It's Going To Be All Right?

People, including parents and friends,
like to say, "It's going to be all right,"
as if they knew. It's not a bad rhetorical
move--pretending you know when you don't.
Where would we be without such
rituals of speech?

"What goes around, comes around," people like
to say. Something about Karma, which
in the U.S. has become a girl's name. Something
about a belief in a force or entity
that controls the game--a pit-boss, say,
in Vegas: no, that's not quite right.

Or maybe it's the deep order of fractal chaos?
It has to be more than wishful thinking.
Doesn't it? It's going to be all right?


I said to a woman once, concerning a mutual
friend who'd been shafted by greasy academic
pigs in tweed, "What goes around, comes around."
(What I really meant was: they'll get theirs.)
She said, "No, it doesn't. Even if it comes around,
it's too goddamn late. These fuckers hurt her,
and they will get away with it."

True enough. Meaning: true. It's in fact the
lesson I took away from Hitler's reign, slavery,
Jim Crow, lynching, assassinations of MLK
and JFK, Black justice v. White justice,
the rise of worms in organization, U.S.-
sponsored coups, and on; and on and on:
they will get away with it.

Even if a dictator's hung,
the damage is already done.

I have said to people in trouble,
"It's going to be all right." It isn't
exactly a lie. It isn't the truth.
It's something we say. It's something
those without knowledge or power
feel as though they ought to say
just to keep the illusion of
an ongoing game alive.

These things we say to each other
that aren't exactly accurate
are nonetheless important
evidently. Tell me. Tell me,
stranger, tell me, friend; tell
me it's going to be all right.




hans ostrom 2013

"Evening Waterfall," by Carl Sandburg

"Shiloh," by Herman Melville

When the Tongue

Quarter to Five (A Zombie Poem)

(reposting one from 2009)
*
*
He works as a zombie from 9 to 5. He climbs
into a catatonic state and performs duties
as are assigned to him. He's under the spell
of employment. (It could be worse.) His
co-worker, Barton, said, "You scare me.
You look like the living dead." "Don't worry,"
he said, "I'm just behaving professionally. After
work I become vibrant and garrulous."

"But I don't get it," Barton said, "--what
job-title around here requires a person
to behave like a zombie?" "In my particular
case," said the man, "it's Chief Deputy for
Zombic Affairs." "And what is it exactly
you do?" asked Barton. "Barton," he said,
"you don't want to know." With his blank,
unnerving, but professionally appropriate
affect, he resumed his duties, for the clock
read only quarter to five.



hans ostrom 2009

"competition," by Charles Bukowski

"these things," by Charles Bukowski

"Conjecturing a Climate," by Emily Dickinson

"Lunar Paraphrase," by Wallace Stevens

"November Sun," by Elizabeth Daryush

"Those Who Will Not Reason," by W.H. Auden

"dog," by Charles Bukowski

Garbanzo Opera

When I was six, garbanzo
beans felt like grainy
mud-pebbles to my mouth.
They tasted like a menacing

nothing. When I picked
them out of a salad
and marched them to the edge
of the plate, a parent's

order became inevitable:
"Finish them." Finishing them,
I gagged. They became
soft bullets of

esophageal assassination.
Now I love the little
bastards. I bathe them
in olive oil, bequeath

unto them garlic and pepper.
I now know their nom de
guerre: chick peas.
People may not

change, but their taste-
buds do, and I would pay
good money to go to
see a garbanzo opera.



hans ostrom 2013