"Metropolitan Museum," by Langston Hughes

"Childhood," by Margaret Walker

Anti-Epic

*
*
*
*

Anti-Epic


Here's a thought: stay home.
Quell grandiose ideas.
Let understanding invade you.

Consider all those people
and animals you won't kill.
Admit that whatever you

would seek doesn't exist--
revenge; a cup; glory.
Construct manageable

fantasies. You're an organism
that eats and sleeps. A deeper epic
lies in being nothing special.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

Dog Outside a Bar

*
*
*
*


Dog Outside a Bar


Memory is loyalty
to something not there.
I sit outside the past
like a dog outside

a bar, and what
I'm waiting for went
out the back door
hours ago. I furrow

my brow and alert
my ears and eyes.
And I remember.
The future wants

to take me for a
walk. It hooks
a leash to my collar.
And here we go.


Copyright 2012 Hans Ostrom

"putrefaction," by Charles Bukowski

"No Leaders, Please," by Charles Bukowski

"After God," by Tim Peeler

"Silence," by Langston Hughes

".9 [The Kiss Poem]," by e.e. cummings

"Karma Repair Kit, 1-4," by Richard Brautigan

Wislawa Szimborska

Wislawa Szimborska, the Polish poet and Nobel Laureate, has died, age 88.  Bless her. What a splendid writer. An obituary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/books/wislawa-szymborska-nobel-winning-polish-poet-dies-at-88.html

A recording of a poem:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dakW05yGs

"Alone With Everybody," by Charles Bukowski

And On Forever

*
*
*



And On Forever


A brisk wind blowing
across a high mountain
meadow continues
after I imagine it, after
I die. It goes on and on
forever in that place.


Copyright 2012