Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Some Fable-Days

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Some Fable-Days

For ten minutes one afternoon, I became
an elephant. I walked heavily away from
where I work, wagging my heavy head.
Cackling minions threw pebbles at my
sad ass.  On another day, I became a cat:

Somebody was talking at me in front
of a group, apparently scoring clever points.
But I'd lost the topic, and word-like noises
from her mouth might as well have been
red jello for all the sense they made to me.
So I stared. I was Cat--there and not there,
dozing in the pride of my mind, not hungry
and therefore supremely disinterested.

I've spent many days as a badger, digging,
fretting, rooting around, growling to myself,
making a lovely mess of my underground
burrow, getting lots of badger-writing done.
Some fable-days, I tell you, are often
just what a human being needs--to stay human.


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

"The Want of You," by Angelina Weld Grimké

No God/Yes God

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No God/Yes God


No God. Physics is all. Yes
God. Yes fathom God. God
is no dice-player. Pascal will
take your wager. No God,
they say, they say atheism is
the good news, if so: yikes.
Despair, respond, no God.
Yes God, repair, despair, Oh
God? Flawed God, no God.
God fails the test, their test,
they say, no intervention into
bad. Yes God, who knows--
who knows? If no God, then
know No. If yes God, then
never the when, yes to an
infinite go, and faith in yes--
which is often a faith in I-do-
not now know, you know?

Copyright 2011

Future-Perfect Sighing

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Future-Perfect Sighing

Name it rain again.
Then sigh. Love your life
if you can. Pain, worry, fear,
and want make that hard to do
sometimes. Obviously.

Everywhere people are learning
the expression for "rain" in a
language or two different from
their native one. They are repeating
and repeating the expression like rain.
Sometimes these people are loving
their lives. Sometimes they will have sighed.

Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom

Monday, April 25, 2011

Concerning Mischief

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Concerning Mischief


Once my wife invited a friend over
to our place, which had a narrow back yard
full of tall laurels. She was showing
the friend the yard through the large
kitchen window. I was in the yard
with a baseball bat, looking at
a hornets' nest in one of the laurels.

The nest: that beautiful gray menacing
mache mansion.  I hit the nest with
the bat, I'm not sure why, and
the hornets poured out, a squadron
going after me.  They hammered
my neck and head.  Now a figure

in an animated cartoon, I ran toward
the house and, desperate, got in there.
The two women looked at me. I put
down the bat and panted. The women
didn't say anything. Hornets were hitting
the kitchen window.  Later, my wife
asked, "Why do you do such things?"


Copyright 2011 Hans Ostrom