A Pigeon in Rome

A pigeon strutted
into a bar on the
Via Veneto. This was
not the first course

of a joke, although
when the pigeon spoke,
it said, "Yes, I know
my head goes forth
and back. I have feathers
not funds. Allow
me some crumbs."


Hans Ostrom 2013

Taking A Break

I'm taking a break from the blog for a while.

I'll see you in the Funny Papers.

CM, you can take me off your route.

If You Judge Me

I saw her thinking and thought
she was thinking of them this:
If you judge me, do it silently.
Don't sentence me
to listening to the noise
of your opinions.



hans ostrom 2013

Two Important Activities

(based on found language, facebook)





In my retirement,
I do two important activities. First,
I always keep a close eye on my
stocks. Secondly,
we like to travel to new places.




hans ostrom, 2013

Father's Day: "Bear Nearby"

My father (1920-1997) spent a good portion of his life hunting bears, observing them, cursing them (not really) for breaking down his apple trees and devouring the fruit, and so on.

"Animals," by Walt Whitman

The Lost Poems

Sometimes I think
of all the great poems
lost to us through
one happenstance
or another. They
gleam like rare
stones lying on the
face of another
galaxy's moon.



hans ostrom 2013

Gwendolyn Brooks's birthday, June 7--poem: "Old Mary"

"The Harlot's House," by Oscar Wilde

"The Old Stoic," by Emily Brontë

Istanbul

In that city, small shops
formed hives of work and talk
and tradition. Birds whirled,
wheeled in flight, dove above
dusty trees at dusk. Voices
called, young and old. There
was the voice of the boy in
the alley calling for his friend,
"Ahhhhh-maaaad!" There were
the voices of the calls
to prayer. That city was a place

of tough vitality. Ferocity
and beauty shone in dark eyes.
Oh, yes, we recalled that
James Baldwin loved it here.
There was a seduction of breezes
after the sun went down. In that
city, acres of red-tiled
roof-tops accepted light and heat,
and people there accepted
their lives, their condition--
for the time being.



Hans Ostrom 2013

The Back-And-Forth

They forced him
to go shopping
but he got back
at them by having
all their memos
drained from
his consciousness.




hans ostrom 2013

Poetry Isn't War

Plath advised, "Write with blood." That's not
necessary unless you're imprisoned. Poetry's
not war. Writers like to give melodramatic
advice and even take it sometimes. That's
their problem. Write the best way you know
how. Ink--real and virtual--works just fine.
Don't kill yourself--because then you can't
write anything. Unless you're really oppressed,
don't force yourself to act as if you are.

They like to keep Plath's morbid celebrity
alive. They have their reasons, I guess.
I recoil from those. Read Plath's poems.
Many of them are very good. That is enough.
More of them would have been even better.
Life, life, life: poetry is life.


hans ostrom 2013

Qualifications

I have a Ph.D. in Foolish,
with specializations in
Impulsive and Awkward.

I earned a certificate in
Befuddled--and pursued
additional training in Perplexed.

"You're kind of a fuck-up,
aren't you?" I asked myself.
"Yes, yes I am," I replied,

"but you're no goddamned bargain."



hans ostrom 2013

In Pursuit of Happiness

Headquarters, be advised,
we are in pursuit of happiness.
Officer is down
on his knees, praying
for redemption. Alleged
miscreant has been advised
of his lights,
and is rising in a red sky.
Moses and Christ,
also Buddha and Allah,
we ask:
what has happened
to our species,
which achieves, achieves,
but that is all?
Headquarters, please
copy our call.
We are over. We are out.



hans ostrom 2013

Walt Whitman's Birthday: "A Hub for the Universe"

"Sonnet--Silence," by Edgar Allan Poe

Re-Posting One for Memorial Day: "For Charles Epps"

For Charles Epps

(1953-1971)

What's left these 38 years after Charlie
died? The same as what was left a minute
after he died: an avalanche of absence.
I've visited the grave. I always go alone. I
let morbidity, a pettiness, arise, think
of what's under ground, including
the baseball uniform in which they put
his body. It's easy to move past small,
awful thoughts. What's left to resolve?

Everything. He ought to be alive. God
knows that as well as I. My knowledge
stops there. I don't know why he died,
only how, when, where, and with whom--
Sonny Ellis. Their death numbed,
scandalized, and scarred me, but so what?
I got to live at least 38 years more
than they. When I die, so will my grief,

and so it goes. Like an instinctive,
migratory mourner, I think of Charlie
at least four times a year and every May
and try to think of something more to say.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

"Oklahoma Is"

"Not They Who Soar," by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"The Sky Is Low, The Clouds Are Mean," by Emily Dickinson

"Blue Monday," by Langston Hughes

We Are In the Waiting Room

The waiting room waits for us
to move through it. Magazines
collect like silt. We try to collect
each other's thoughts; fail;
return to our own. The waiting room

is quieter than most places
of worship. A door opens rudely.
The caller of names holds
a file, speaks two words brusquely.
One of us gets up. No one
says goodbye or good luck.

Those remaining settle too quickly
back into waiting. We've become
like birds on a roost at dusk.

The world cannot end as long as
there are waiting rooms
because that would be too dramatic.



Hans Ostrom 2013

"Choking It Back"

Today I happened to be
watching a cat choke back
the urge to vomit
a hair-ball just
as I was thinking of
the sheer number of Americans
who, first, consider themselves
White and, second, simply
cannot abide even the thought
of a Black man as President.
I want to say to them,
Vomit up that hatred, first,
and, second, read a
goddamned history book.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Man He Killed," by Thomas Hardy

"Leonardo's 'Mona Lisa,'" by Ernest Dowden

"The Last Invocation," by Walt Whitman

"The Village Atheist," by Edgar Lee Masters

"A Superscription," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"To Any Reader," by Robert Louis Stevenson

Gary Snyder's Birthday Today

It is Gary Snyder's birthday today. My favorite books of poems by him is The Back Country. He was born in San Francisco in 1930.

Here is a brief selection from his nonfiction book, The Practice of the Wild:

They Don't Want to Hear From You

Lou, they don’t want
to hear from you. They
don’t want to see
anything you do.

You don’t belong, Lou.
So how long you going
to keep asking to be
considered? Lou,

you were born behind
and never caught up.
Stubborn’s not a talent
they’re looking for.

If they had wanted you,
they would have sent
for you by now, Lou. They
would have sent for you.


Hans Ostrom

"Consumocracy Blues" recorded

"No Worst, There Is None," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Consumocracy Blues

They're spending what they don't have
on stuff that they don't need.
Yeah, they're spending what they don't have
on things they do not need.
Maybe they need to slide into
life with a simpler creed.



hans ostrom 2013

"The Poets," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Planet Is Hooked

The fish are getting high
on our pharmaceuticals. Perch
take anti-anxiety meds
prescribed by our sewage
and runoff & they swim
like hell. We like to share.
Gulls smoke our clouds of
junk, bears chew through plastic,
and clams can't find the calcium
anymore because of our acid trips.
The planet's on our street now.
We'll sell it anything.



hans ostrom 2013

Old Man, I'm Talking to You

Old man, I'm talking to you. I am you.
I didn't used to be. I used to fly past
on a train. You'd be sitting on a bench
at the station--gray eyes, gray sweater,
a blur of inert age. And I? Well, I

was all tendon-taught, unfraught, lithe,
and smug with youth. Uncouth. I was
on my way to . . . to here, as
it happened. And it's happened.

I'm situated at the station now, too,
talking to you, old man. Here
comes a train.


hans ostrom, 2013

Official American Poetry

Official American Poetry is a corporation like
any other. It has executive officers, middle-
managers, salespeople, controllers, and share-
holders. It operates major retail outlets

such as anthologies, presses, workshops,
and MFA programs. There are Academies
and Institutes, with canons on the parapets
and reviewers pouring hot grease on the mob.

Official American Poetry (OAP) frequently
says, "We are unamused by most american
poetry." When OAP notes an Interesting
Development, then OAP buys it up to

maintain market control. It bought up
Dickinson and Whitman, Plath and Sexton,
the Beats and LANGUAGE. There is insider-
trading, lobbying, and influence-peddling.

There's the awkward American imitation
of royalty (Pound crowning Eliot). OAP
is a tower of glass and steel. If you want
to try to try to trade independence for

recognition, go for it. Good luck.
Otherwise, just keep walking. And
writing. That's what Walt and Emily would do.
Bukowski and Bob Kaufman, too,

and this is not to mention,
and this is not to mention
all the poets alive, above and
under ground both at once.


hans ostrom 2013

It's the Birthday of Shakespeare, and He Wants to Know, "Who Is Sylvia?"

Earth Day--and Hopkins' "Pied Beauty"

"The Hour Glass," by Ben Jonson

What She Realized

She realized one day
that what she had produced
in her field was as good
and often better than
what the famous in her field
had produced. She knew
she'd never be famous.
She understood the machinery
that established hierarchy.
She knew that proclaiming
her work was as good and often
better was a losing ploy,
and she knew that complaining
was the sucker's payoff.
So she chose satisfaction.
According to hard criteria,
what she had done was good
and even excellent. Let it
be that, she thought,
and let the rest go.



hans ostrom, 2013

Bond of Union

(after M.C. Escher's Lithograph, "Bond of Union," 1956)


We first met in a vat of soup,
you and I. The bubbles entranced.
Then they turned into spongy spheres,
and the soup evaporated entirely.

More adventure: our insides--
brains and guts, bones and such--
departed. We became mere ribbons
of being, me with my sad goatee,

you with your lovely mouth
and luxuriant hair. We discovered
but one ribbon became us. So we
move cautiously now and try

not to attribute blame.


hans ostrom, 2013

From Inside a Renoir Painting

I am speaking to you from one
of Renoir's paintings. My voice
shatters softly like light.
I'm perspiring terribly
beneath these tight clothes,
these goddamned buttons and bows.

I'm drunk in that annoying way--
you know: wine gone sour
in the belly, head heavy, ambition
for a sexy evening vanished.
Only a nap says to me, "Hey."
I'm glad you like the painting.



hans ostrom, 2013

"Tour of a Painting"

Thanks: A Poem

Life happened to me,
fortunately. It could
not have happened
to me, quite possibly,
although there would
have been no I to have
missed the opportunity,
no sensor of vacuity.

Occasionally, one asks
why, or what have I done,
or what was I supposed
to do. No clue. I'm
nothing more than just
another you perceived or
not by other I's and yous,
we's and theys. Thanks are
a kind of praise.



hans ostrom, 2013

The Great Age of Fingernail Polish

Citizens, we've entered
the great age of fingernail polish.
I should be writing about things
less trivial. Apologies.
But I've been out among women
whose digital surfaces have been
enameled with all the colors
that have escaped the spectra.
And I could look at women's
hands forever. And women's hands
are not trivial.



hans ostrom, 2013

The Brain's Oven

The old woman
who slid a pan of cookies
into my brain's oven
never returned.
The cookies have turned
into black dots that float
across my vision.
I reek of burnt dough.

I lie on my side like a
buffalo who's been reading
Hegel on the parched
plain of Kansas for
example. Invisible merchants

empty microscopic vats
of hot slime on my neck,
my forehead. A thin woman
with cold fingers practices
scales on my spine,
and a chorus of angelic rats
prevents me from nodding off.

I raise one hand
as if to conduct
their concert. And I
pass out. I am a loser,
I am a loser, hallelujah
and amen.


2013 hans ostrom

"Lyric for an Oval Window"