beach,
trying to figure things out. There's
nothing wrong with that--walking,
wondering. What are you hoping for?
Hans Ostrom
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Elvis in the Holy Land
(based on found language)
Deadline approaching
to book
Elvis tour to
Holy
Land.
hans ostrom
Deadline approaching
to book
Elvis tour to
Holy
Land.
hans ostrom
Monday, February 4, 2013
Sacramento Capitol Mall
Politicos stride like
totalitarian colonels.
Professionals lean into
conversations
about cash-flow, internal
control, and impact (a verb).
Winos stand against a wall and
shiver
their way out of hallucination,
their shirt-fronts soaked with
the Lamb's
most inexpensive blood; bums pick
through rubbish
and sleep under news; the mad
testify
to streetlights and themselves.
No one runs for office anymore
except the staffs of those who
ran before.
They govern each other and
whisper about us.
Sunlight remains democratic.
We walk in it together
between the muddy river and the
capitol.
We are lobbyist and lunatic,
accountant and pickpocket,
admin-assistant, tech-person,
plumber,
and Ph.D. student writing about
power-relationships.
I find myself wondering not at
all
about the powerful. I focus on a trembling
hand
that picks through garbage. I
fork over
a few bucks to the hand's person.
who gargles the words, "God bless you."
Somewhere there’s a
photo
of that man when he was six years
old
and squinting at the camera,
happy in a summer
in another state.
Maybe you finally come to hate
poverty
enough to pursue it as an art;
maybe a thousand left hooks in
the downtown gym
finally leave your brain fizzed
like pink champagne,
and you're on the street mumbling
to a corner man
who isn't there. Or somebody
dies, and your way
of understanding that is to let
go the things
that hint of looking forward,
including the grammar of love,
and love of self, and taking tomorrow straight.
Yeah, so, I gave him a few bucks, which
will
go for booze, not a sandwich, and I don’t
care
because it’s not my money anymore,
and as the Capitol might whisper,
it never was.
Copyright 2013 hans ostrom
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Friday, February 1, 2013
Twice-Believing Creatures
Twice-Believing Creatures
Crickets sing the word
"ceasing" electronically
in dirt and dry
stalks.
A heavy black beetle turns his
belly
to the cosmos,
plucks with his six feet
at the needles of a darkening
pine bough.
The Magician
dances out of straw. He is Dusk;
he juggles the sun and the moon
and the evening star.
Here and there a
few are alert,
some curious, some thankful--like
the deer,
weary of
swishing horseflies away
from their backsides all day and
hungry
after the heavy
afternoon;--like the raccoon,
waddling off to make a living at the pond's edge;
--and the
tireless child, the old man
who stands near his garden
listening to the corn grow,
and the woman
with her hands folded,
singing out loud to nobody.
They know that
dusk takes today's body
and brings another after an interlude
of dreaming.
They know
nothing of the sort;
they are as dubious as the light
at dusk.
They know the
world to be as new
as the note of a gnat in the ear,
as old
as the lizard's
dry smirk,
a boulder's personality, darkness.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Nude Up and Get in a Pile
It may have been a line
from North Dallas Forty.
Anyway, we’d quote it
at the bar and laugh.
The thing is, pre-AIDS,
you might think you
were headed home
in a silver Camaro after
the bars closed
in California’s inimitable
Central Valley. Then you might
stop at a red light, two lanes,
and two women you knew
barely might laugh, roll
down the window, and
suggest, “Follow us.”
And, wow, there you’d be,
nuded up and in, no,
not a pile, but an expansive
naked arrangement of
three or four or five.
It was a gas, a blast, a trip:
listen to the lingo change
down the ages. Olive oil
on large breasts, the
several positions, good
clean fun. Of course, in
an apartment of your brain,
you knew the party had
to end—that night; and for you;
and for a generation. Microbes,
maturity, and so on. None-
the-less: at the stop-light,
in a Camaro, a little loaded
on whiskey and weed and
maybe a line: the light,
the spark, of mischief.
Good clean fun in
an era everybody and
his mother, as we said,
would not just forget but
not know existed.
*
*
hans ostrom 2013
from North Dallas Forty.
Anyway, we’d quote it
at the bar and laugh.
The thing is, pre-AIDS,
you might think you
were headed home
in a silver Camaro after
the bars closed
in California’s inimitable
Central Valley. Then you might
stop at a red light, two lanes,
and two women you knew
barely might laugh, roll
down the window, and
suggest, “Follow us.”
And, wow, there you’d be,
nuded up and in, no,
not a pile, but an expansive
naked arrangement of
three or four or five.
It was a gas, a blast, a trip:
listen to the lingo change
down the ages. Olive oil
on large breasts, the
several positions, good
clean fun. Of course, in
an apartment of your brain,
you knew the party had
to end—that night; and for you;
and for a generation. Microbes,
maturity, and so on. None-
the-less: at the stop-light,
in a Camaro, a little loaded
on whiskey and weed and
maybe a line: the light,
the spark, of mischief.
Good clean fun in
an era everybody and
his mother, as we said,
would not just forget but
not know existed.
*
*
hans ostrom 2013
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
Hiram Displays a Bad Attitude Toward Popular Cinema
Hiram, in his cups, which had been full
of vodka, says, "Let the miserable blob
lay. Lay the miserable fucking blob. Lay
miserly blob. Hey, Miz, lay Miz, Fizz Miz."
I can fill in the rest. It isn't so much
the genre of musical, or the tears
being squeezed out of melodrama
like hot fat from cooked bacon,
or the celebrity-actors shoved out
in front of the cameras like mannequins
with entourages, or that the Public
eats this shit up, it's the combination
of all five; and more--that gnaws
at Hiram's sense of what is all right.
"The whole fucking thing . . .," Hiram mumbles.
The combination. The combinations.
That's what gets a body down. In an age
of Packaging, Hiram opposes the Package.
hans ostrom 2013
of vodka, says, "Let the miserable blob
lay. Lay the miserable fucking blob. Lay
miserly blob. Hey, Miz, lay Miz, Fizz Miz."
I can fill in the rest. It isn't so much
the genre of musical, or the tears
being squeezed out of melodrama
like hot fat from cooked bacon,
or the celebrity-actors shoved out
in front of the cameras like mannequins
with entourages, or that the Public
eats this shit up, it's the combination
of all five; and more--that gnaws
at Hiram's sense of what is all right.
"The whole fucking thing . . .," Hiram mumbles.
The combination. The combinations.
That's what gets a body down. In an age
of Packaging, Hiram opposes the Package.
hans ostrom 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Mentioned Honorably
This is to inform
you that you received
an Honorable Mention
in the recent publication,
Who's Who In Global Obscurity.
hans ostrom 2013
you that you received
an Honorable Mention
in the recent publication,
Who's Who In Global Obscurity.
hans ostrom 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Sudden Infinity
not sure.
do know history's owned.
driver's ed.
the allies. you remember them.
cut the heads off.
indescribable scene.
sources say myth.
sources say fear.
sources. say.
sources. "the thing is,
he had to have known."
percentages on the back end, said
my friend in Hollywood, which
does not give
does not give
does not give
a
shit.
in other news, we, collectively,
have raised the average
temperature.
what to do?
did you say, "what to do?"
well then to that i say,
yes, let us ask and let us try
to
answer
hans ostrom 2013
do know history's owned.
driver's ed.
the allies. you remember them.
cut the heads off.
indescribable scene.
sources say myth.
sources say fear.
sources. say.
sources. "the thing is,
he had to have known."
percentages on the back end, said
my friend in Hollywood, which
does not give
does not give
does not give
a
shit.
in other news, we, collectively,
have raised the average
temperature.
what to do?
did you say, "what to do?"
well then to that i say,
yes, let us ask and let us try
to
answer
hans ostrom 2013
Friday, January 18, 2013
Man, Bicycle, Shirts, and Crows
With his right hand, a man
pushed a bicycle. With his left
hand he carried five white shirts
on hangers, covered in transparent
plastic. Three crows yelled.
They said, Get on that bike
and ride, brother! Wear black,
wear black, wear black!
Hans Ostrom, c. 2013
pushed a bicycle. With his left
hand he carried five white shirts
on hangers, covered in transparent
plastic. Three crows yelled.
They said, Get on that bike
and ride, brother! Wear black,
wear black, wear black!
Hans Ostrom, c. 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Gothic Fog
He stepped outside
and rubbed the fog,
its pliant hide. What's
inside you? he asked.
No answer. Just muffled
rumblings. Suddenly
a woman's hand emerged,
caressed his cheek and neck.
"Come in," a female voice
said clearly. He entered
the fog. In there, faces floated
like unlit paper lanterns.
A chorus of moans arose.
He turned to escape, but
elsewhere had vanished.
He was inside the fog now.
He moaned.
hans ostrom, 2013
and rubbed the fog,
its pliant hide. What's
inside you? he asked.
No answer. Just muffled
rumblings. Suddenly
a woman's hand emerged,
caressed his cheek and neck.
"Come in," a female voice
said clearly. He entered
the fog. In there, faces floated
like unlit paper lanterns.
A chorus of moans arose.
He turned to escape, but
elsewhere had vanished.
He was inside the fog now.
He moaned.
hans ostrom, 2013
Gardener's Soft Porn
After the first seed-catalogue
arrives in Winter, I paw through
it as eagerly as I gawked
at my older brother's
Playboy when I was 15.
hans ostrom, 2013
arrives in Winter, I paw through
it as eagerly as I gawked
at my older brother's
Playboy when I was 15.
hans ostrom, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Poet's Musings: Torture
Re-posting one from 4 years ago.
Link below:
Poet's Musings: Torture: In a discussion-group recently, we read Poems From Guantanamo, edited by Marc Falkoff. As you might guess from the title, the poems were wr...
Link below:
Poet's Musings: Torture: In a discussion-group recently, we read Poems From Guantanamo, edited by Marc Falkoff. As you might guess from the title, the poems were wr...
Waltzing
Oh, let us hold
each other turning
slowly ‘round
the floor. A waltz
is humorous
and kind, old-
fashioned intimate.
We’re a little high.
Oh, the perfume
of your hair, the
architecture of
your back, the
present of the
presence of
your hand in mine.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
each other turning
slowly ‘round
the floor. A waltz
is humorous
and kind, old-
fashioned intimate.
We’re a little high.
Oh, the perfume
of your hair, the
architecture of
your back, the
present of the
presence of
your hand in mine.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
Over, and Not Over
the big election is over
the most recent atrocity is over
the most recent Winter holidays are over
also the latest predicted apocalypse, over
the morning news, over
cup of coffee, over
cats fed, over
work, work--over
not over is
my lifelong
need to do
things for
people &
worry about
keeping
them pleased so
that i may get
some
sense of my
worth. this search
for worth, not over.
Hans Ostrom 2013
the most recent atrocity is over
the most recent Winter holidays are over
also the latest predicted apocalypse, over
the morning news, over
cup of coffee, over
cats fed, over
work, work--over
not over is
my lifelong
need to do
things for
people &
worry about
keeping
them pleased so
that i may get
some
sense of my
worth. this search
for worth, not over.
Hans Ostrom 2013
Zen Treasure-Map
On a Zen treasure-map,
there’s an X but no lines
or place-names. The four
directions are all marked E.
What you do is, you carry
the map with you at all times
and assume wherever you are,
is X—where treasure lies!
Hans Ostrom, 2013
there’s an X but no lines
or place-names. The four
directions are all marked E.
What you do is, you carry
the map with you at all times
and assume wherever you are,
is X—where treasure lies!
Hans Ostrom, 2013
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
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