Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Memory's Bus
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Memory's Bus
Memory is madness
that's deemed sane.
It hums lost tunes and
strolls a lost lane.
It makes things up
and calls them "Past."
It manufactures
replicas that last.
For language and math,
memory's all right.
It helps you hold what
you read last night.
Its versions of us, though,
become who we are.
Arbitrarily, it selects
scenes that will star.
In the story of us, memory
tells and retells us.
Memory drives the
weirdest tour-bus.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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Memory's Bus
Memory is madness
that's deemed sane.
It hums lost tunes and
strolls a lost lane.
It makes things up
and calls them "Past."
It manufactures
replicas that last.
For language and math,
memory's all right.
It helps you hold what
you read last night.
Its versions of us, though,
become who we are.
Arbitrarily, it selects
scenes that will star.
In the story of us, memory
tells and retells us.
Memory drives the
weirdest tour-bus.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Earth As Art
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Earth As Art
In aircraft over Eastern Oregon, see winter's
landscape white and blue. White discs equal
crop fields: wheat? Lake-blue equals not
lake but mountains' shadows: shockingly
beautiful and surreal. Brownish blue is lake.
All color down there just is: is simply it.
Allow color to be abstract if you will.
White ends abruptly as a suede plain
opens up to view. Plain cannot desire
view, unlike artists and their art. This
sculpted painting below comes from
genius of, genesis of, Earth. Down there,
as up here where jet-trails briefly mark
the sky, humans have etched geometric
shapes and scrawled highways. That's
about all. Otherwise, Earth is left
alone to the studio of itself.
Copyright 2011
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Earth As Art
In aircraft over Eastern Oregon, see winter's
landscape white and blue. White discs equal
crop fields: wheat? Lake-blue equals not
lake but mountains' shadows: shockingly
beautiful and surreal. Brownish blue is lake.
All color down there just is: is simply it.
Allow color to be abstract if you will.
White ends abruptly as a suede plain
opens up to view. Plain cannot desire
view, unlike artists and their art. This
sculpted painting below comes from
genius of, genesis of, Earth. Down there,
as up here where jet-trails briefly mark
the sky, humans have etched geometric
shapes and scrawled highways. That's
about all. Otherwise, Earth is left
alone to the studio of itself.
Copyright 2011
Selected, Screened, Scanned
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Selected, Screened, Scanned
In Vegas airport, I was selected for extra
security-screening, or netted in the screen
for securely extraordinary surveillance. I felt
like an unusual combination of numbers
that had arisen against common gaming odds.
"We want nothing in your pockets but air,"
said the woman. (The same philosophy
guides the gaming industry, which doesn't
gamble.) She then left me standing like a
mannequin in the scanner's glass exhibit,
my shoeless feet set in someone's yellow
footprints. A device rotated around
axis-me, dusting me with radiation, my
hands up and elbows out like those of
a salamander climbing a clammy stone.
I emerged with nothing in my pockets
but air and a few sad items in my
hands, such as a handkerchief and
scraps of poems. A man greeted me
severely when I came out from the
momentary cell. He examined stuff
in my hands. He spoke into a walkie-
talkie: "Copy the male," he said to . . .
someone, somewhere, who had placed
a kind of bet on me. Why?
Was it my dark and brooding brow,
my atavistic 50s buzz-cut, my constant
befuddlement as, in line, I moved bits
of paper, coins, lint, and pens from pocket
pocket to pocket like a Dickensian
fidgeter? What raised the odds on me,
aside from my oddity? Ah, it could have
been my gaze, which, fascinated, fastens
itself on persons, all of whom interest me.
To stare, after all, is part of a writer's
routine. In front of a screen, the
surveilling man or woman either was or
was not relieved to lose the wager placed
on the male, the me-male, the I, the copied
male, the selected, suspected, screened,
scanned, and surveilled male with only
air in his pockets, socks on his feet,
and curiosity in his head.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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***
****
Selected, Screened, Scanned
In Vegas airport, I was selected for extra
security-screening, or netted in the screen
for securely extraordinary surveillance. I felt
like an unusual combination of numbers
that had arisen against common gaming odds.
"We want nothing in your pockets but air,"
said the woman. (The same philosophy
guides the gaming industry, which doesn't
gamble.) She then left me standing like a
mannequin in the scanner's glass exhibit,
my shoeless feet set in someone's yellow
footprints. A device rotated around
axis-me, dusting me with radiation, my
hands up and elbows out like those of
a salamander climbing a clammy stone.
I emerged with nothing in my pockets
but air and a few sad items in my
hands, such as a handkerchief and
scraps of poems. A man greeted me
severely when I came out from the
momentary cell. He examined stuff
in my hands. He spoke into a walkie-
talkie: "Copy the male," he said to . . .
someone, somewhere, who had placed
a kind of bet on me. Why?
Was it my dark and brooding brow,
my atavistic 50s buzz-cut, my constant
befuddlement as, in line, I moved bits
of paper, coins, lint, and pens from pocket
pocket to pocket like a Dickensian
fidgeter? What raised the odds on me,
aside from my oddity? Ah, it could have
been my gaze, which, fascinated, fastens
itself on persons, all of whom interest me.
To stare, after all, is part of a writer's
routine. In front of a screen, the
surveilling man or woman either was or
was not relieved to lose the wager placed
on the male, the me-male, the I, the copied
male, the selected, suspected, screened,
scanned, and surveilled male with only
air in his pockets, socks on his feet,
and curiosity in his head.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Stan Is Stubborn
Stan Is Stubborn
Once an inebriated stranger
in San Francisco on
the street in North Beach
said to me,
"Stan, is that you?"
"No," I said, "I'm sorry,
but I'm not Stan. "Oh," he
said, swaying delicately in
that way actors can never
capture, the white of his
eyes gone burgundy like
a Pacific sunset, "I was
afraid of that. . . . Stan
died 'n I guess he's gonna
stay dead. He always was
a stubborn son of a bitch."
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Once an inebriated stranger
in San Francisco on
the street in North Beach
said to me,
"Stan, is that you?"
"No," I said, "I'm sorry,
but I'm not Stan. "Oh," he
said, swaying delicately in
that way actors can never
capture, the white of his
eyes gone burgundy like
a Pacific sunset, "I was
afraid of that. . . . Stan
died 'n I guess he's gonna
stay dead. He always was
a stubborn son of a bitch."
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
it's New Year's Eve and
i'm lying in bed writing,
writing as usual. i start a
poem, then hear the phone,
get out of bed, and answer it.
the person calling
is a very close friend
and says, "i'm terribly
anxious now--i don't
know why--is everything
going to be okay?"
"yes," i answer, "it is."
my friend seems relieved.
soon the conversation ends.
i go back to bed. i'm wearing
a white oxford-cloth, button-
down shirt, not pajamas.
there are 7 books on the bed
and debris. i start to write again.
it's almost New Year's Day,
and everything is going
to be okay, if i'm right,
and if i'm wrong.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
it's New Year's Eve and
i'm lying in bed writing,
writing as usual. i start a
poem, then hear the phone,
get out of bed, and answer it.
the person calling
is a very close friend
and says, "i'm terribly
anxious now--i don't
know why--is everything
going to be okay?"
"yes," i answer, "it is."
my friend seems relieved.
soon the conversation ends.
i go back to bed. i'm wearing
a white oxford-cloth, button-
down shirt, not pajamas.
there are 7 books on the bed
and debris. i start to write again.
it's almost New Year's Day,
and everything is going
to be okay, if i'm right,
and if i'm wrong.
Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom
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