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

Corporations Keep Rats

Corporations keep rats.
They keep them running.
The rats have some cash,
which they pay
the corporation for stuff
the corporations make.
Run there! Pay here!

The bait is technology.
Hey,rat, run after
the new eye-fone 18.3Z!
Pay cash first! Or
put it on a rat-card!

Imagine if the rats
turned around one day
and said, Rat Master,
we don't want any
more stuff right now.
We like the look
of your throat. That's
what we want. For free.



hans ostrom 2013

"Go By Brooks," by Leonard Cohen

"Worry About Money," by Kathleen Raine

How White Operates, Too Often

Way too often, White
goes out like a boomerang
toward what is right
and fair and just, only
to turn in reactionary air

and curve home, home,
to righteous hate, selective
outrage, a change of "heart,"
smug safety, reunion with
old friends, and other amenities
of the supremacists' field
from which
the boomerang
was launched.

Whether you're Black
or White or something else,
here's the thing: if
you truly "get it,"

then you will know
what "it" is, and
you'll nod at
the tautology
(for sure),

and so,
you know,

no doubt
gratuitously,
I advise:

Beware of the White
radical, the White liberal,
the White conservative, and
it goes without saying
the White unapologetic bigot
spewing hate like a spigot.

Beware of them all. Be
unsurprised if they turn
back, if they curve a return to
"home," if, in fact,
they simply are not able.

For they are simple and White,
terrifyingly simple,
and they live
in a White-rewarding world,
and in most cases,
over the long haul,
they are not able.
They just aren't able.


hans ostrom 2013

Computer As Penis, Penis As Computer

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hans ostrom 2013

"I Could Not Drink It," by Emily Dickinson

Triviality and Guilt

I celebrate your new coiffure
and worry about the hungry and the poor
at the same time. What
good does either trivial focus or guilt
do to affect big problems? I state
the question in a homely way.

I congratulate your hips
and fret over how White Americans
will never "get it"
(until they get it).
What good? Fuckin' white people.

I remark on a grey cat's
behavior and think of
our water on fire
our air carcinogenic
our land
either flooded
or
baked
our politicians
embalmed
with corporate money,
ah, what good?

I rest my teeth
on the image of a chrome fender
and I wonder
how many bombs "we"
have dropped, on what,
on whom, and why
(why not!)
since, say,
1941. What. Good?




hans ostrom 2013