The Advertisers

They went to a lot of trouble
because they didn't know any better.
We speak of advertisers, decades
ago.  They crafted heavy metal
signs in the shape of a flying
horse (petrol). They made radio
and TV commercials as subtle
as pile-drivers. They showed
stag films to unsavory clients,
lots of smoke and leg. A steak,
potatoes, beans, martinis, and
pie a la mode every night:
deserving of a medal, maybe.
In retro-spectro-vision, I guess
the marketeers were as obvious,
naive, and simple as us, their
targets. Because they were targets, too.



hans ostrom 2016

Wish Lists for the Dead

You know there's these online wish-lists
for people about to get married.
Toaster (1). Champagne glasses (12).
That sort of thing. A lot of pre-newlyweds
just want cash. Why did I just write "just"?

Anyway, I think there should be wish-lists
for people who've just died. Some things
with far more granularity than a will
or a trust or a box of photos. Bouquet
for Giselle (1). Fuck-you to cousin
Rexx (3). Trees planted (1,345,238).
Bourbon-and-branch-water for
Dolores (3). Kind word (1).


hans ostrom 2016

I Demand to Know

A dragonfly, wearing standard-issue
lead goggles, downshifts its wings,
which when still look like foggy
cracked windows. Resting,

this dragonfly pulses. Its curved
blue tail befriended a scorpion
once during a vacation in Mexico.

I demand to know
what this dragonfly thinks.


hans ostrom 2016

The Fiddler's Response

The absorption of music operates
individualistically, in spite of
communal structures, hitocracies,
group performance, and ubiquitous
corporate dispensers. Thus

was the violin-player in a four-
person acoustic jazz band induced
by the present music and her
personal compunctions to play
with her hair, twisting it with
one finger, then looking at it

as if it were a clue; this, as
she waited (was she waiting?)
for a guitarist to complete
his wailing interval.


* "wailing interval"--sometimes
used by Duke Ellington to refer to
an instrumental solo


hans ostrom 2016

Mutant Pop Song

I don't want to see you tonight.
Baby. I want to see you sometime
today. Let's say between 1:00 and
2:40 in the afternoon. I want
to sniff your abdomen.  Baby.

I would walk many kilometers
to be with you. Just not all at once.
Plus you're the one with the car.
Oh, oh Baby. 

Cool Reaper

We who will be harvested
are understandably grim
about the prospect. That
doesn't mean the reaper--
constant change--is grim.

The reaper's merely
impersonal, although our
misery is not. That
coolness chills the blade
and menaces the hopeful,
who are hopeless.


hans ostrom 2016

Nevada

A human view has it that
a city of casinos and libertines
will be the center of sin
while piety flourishes on
the sagebrush plateau. God
probably thinks otherwise,
not being human. Not
opposite, just otherwise.


hans ostrom 2016

Faith Is Bulbs

Faith? Don't speak to me of Allah, Yahweh,
Jahova, Christ, Moses, da Buddha-man, Zeus,
Sky Papa, Earth Mama--or any of it.

I'm no atheist. I'm a modest gardener,
vegetables and flowers, who in Spring
is online-ordering tulip bulbs to plant

in October and to witness the following
Spring. That is faith.


hans ostrom 2016

Mutant Country-Song

When it all falls apart
and I'm lying on my deathbed,
I hope the Lord'll forgive me for
what flashes through my head.

"I hope someone's getting laid,"
for example. Or "I hate Nashville
worse than bosses." Or "I don't
think God gives two shits about
your politics--or your religion."
And, of course, "Ouch, that hurts
like a motherfu--."

[Docking complete: begin transfer
of pickup truck (old), farm, train,
mama, daddy, pretty girl, "darlin'", 
we, they, goodbye, dancin', 
hungover, fishin', gospel.]

I hope the Lord'll forgive me
for what may flash through my head
when everything falls apart and
I'm lying on my deathbed--or

on a couch, a highway, grass,
the crapper (Elvis!), a stretcher,
or a woman (darlin').


hans ostrom 2016

The Director of the Center

He's the Director of the Center for Let's
Wait and See. He's been worn down by
urgency. His social network includes a few
remaining pragmatic empiricists, resigned
skeptics, and anti-dualists. the CLWS
believes culture's terribly noisy, even
for the deaf, and maliciously distracting.
CLWS does all it can, which isn't a lot,

to promote counter-measures.
For there's so much drama
and so little repair,
not to mention
thoughtful original design. The
Director chooses not to whine.


hans ostrom 2016

Curve of Life

Hello, curve of life.
Darling, you bend me.
You give me the blues.
So generous.

From all directions
(he whined and over-stated),
comes the onslaught of aging.
I'm too tired to list them.

Mitosis and meiosis. Oh,
how fresh my cells were
when I first studied cells.
La-dee-dah. Curve of life,

where will you take me? Over
a dark ridge--and then soaring
over vast landscapes under stars?
Perhaps something a bit less fancy.


hans ostrom 2016

Our Days to Get Through

Everybody has a day to get through.
It may look like other people's days
to other people, but no: each person's
particulars make the day unique. Many
days I don't feel like I've known anyone,
and each time I feel that differently.


hans ostrom 2016

Song: Another Kind of Eden

It's another kind of Eden, I supposed.
What do you think: Should we remove our clothes?
We're on a rugged beach.
The seagulls strut and screech.
And in the sun your lovely person glows.




hans ostrom 2016

I Had My Eyes On You

I had my eyes on you. They were
those plastic ones from the novelty store.
I had them on your bare abdomen.
You were lying down (as

opposed to lying up) absorbing
sunheat. "I can't seem to take
my eyes off of you," I said.
Eyes closed, you said something

like "Huhnhmnm!" Which jolted
your stomach-muscles. My eyes
tumbled off onto what covers
Earth's crust. You put your eyes

on me--a warning glare. That's when
the devil showed up in the form
of the neighborhood's vicious
cat. I cast an eye at him--missed.

But he scampered. "Get you out
of here!"I yelled. "Same goes for you,"
you said to me. I gathered my eyes
and kept spinning in space on

this thing we call a planet.


hans ostrom 2016

Less Than Petty

On Twitter literary opiners complained
about poems concerning petty crises.
More attention to broad social emergencies
is wanted. Makes sense. You know how
it goes sometimes, though. The admonishment
has an unintended effect sometimes, even
on poets who sympathize.  I blew my nose
into a red handkerchief, which I opened.
I looked at the snot.  Tapioca. The shape
looked like an obese number 1, with sarif.
The topic of this poem is less than petty.


hans ostrom 2016

Humans Can Kill Easily

Once they breach the membrane
of empathy and kill with calm technique,
an order of evil descends. Those well
removed who have deployed and justified
the killing puff up and stink like toads.
They speechify, murmur, count, and preen.
Dead bodies rot in sun and shade
as the day moves on. Killers rest,
their eyes dulled, their nerves in service
now to evil. They care for their weapons.
Humans can kill easily, Lord knows.


hans ostrom 2016

Feline Disappointment

I aspire
to earn one day
the scorn expressed
sometimes
by certain cats I know.


hans ostrom 2016

Are We We? Oui

How are you enjoying the Pre-Apocalypse?
Other species through no fault of their
own get clocked by asteroids or Ice Ages.

We're just self-destructive. And we
think we have the right--don't we?--
to blow up everything. Wreck it.

Including the future. Who are we?
Are we we? Is there time. Is there time?


hans ostrom 2016

Caught Playing With Words

Are you playing with your words again?
Stop playing with your words! Put them down.
Oh, my God, they're all over your face, in
your hair,on the floor, the walls.

And stop laughing! It isn't funny.
You're much too old to be playing
with your words. You're never going
to amount to anything. What do you

mean what do I mean by "anything"?
People can amount to things!
But only if they stop playing
with their words at an early age.



hans ostrom 2016

Poets

One orders French wine and quizzes me about
who (what poets) I know and what I've read.
He's not quite insufferable.  He seems to think
he's hot shit. I start to get bored.

Another one sings a verse of a bluegrass song
on voice-mail--in tune, on pitch, with a
Carolina accent.  And another

edits a prestigious anthology which a
prestigious scholar skewers in a review,
and I don't care because their prestige
seems like a well preserved automobile
from 1936. Plus with the Internet,

anthologies don't matter, and
prestige is a penny stock.

Millions of others are just starting,
farting around with words.  It's a fine
thing to try to imagine: millions of poets
writing, clotting in cafes, tapping
on screens, falling asleep after
a swing-shift, wondering why White
people are so crazy, trying to get
another poet in bed.

Me: never prestigious, my obscurity
well seasoned, robust, full bodied.
The fascination with poetry stays
fresh.  The uncertainty about poetry's
place in society enlarges.

Anyway, it's one word. After another.


hans ostrom 2016

Language Charged With Meaning

Ezra Pound wanted to charge language
with meaning.  A misdemeanor, surely.

Who could testify against language?
They'd have to use language to try

and thereby make themselves
accessories after the testimony.

I say exonerate language from meaning.
Or convict but pardon it.  Commute

a few of its sentences. I mean, really.


hans ostrom 2016

Novel and Poem

(ars poetica)

A novel is a thousand lovely cacti.
A poem is a shot of tequila.
Novel is the breathing of a marathon-runner.
Poem is the intake of breath felt when a woman
invites you to be nude with her.
Novel is a wheat field. Poem
is a vegetable patch.

A novel is a city.
A poem is hearing music or seeing
art or going broke or having sex or
falling in love or hating work or fearing
or being all alone or getting acclaim or
arrested in that city.

Novel is a search for spices.
Poem is cardamom.

A novel is a battle.
A poem is dog-tags hanging
on a war memorial.

Novel is someone you know well.
Poem is an intimate stranger.


hans ostrom 2016

Bible and Rifle

I saw a man
wrestling his Bible.
I saw a man
clutching his rifle.

It was one man.
One and the same.
And all confused
by hate and shame.


hans ostrom 2016

Quest Ionnaire

What is your gun rights?
Why is movie stars?
Who is bombing sites?
How is luxury cars?

When is bigots?
Who is frackings
How is forgets?
Where is hackings?

Why is hedge-funds?
What is gun rites?
Who is bombing raids?
When is megabytes?

How is racists?
Why is time-shares?
What is billionaires?
Who is malwares?

Consciousness

Consciousness floats in virtual air
like a weightless golden pear
the body imagines with its blood.

Consciousness is absolutely
absurd, partly because it
can reason. Not least of all,

intuition forms an illuminating
shadow. In closing, let us
pray, and let us note

that prayer is one way consciousness
expresses its hope that it's not
talking only to itself.


hans ostrom 2016

Patented New Sonnet Form

Pablo Parabola patented the ten-line
sonnet for a sleeker look, increased
speed, and tighter handling. Interviewed
at his apartment in the Pommes de Plume
hotel, Parabola said, "We;ll be in full

production before Fall." Critics
say he and his investors have grossly
overestimated the market for ten-line
sonnets, leaving aside the question of
demand for sonnets globally.


hans ostrom 2016

Medusa's Morning

One morning Medusa put her hair up all
in snakes. What do you think? she asked
her lover. Looks great! he said. You didn't
even look! she said. I did so, said he,
and it looks terrific. At the same time,

your hair looks hungry, and what people
forget is that snakes stink.  He got out
of bed and asked Medusa what she thought
of the red hawk he'd attached to his groin.

She said, You're scaring my hair.

hans ostrom 2016

However

"However."  Strange word. Gets away
with looking ordinary. How. Ever.

One part has to do with in what manner;
the other part, with time. However
makes as much sense as Wellsoon.
"Wellsoon, we did find the broth too salty."

However, "however" is as reliable
as a steel pry-bar and never wears out.
It leverages a turn
of direction in writing, speech, and thought.
Whatever it means, it functions
and does so more slowly than but.

In the U.S., however has enjoyed
a long friendship with the semicolon;
however, that probably doesn't
interest you.


hans ostrom 2016

Clusterville

I'm living out in Clusterville. Out here
we cluster up the huts and houses, apartmental
lego-heaps, and all the rest. The clustering
seems fine. I have a job at Clusterworks.

The Clusterwork motto is
"Trust Your Clustering to Us!"
We've been trained never to omit
the exclamation point.

Believe it or not, my wife Clemithia
is a direct descendant of one
of Clusterville's founders--
Alchemia von Kluster,

who was German by birth,
Belgian by culture. A grim,
exacting gourmand, so they
say. Aggressive pacifist.

Clemithia takes after her.
I would call my spouse
an imposing figure.
You would, too.

Again by marriage I'm related to
Colonel Jean von Kluster,
who's first and last stand
occurred just outside Clusterville:
he sank his savings into
a failed jousting tournament.

Look,I'm no deep thinker, no
existentialist, anarchist,
or pub philosopher. I work in
Clusterville because that's what I do.
I like self-evident just fine.

Other people call the shots
and legions more (the sad cases)
believe they have control.

There are clusters of people,
places, and things in Clusterville.
That is all you really need to know,
amen. Come to Clusterville.
Call it home. Stay.


hans ostrom 2016

Having a Word with It

I'm never quite sure of who you are,
depression. I ought to hate you. I don't.

It's like you're some kind of gray-garbed
circuit judge. You ride into town, glower
down at me, then summon me to a cold

brown room where we sit silently.
You like it fine. I start to stare

into a pit I've hallucinated.
Eventually you leave. Or seem to.
When they finally sort out all
the brain science, your current name,

depression, will seem as quaint
as a Model T. Anyway, . . .


hans ostrom 2016

Black's Beach

(the clothing-optional beach near San Diego)

The heavy sand is as black as the stuff
that abides with gold in the Sierra.

Black-suited surfers march
along the beach in martial service
to the obsession. A nude

woman enacts yoga poses,
and I wonder why they never
offered that kind of thing
in high school physical education.
A solid replacement for
the badminton unit.

I sit naked on a purple towel
laid out on a washed-up wooden pallet.
There are other old washed-up
hippies (not the most accurate word,
but it will do) who dot the beach
in stupendous sunshine and fresh air.
Erosion-scarred brown bluffs rise above us.

I suppose we're absently wondering
where all the parties went to.
Answer: nowhere.  They just go on
without us. Somewhere we got

separated from our pods and
ended up on this beach.

It's not a big gulp of freedom.
Only a sip or two. Now a brown
young woman wades out into surf,
presents her body to the ocean,
dips her hands into the water
as if it were cool liquid silver.

She brings her hands to her face.
She runs her fingers through her hair.
I lie back like an old sea lion
and close my eyes.


hans ostrom 2016

The Shark Teeth Underground

I bought six shark teeth today.  Small ones.
Inexpensive. Also cheap, although not from
a shark's point of view. They came in a week
plastic box with a black foam mini-mattress.

They look a little like bobcat teeth.
Their color runs from taupe to blonde.

They remind me of when I bought
a chocolate-brown baby octopus
at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco,
when I was 8. These cheap,

eccentric creature keepsakes
(my mother's word) keep me going.
They symbolize a child's economy,
which dictates that all the stuff

in the world, like sticks, rocks, bones,
and bugs, is a vast, astonishing
pile of wealth. You can just pick
some of it up and have it! Holy shit!

You can even covet it and save it.
But most of it you just let go,
a re-investment in the infinite treasure.

The economies in which I've had
to participate in sell things the seem
necessary or desirable.  But almost
all these things harbor a tumor
of dullness. That's why advertising

must work so hard to distract
us from the dispirited quality
of goods and services.  As a
practical matter, the more I keep

current on child economics,
the more sanguine I am as I go
undercover into the adult,
capitalist polity. My

code-name today is Shark Teeth.
If you want to join this underground,
you're already a member, and remember:
the wealth we explore, the miraculous
forms that delight us--they're cool
and inexpensive, often totally free.


hans ostrom 2016

To Eddie Some Weeks After the Winter Solstice

Oceans are the ultimate artists, Edward,
more variously capable and constantly
original than earthquakes, rivers, ice,
and erosion. Of course, human art,

in contrast to all of these, is not
really in the conversation. Human art
is always a bit of a knock-off.
Sculpture, painting, surrealism,
realism, epic tales, Dada, absurdism,
comedy, tragedy, scrambled genres,
modes, and impulses, and forms
we cannot even grasp abound

in oceans, by oceans. The oceanic
opus is constantly changing,
ever-expanding, and utterly
unconcerned about audience,
remuneration, and critical success.

Sad Plato, when he was thought-seeking
for ideal forms, should have recalled
the ideal generator of forms:
the sea! The Greek seas alone
would have cheerfully overwhelmed
Plato's wee dialogues and allegories
and turned them into fantastic
shapes to nourish starved imaginations.

What do you think about that, Eddie
of La Jolla? I know how you like your
Plato and his greatest invention Socrates,
who, like a professional wrestling
star, always won his contests.

As you warm up your pipes to sing
in response to me, Eddie, let me stand you
to a salty tequila cocktail, an
ocean unto itself, some say.

hans ostrom 2016

Early Days Yet

Come all you
myopic visionaries,
procrastinating inventors,
and clumsy magicians!

Join us in the project
we like to call
"Ambition and Other
Toxic Ideas."

We're not sure
what we want
out of the endeavor,
or where it will

occur. Or when.
Or even what
the endeavor may
entail. But

we're warming up
to the notion,
and we've given
serious thought

to a mission-statement.
No doubt you're
as excited as we are
about all this.


hans ostrom 2016

Our Conversation So Far

Are they than closer appear
may mirror in objects? Seated
while belt seat fasten your
under vest life!

Refrigerated keep. Sale
individual for labeled not
unit this, all right?

Tough song, fly
along, boogety, boogety.

You count my blessings
if that's what interests you.
I don't think blessings
belong in a ledger.

Yes, there is at least
one mirror in every
object humans perceive.

Experience online
exclusive an to redirect
we as wait please. Please.

There are no objects
in mirrors. Mirrors
are objects.


hans ostrom 2016

If Riven

Mary Christ
cross criss

Joseph cross
rises boss

early daze
Christ bright

Jesus common
strums some

romans romans
romans romans

occupied rocks
goats flock

sun sun
sun sun

no details
know details

the hole
whole thing

the holes
whole blood

thing blood
thing well

no not
bread no

push back
pay back

you'll pay
back pay

push back
react shun

done it
done sun

son done
it done

Christ whoa
woe Jesus

yes mystery
mystery no

lore lore
lore lore

gospel true
blue truth

anyway anyway
rising rising

risen and
if then

and when
if riven

riven risen
end there



hans ostrom 2016

Alice Axe

Action hero Alice Axe
drops explosives down
the rabbit hole and obliterates
imagination. Her carved,

starved body glistens
and flexes for the camera
set-ups. Acting is
manufacturing. She's

on a mission. Certain
accounts depend on her.
The box-office weekend
slouches this way.

Know you are supposed
to believe phantoms
want to invade the nation.
Huh? Yes, oh yes.

Wonderland had it
coming. That is
from the movie, Alice
Axe has been celebritized.


hans ostrom 2016

Sistern Chapel

iron steel
steal, irony

please court
short pleas

angel angel
math moth

no pattern
known patter

sistern chapel
water sister

pleasure tongue
sung leisure

incense friend
ginseng end


hans ostrom 2016

It's Not Pretentious If You Don't Insist On It

(found language)

TACOMA YACHT CLUB
Boats Not Necessary




hans ostrom 2016

Regrets

Lots of people tell me
they have no regrets
about anything, they don't
believe in regrets. Because
they're people, I suspect
they're lying. So what?

Then there are those who
urge other people never
to have regrets, as if regrets
were bunions and not
potential signals of a
conscience. These people
aren't lying. They're tyrants
of one sphere or another.


hans ostrom 2016

Use Your Head

I spend all day hauling my head around,
sometimes setting it down on a pillow.
My head's attached to my body (should
go without saying?). Even if it weren't

I'd bring it along because that's where
I most like to be. I've often gone into
my head, mostly for fun, not to mention
narcissism, but also to get way

from the world, which is inexplicable
and excessive, and from people,
who are--well, you know. We'll never
know whether I would have gotten

along better with an evolved
version of Neanderthals.


hans ostrom 2016

This Facility

Unintended consequences follow
and then lead. Inconsequential
tendons don't exist, although the
import of those meat-strings comes
clear often only after snap or pull.
I'm not proud of the way my mind

works. It stumbles around
like an optimist in a dark cemetery,
where names on stones change
themselves but change back
before anyone notices. Also

graveyards seem the least
likely place to see or hear
a ghost because if you have
freedom of movement, why
wouldn't you get out of there,
haunt elsewhere, and see
the sights? In conclusion,

the staff is threatening
to take away my privileges,
as if my haunted mind were
powerful; and as if I weren't
the owner-operator of
this facility.


hans ostrom 2016

Night Train in Fog

You hear the fractured racket of the beast,
its engine, horn, and steel on steel. The total
sound is one of the heaviest you'll know.
Fog's turned the invisible train into
a backstage cataclysm. Imagination

rises like an exhausted porter. A Black
stoker sings early versions of "Casey Jones."
Jackie Gleason offers Sherlock Holmes
a highball. John Henry stirs a kettle
of beans for hungry hobos. Dr. Zhivago

and Lara get it on joyfully in a sleeper,
and Agatha Christie shows Hitchcock
a few card tricks, but he can't concentrate
because a platinum blond just entered
the dining car. Butch and Sundance

ride disguised as old Methodist women.
Johnny Cash and Leadbelly sing
a train song, and Rain in the Face
(the engineer) leans on the horn hard.
It ain't no whistle.


hans ostrom 2016

Captured Pawns and Pieces

They're relieved to get off work early.
Two pawns have a threesome with a rook.
The other rook smokes weed. A knight
gets drunk with a bishop, a medieval
tradition. Soon the queen shows up,
sweating, the sleeves of her robe
rolled up. "We're horribly mis-managed.
Let's unionize," she says. No one listens.


hans ostrom 2016

Unhappy Teriyaki

Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten at
the "Unhappy Teriyaki." For the sauce
was morose, the service glum. Clientele:
numb. It was as if we all were extras

in a black-and-white film, waiting
for the star to come in out of the
fake rain playing a humorless,
wandering anti-hero. Short handsome

zero. Even if it wasn't as if that,
I tell you only the rice looked upbeat.
Songs of lamentation emerged
from the kitchen. A percussion-section

warms up in my orchestra pit.


hans ostrom 2015

Photo from Dallas 1963

There's that lesser known photo from Dallas,
1963. Johnson, crowned by a cowboy hat,
almost smothers the foreground. He's
come down the steps of Air Force One
and hit the tarmac bellowing, bellicose.
Citizen Canine. The camera seized

his right arm as it rose in salute
to Texans, so it seems like a fascist
salute. Kennedy, bad back and all,
is several steps above him but
upstaged. Johnson has put his boot
on the throat of protocol. The President has
reached across his body to grab

Johnson's shoulder and hold him
back. It's hopeless.  Johnson and time
have become mad bulls. Kennedy's
sad face suggests surrender. Between
the men, Mrs. Kennedy seems to sink
beneath the surface of something.

The immensity of the suited males
becomes grotesque and arid--
menacing, but not like the slobbering
dogs of Birmingham. Mrs. Kennedy
looks politely terrified, glassy-eyed,
impaired by celebrity, sick to death
of the spectacle of power. In its own
way, the photograph is obscene.


hans ostrom 2016

Poetry Mountain

Mountains of poems, peaks
like Killimanjaro and Rainier.
To one of them a poet
brought a poem. "Here you go,"
she said. (She'd hiked to the top.)
A poetry-mountain attendant
said, "Thanks! Without poets,
there would be no poetry mountains."

He tossed the poem on the heap
and took a smoke-break.
Something then to do with
poetry-mountain physics
kicked in.  An avalanche.

The poet rode it all the way
down, where parts of the poetry
wreckage clotted cafes, open
mic venues, and other spaces.
Several famous poets awoke
to wads of words in their
mouths. They coughed and got
fussy like babies. The search

is still on for many missing
critics, last seen disappearing
under the crust of the mass.
The poet, she posted
an adequate apology online.


hans ostrom 2016

Under the Horizon

Thinking today of how like all workers
the Old Man got body-tired of and bored
with labor about the same time, like me
today chopping at a vegetable garden's
frozen mud in January.  Your mind

lets your body make your mind
think, "This shit is getting old."
You feel like you think the sun
looks when it seems to drop
below the top of shadowed hills:
ready for bed. Of course there's more
work waiting under the horizon.


hans ostrom 2016

Artist's Statement

Using the combined skills
of impatience, lassitude, imprecision,
obsession, genius, dullness, impracticality,
and distraction, I am able

to craft these wobbly, pathetic
structures, and to paint colors
and shapes that dislike each other.
These artifacts are fluent in me.

They're dear, embarrassing,
and perfect. They embody
the ideal of the mongrel
Get what I'm saying?

If not, I recommend the cafe
next door. If so, you'll stay
in this gallery for hours, meet
someone, and fall in love.


hans ostrom 2016