And the Frogs Croaked "Affidavit"

I think an affidavit should be something
different from a legal statement. An affidavit
should be a mythical bird or a frenetic folk dance.
Or perhaps a ritual response in a liturgy.
(Affidavit, affidavit, said the assembled, gravely.)

I was listening to some frogs last night, The
dear frogs, moist creatures enamored of moonlight.
They just kept croaking affidavit, loud and crisp,
with syncopation borrowed from another aural plane.
The amphibious chant mesmerized me. Down

the years it has done that, for I have listened to frogs
my whole life, and I will sign a statement to that effect.


hans ostrom 2018

Implied Narrative from a Language Lesson

(translated)

Can you please be a little more
quiet? I want to hug you. I
want to kiss you. I need to use
the bathroom. I want to move here.



hans ostrom 2018

Good News: You Seem to Exist

"That there is something is the first, most obvious, and best known thing conceived by our intellect and all the rest follows" --Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus 

"I think; therefore, I am"--a bit self-centered,
Rene. "It is, even if it's not what it seems

or seems different depending who or what
records the seeming"--awfully inelegant--
but better? Here's the thing:

something exists. Can I I be more specific?
Can the something? The questions answer
yes implicitly, being more specific themselves.

Here is a word: exits. Exits exist, or seem so to you
and so they do, and therefore so do you, so take one

to a fine and rational place.


hans ostrom 2018

Thumpers

Hail Grace, full of Merry, how
does your garden grow? And another
thing: why are people
who are full of hate and empty
of sense in charge of things?
Is it just tradition?

Blessed art art, at least
it's a vector in which to stuff
the rage of futility, the roar
of despair. Jesus, Christians

have made up a bunch of crap
about you, turning you into
a white supremacist policer of sex
& gender and a lobbyist for guns and greed.
They preach the "gospel of wealth."
No, really. Thugs, they really
thump the love out of the Bible.


hans ostrom 2018

An Under-rated State of Being

Beside a creek, we discussed creeks.
At a table we talked of American
depravities--acidic combinations
of sex-policing, racist hate, and greed.

In a bookstore, we spoke of sex.
In many places, we used language
to evade. Hiding, we sometimes
told the truth. We asked questions

in anger, illness, lust, inebriation,
shock, exhaustion, and fear. We
fiercely expressed certainties
that, seen later, were all wrong.

At our best, we had nothing to say and
said nothing: an under-rated state of being.



hans ostrom 2018

You Take Requests

You're performing every night
inside your head. You play piano,
you play shame. You play

dream flute and percussive
regret. You turn rain into harp
strings and fear into drums.

A low tuba of worry
supports an anxious violin.


hans ostrom 2018

The Talk Artist

She kept talking. I let her talking
be the sound of a creek, an abstraction
made of sound waves.

Then her talking began to sound
like a sea, rising and retreating.
It mesmerized me.

"Does that make any sense?"
she asked. I roused myself
from hearing to answer:

"Yes, and it's beautiful in its
own way," I said, referring
to her talking. That

induced her to talk more.
She was a compulsive talk artist.
She talked as if to breathe.



hans ostrom 2018